[John Rofrano]

You’re welcome Thomas. Glad I could help.

Personally, I’m waiting to see what Apple announces for the new Mac Pro before I make my next purchase. There is also the recently announced iMac Pro but they are rather expensive with the 8-core 32GB starting at $5,000 and the 18-core 64GB at $8,000 but they are beautiful if you have the money.

Good Luck in your decision.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Greg Ball] “1. How can I check the clip properties that a client has sent me to determine if it’s 1080P or 720P? In FCP 7 you used to be able to see it in the browser.”

You can see this in the inspector. Select the clip in the browser or timeline and open the Inspector window (⌘4). Press the (i) icon and you will see the resolution and frame rate in the top bar. Also if you change from the Basic view to the General view you will get even more clip properties.

[Greg Ball] “2. Pan and zooming video clips and images. I’d like to pan or zoom clips and images by starting the move before I cut to the clip. In other words I’d like to cut to clips that are already zooming or panning. In FCP 7 we used to just drag the first keyframe BEFORE the portion of the clip we were using. But I don’t see how to do this in FCPX.”

Create a Compound Clip from the clip and double click on it to open it in it’s own timeline. Then apply any cropping and panning keyframes you want on the entire clip. This will add motion to the source clip regardless of how you trim it. Then when you return to the timeline you can trim the clip to start at a point where the panning is already in motion.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

I agree with Jeremy’s last suggestion. You probably need to create a computer generated explosion so that you can place it in front of the person. Just more smoke to add to the original explosion would probably do. Shoot the person on a green screen so that you an easily key out the background and composite the shot with the original footage -> chroma keyed person -> CG explosion from bottom to top.

Selling the shot is a different story. When you shoot the person, you need to make sure that all light and shadows are coming from the same direction as in the original scene. Also the color temperature of the lighting must match (I assume daylight). Some chroma keys have a light wrap mode that will wrap a bit of the original light around the edges of the composited foreground to make it blend better with the background but there is no substitute for getting the lighting and shadows to match when you shoot the two scenes in the first place.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Sherril Schlesinger] “So conceivably I could give the 2 drives to 2 different editors and both would have all of the media for those projects?”

Hi Sherril,

Yes, what consolidate does is gather any media that is referenced in the library but not physically in the library and copies it to the library leaving the original media files in place. That would allow you to make a compete copy of a library on an external drive and then copy that to yet another drive and give the two complete copies to two other editors and they would each have all of the files from the project.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Thomas Hanser] “I have to upgrade my aging Mac Pro 2008 to a newer machine and I’m considering the Mac Pro 3.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5 or similar.”

Have you heard that Apple is about to come out with a new Mac Pro? I would not buy now if you are buying new. You can get a used 2013 Mac Pro 4-Core 12GB memory 256GB SDD for $1749 at OWC. Of course, you have to consider that for that price you could also get a 2015 iMac 27″ Retina 5K 3.3Ghz with 32GB memory and 2TB Fusion drive which also has an absolutely gorgeous display.

You might want to check out the Geekbench Scores because there are a whole lot of Mac’s that are way more powerful than that old 2013 Mac Pro 4-core. The Geekbench multi-core score for the 2013 Mac Pro 4-core is 13116 while the older 2010 Mac Pro 12-core is 16517 which is why a 2010 Mac Pro 12-core might not be a bad option for you.

[Thomas Hanser] “Does anyone edit video with these machines and how do you like them?”

I don’t edit with one. I had the decision to buy one or buy a used 2010 Mac Pro 12-Core when I was moving up from my 2008 Mac Pro 8-core and I bought the 2010 Mac Pro 12-core because it was more expandable, almost just as powerful, and way cheaper used. It runs the latest macOS High Sierra and you can use all of the cards and other peripherals in your 2008 Mac Pro with it. They are very cheap on eBay (12-cores for $1,300 – $1,500)

[Thomas Hanser] “With no room for additional internal drives, where do you store your source clips? “

Most people use an external Thunderbolt RAID drive. I have a 12TB external RAID 5 even with my 2010 Mac Pro which has 4 internal drive bays.

[Thomas Hanser] “Do you use FireWire drives or USB external drives?”

Firewire is old and slow by today’s standards. Newer Mac’s don’t even have Firewire ports anymore. Thunderbolt is the new interface. I edit with external USB 3.0 drives and they are plenty fast enough but I’m still working in HD (no 4K) so it would really depend on your media size. If you plan to edit 4K I would look into Thunderbolt drives.

[Thomas Hanser] “Any comments our suggestions before I purchase one, used? How easy is it to do your own upgrades (RAM) on this machine? “

RAM is about the only thing upgradable on the 2013 Mac Pro. It is not the Mac to buy if you like to upgrade (which is why I chose not to buy one). You will be stuck with whatever graphics chip is in it forever (and the 4-core probably has the basic D300) because it’s not upgradable.

