[Mark Grance]

With not one word on reliability. I’m sure it is still all running on the same wonky AWS haystack as before.

[Mark Grance]

I wish it were just the early days with frame.io but it isn’t.

This reminds me of Vimeo days. Their upload/compression worked great until it didn’t. Many a time I was sitting for a few hours waiting for the file to finalize. 5 at night, 6, 7, 8…

This was why I left Vimeo.

Now it seems to be that frame.io doesn’t really have the horsepower to keep it going all the time.

They add features and connections with apps get chummy with Hollywood, but when it goes down, they report they are working on it.

We’re working on it.

We’re working on it.

We’ve implemented a fix.

We’ve implemented a fix.

It is fixed.

It is fixed.

But they never say what went wrong and how it is going to be prevented in the future.

All I get is post about how to use frame.io for my next project. You can upload directly to frame.io. Until you can’t.

My guess is they are dependent on AWS without a plan B.

Nothing to see here, all is good.

[Mark Grance]

Not using it integrated. Just as posting/viewing site. Maybe I am just unlucky, two of the times they were down in the last few months, was right in the middle of client approval (editorial to agency to client). Had to fire up plan B. Agency and client now skittish about anything frame.io related.

I know things happen, as I posted, I just would like to hear from leadership, instead of them just pushing more use cases.

[Mark Grance]

One thing about your comment “if you shoot 4k and 6k…”

What has been a bigger impact is that nobody says “cut” any more. Shooting ratios have gone sky high.

[Mark Grance]

It’s not the Windows issue for me, I’m on a Mac Studio, it is getting ProRes RAW footage from clients.

[Mark Grance]

I started on Avid then to FCP7 then to Premiere and then to Resolve. I still am on Premiere half the time for various reasons. A little frustrating jumping back and forth between the two because of the keyboard layout (yes I know I can change but prefer to keep them separate.)

I hate that Resolve doesn’t support ProRes RAW. Not a fan of projects being stored in a database but that’s how they do it. And their preferences are all over the place — literally.

Adobe keeps screwing around with color management. Frankly it seems like there is no captain driving the Adobe ship (by ship I mean all their apps.) Really, do we have to have a different color picker layout in each app? Or different type tool layout. Shouldn’t type generated in AE look the same as PP?

But if I have the choice when starting a project (that doesn’t use ProRes RAW) I pick Resolve. I’m not a “motion graphics animator designer” I do compositing and other “fixes” and screen replacements during the edit, so not using AE and being able to use Fusion within the edit is a plus.

[Mark Grance]

I’ve delivered to “AV” companies for years… my two cents.

My suggestion is to let them tell you what they want. Ideally, this conversation should have happened before you started. Assuming they are experienced (and know what they are doing) they will know what they need. They’ll know what frame rate they will be running for playback, what resolution, what aspect ratio (yup, their idea of HD and yours might be different) and what bit rate their players can handle.

(This conversation will also give you a clue as to how competent they are)

Oh, and don’t forget about the squeaky part of the picture — audio.

It is tempting to urge them one way or another, but if something goes wrong, or looks off or hiccups, and you have suggested the specs of the deliverables then they can point fingers at you. Since you aren’t on site, you won’t know what happened.

They also might have specific needs like (x) frames of black before show start and (x) frames of black at show end or freeze on last frame for (x) frames.

I’ve had to deliver DCPs, ProRes 4444HQ, mpeg 2, MXF, AVI, WMV and a few more.

The most successful playback has been when the show company drives the conversation. If they know what they are doing. If they don’t, they can take a ProRes file and make it look like a 500kbps h.264@12fps.

[Mark Grance]

If Mac, I have seen this before on a system I had to use on a project (that wasn’t mine) and permissions have been the culprit. Finally just moved all media into the Project folder.

One other thing to look at “ignore ownership on this volume” on the flash drive info screen. (Select the drive Command-I)

[Mark Grance]

Used to use Vimeo years ago but it had so many downtime issues that caused me to hang around for hours waiting for my spots to upload. Gave up on them. This was also when they were trying to be an indie movie distributor or something.

Many of my clients with IT departments do not allow dropbox.

So now am using frame.io. They have had some system offline days so that is a concern, but that is what we use. The integration with Adobe is pretty good. For those who haven’t used it recently it is worth a gander.

You can share either a non-interactive webpage (with download option) or you can share a review site. The review doesn’t not require the user to have an account. It doesn’t require the user to be somewhat savvy about the interface but it’s not too bad.

Comments link to the sequence in Premiere Pro so no timecode burns or email trails. I’ll admit that I don’t use it when I have lots of people giving feedback. But couple is fine and saves me cataloging email threads.

We typically just have one account for our company rather than for each user. We pay extra for branding. As I recall there is an account included with Adobe Cloud but not as much storage.

One BIG ISSUE I have with frame.io is that the player doesn’t really support social media aspect ratios. Everything gets placed into a 16×9 viewer. So 9×16 played on a computer is played within a 16×9 viewer. Though if you look at that on your iPhone in full screen mode (vertically) it will fill the screen properly. I have talked to them about this for two years and they keep saying they are working on it.

[Mark Grance]

It should be noted that USB C is only referring to the connector’s form factor and not the speed. USB speed is referenced in numbers like USB 2.0, USB 3.0, USB 3.1 or 3.2 Gen 1, etc.

I know it sounds like I am nitpicking but there are USB cables (with USB C connectors) out there that are not high speed.

If you have a lot of “USB C” cables in your collection, I recommend you take the time to test them one at a time directly connected from the computer to a drive and use something like AJA System Test Light or Blackmagic Disk Speed Test to verify the performance of the cables. I found “USB C” cables that are as slow as USB 2.0.

Also, just because a drive has a USB C connector doesn’t make it fast.