[Brett Sherman]

I just bought the VocalRider plug-in. It’s a remarkable deal right now at $29! It’s first heavily discounted and then half off for a limited time.

I can confirm it works well in FCP X. (Not all plug-ins do)

[Brett Sherman]

I was. But a came up with a super hacky way of doing it using opacity of the gradient and altering random seeding. It took a lot of messing around to get it to work that way though.

I have to look at yours more in depth. It looks like you are using individual frames to separate the graphics. I don’t know if it works with Drop Zones since they have to span the length of the Composition where they are used. Here’s what I ended up with:

[Brett Sherman]

I think I got it now. Color Mode “Pick from Color Range”, then adjust opacity of gradient with a hard change from 0 to 100 percent.

[Brett Sherman]

[Herb Sevush] “Which is why I bought the much cheaper UVW line …” what noise, I don’t see any noise.””

Now you can get DVW decks for about the same price as a UVW deck! I know I bought like 3 of them recently for an archiving project. If the deck stopped working, I just plunked down $300 for a different one. I think people are just happy that you paid the shipping to get it out of their house.

[Brett Sherman]

[Herb Sevush] “There’s nothing possible about that, it’s definitely the reason. That’s why I spent 1K on my chair, and it’s why hammock breaks are part of my working day. I’ve spent too long working in situations we’re I’m fighting my own gear as I’m fighting the clock, it leads to sleeping on facility couches and rising bleary eyed to unproductive outcomes. I’ve often said that an editor’s best, most creative tool is time spent away from a project, to that I will add a positive working environment.”

I too spent about that on a chair (though used I got it for $600). My chair has lasted 20 years though and will continue to do its job until I retire. Depending of course on the media you’re working with, I just don’t see that the 2019 iMac versus the new Mac Pro will be a definitive difference in life. Sure, if you’re editing RAW multicam. But drive speed is really going to hit you there. And don’t render breaks do exactly what you want? Time away from the machine.

If I look at what frustrates my workflow the most, it’s not processing power. It’s disk speed, it’s NAS weirdness, it’s the machine not doing what it has handled easily previously, it’s software bugs, it’s OS bugs. Maybe when the machine ships and I see what it can actually do, I’ll be convinced otherwise.

[Brett Sherman]

[Oliver Peters] “A day rate for a home studio – editor + gear/room – should be minimum of $1K-2K/day in most medium US markets. “

Of course this brings up the point of if you’re charging by the day or hour what’s the financial incentive to speed up the process slightly with a Mac Pro? Do you think clients will be convinced to pay a higher day rate because you have a slightly faster Mac? I don’t think so. In these cases, the smart money is on a well-fitted iMac (not even iMac Pro).

Even if in Herb’s case you bid out whole projects. Unless you’re turning down other projects that you could take on with a slight speed boost in productivity, the financial incentive for getting the fastest possible machine isn’t there either.

The Mac Pro is a machine for workflows that do not work well with existing Mac hardware.

[Brett Sherman]

[Oliver Peters] ”
I’m not sure that’s true, but it depends on how you define success. Obviously there’s a workstation market, otherwise, HP and Dell wouldn’t manufacture such machines.”

There is a much bigger market for PC workstations. I’m sure they can turn a profit on their workstations. I’m not so sure about Apple. But like I said, I don’t think for Apple it’s to make money. And like I said I also don’t have a problem with Apple serving this market. I do think there is a hole they are missing in the 5-8K range of people who want upgradeability but don’t need the performance (or cost) of this Mac Pro.

[Brett Sherman]

I’ve done this before with the Neat Video plug-in. Another tip is to limit the sharpening with a mask. For example just on a person’s face. For me this helps avoid the “artifacted” look that sharpening adds. If someone’s eyes are sharp you tend to think the shot is in focus.

Of course, I’ve never screwed up focus on anything I’ve shot…

[Brett Sherman]

[Ronny Courtens] “So, before assuming that no-one will buy this MacPro just because you don’t need it, it would be best to realize that there is a very vast world outside everyone’s little neck of the woods.”

Of course. I’m glad the high-end shops have a Mac for them. I don’t think it’s assuming too much that this won’t be a huge commercial success. But I don’t think Apple necessarily intended it to be such. They clearly wanted to meet the needs of high-end facilities where cost is not much of an issue. I think it removes hardware as a barrier to using Apple. However, there are still barriers that remain for many of these potential customers – most notably the Nvidia/Apple conflict. That will undoubtedly dampen sales of such a high-end machine.

Now for us in the mid-level. It’s hard to see how I justify a purchase of this machine. The base configuration simply doesn’t cut it for me – 256GB? You have to be joking. No fool would ever buy a machine with a 256GB system drive as it would lead to continual problems. Unless there’s a sweet spot for less than $8000, I don’t see it’s realistic for me. And I’m not convinced at that price point it will be faster than an iMac option.

The only hope would be if there is a Mac Pro junior at some point. 1 double PCIe slot, 1 regular PCIe (for afterburner), 2 m.2 NVMe slots, 6 DIMM slots, 400 watt PSU, 10GB Ethernet is all I would need. I sort of doubt it, but a person can have a dream.

[Brett Sherman]

One of the first things I did was change the “B” shortcut key to “Blade” instead of “Blade Tool”. That way it instantly cuts the clip where the pointer is. I find it unnecessary to have a “Blade Tool” as I’m typically only blading one thing at a time. And it’s easier to get exact.