My advice, if you can’t wait for the new Mac Pro to come out and you need a workhorse for rendering, then buy a used 2013 Mac Pro but take a look at the iMacs. They are great for editing. I understand they get a little hot when performing a lot of long renders but they are a delight to edit on with that big 5K display. If you do more editing than rendering you might find that a nicer choice.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Ken Ramsauer] “I am having enough issues right now with Premiere CC 17 and 18 that I want to toss them out.”

I use Final Cut Pro X and I have a very pleasant editing experience and efficient workflow. I was never a fan of Premiere or tracks and I don’t like the subscription model or forced updates especially when they destabilize your system. If there is a way to turn off the automatic updates I would definitely try that once you get your system stable again of course. Then only allow an update after you have performed a backup in case anything goes wrong.

[Ken Ramsauer] “Black Magic will not even open on Higj Sierra so I can’t test anything.”

I suggest that you delete it and re-download it from the App Store because it works fine with High Sierra on my Mac. This may suggest deeper issues with your Mac. It may be time for a clean re-install.

Good Luck!

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Robert Withers] “Do thunderbolt daisy chains have the same issue?”

Yes, but the question us will you feel it? Thunderbolt has significantly more throughout than Firewire and depending on the order that you chain the drives, you may not feel any slow down at all.

This is a good article that discusses the subject and some experiments:

Thunderbolt: How devices affect each other on a daisy chain

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Ken Ramsauer] “I was thinking to use my external SSD as a Adobe Scratch Disk only and use the Fusion drive for the Media storage BUT because the SSDs are so cheap would it be faster to use two external SSDs one dedicated for Media storage and one dedicated for the Scratch Disk? “

This decision depends on two things:

(1) SSD’s have a finite “write life”. That means that you can write to them a fixed number of times and then wear out and go dead. For example, Intel’s 335 Series 240GB SSD’s are rated for 20GB of writes per day for three years, which works out to about 23.5TB of total writes. Most people would not reach this under normal use but the workload of a scratch disk is not normal use. Scratch files are constantly being created, updated, and destroyed and because of this, an SSD is not the best medium for a scratch disk unless you don’t mind replacing them prematurely (which you might be OK with). They are fast, but they don’t last as long as a HDD.

(2) Is the USB 3.0 bus fast enough to keep up with the throughput of the SSD drive? The USB 3.0 specification says that it can handle up to 640MB/s and the Samsung T5 is rated at 540MB/s Transfer Speed so in theory, you should get top speed from your external SSD via USB 3.0. Actual results may vary depending on how many other devices are sharing the USB 3.0 bus. (BTW, your 2015 iMac has Thunderbolt 2 ports which are faster than USB 3.0. )

[Ken Ramsauer] “What about using the Scratch Disk for both Media and Scratch? Is this still faster than using the internal Fusion Drive? “

Whether it would be faster to use two external SSD’s or one SSD for both depends on how well your Fusion drive performs because, after all, it contains an SSD as well and Apple usually uses crazy fast SSD’s. The SSD in my 2015 MacBook Pro has Read speeds of 1,675MB/s! That’s 3x faster than your Samsung T5. So don’t count out using your Fusion drive for editing.

I would download Blackmagic Design Disk Speed Test which you can get from the App Store and do so measurements for yourself. Then decide which is faster.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

I would use a San-Serif font. All of the serifs in your font add a lot of very thin detail that its hard to encode. Use Helvetica or Arial font. This will clean it up and help the encoder produce better results.

You also might want to add a black background behind the text so that the encoder can make sharper edges against a solid color.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Patrick Cooper] “My gosh, I had no idea that the prores codec used by Shotcut is ilegal. In that case, I won’t use that codec.”

Yea, maybe “Illegal” is too strong a word but they are not “licensed” and it’s “illegal” to reverse engineer the Apple ProRes codec to get around paying licensing fees so that’s why I say they are illegal. The problem is also that they perform poorly because they are a “hack” from reverse engineering. When you place one of these files on your timeline line they cause playback problems and as soon as I experience this I check the codec in the file and it’s always the ffmpeg ProRes files that cause the problem.

[Patrick Cooper] “Among the codecs that a lot of stock sites accept are h264 and photojpeg. I admit that h264 is more attractive to me due to the smaller file sizes. Though I guess photojpeg would be the preferred option for clients due to supposedly less compression?”

When I buy stock footage I expect the highest quality possible. PhotoJPEG is much higher quality than highly compressed h264. As a professional, I don’t care about file size, I have a 12TB RAID 5 for my footage. I care about quality! A lot of stock footage is delivered as PhotoJPEG if it can’t be ProRes.

If you are considering doing a lot of this, you might consider buying a Mac and creating real Apple ProRes files so that you can deliver in the formats that professional expect. BTW, I don’t use Vegas Pro anymore or even use a Windows PC. I’ve been on the Mac for that past 4 – 5 years using Final Cut Pro X and use Apple ProRes for most of my work.

Alternately, you could buy Vegas Pro 15 which includes a licensed Apple ProRes codec but that’s a big jump in price from Movie Studio. Of course for the price of Vegas Pro 15 you could buy a Mac Mini instead. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com