[Oliver Peters]

Moving NAB to fall is just dumb. It’s shooting yourself in both feet. It sets up the choice between NAB and IBC, not only for attendees, but also vendors. This runs the risk of hurting both shows with no upside.

If potential growth is outside of North America, then it would seem that given the choice, IBC will win, potentially making NAB a smaller US/Canada/Mexico-centric event. Plus many of the bigger companies can get most of their message out via their own targeted events in NYC and LA plus the web. So if you are Avid or BMD, host several regional events in US and then skip NAB in favor of IBC for the full trade show push.

[Oliver Peters]

[Jeremy Garchow] “and it now seems to be back”

Thanks. I’ve been running on Mojave, but I guess I just never hit that combination. Cool.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

Just wondering… Select any project in the browser and hit the space bar. It loads that project directly into the timeline and starts playing in the viewer. Never saw that before. Is this a new feature?

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

Is this a new feature? Select any project in the browser and hit the space bar. It loads that project directly into the timeline and starts playing in the viewer. Never saw that before.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

FWIW – poke through the forum at FCP.co (https://www.fcp.co/forum). There seem to be quite a few little bugs being discovered. Most seem to be limited to small, specific workflows and no real deal-breakers for most users. In any case it may just be my impression, but there seem to be more of these than with past updates.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Rich Rubasch] “Can you tell us how you use Switch in your day to day workflow?”

Sure. The first big use is as a media player and/or QC tool. Many of the formats that can’t be viewed in QTX Player can be opened in Switch. You can also sometimes do this with VLC, but Switch covers more pro formats, like various MXF-wrapped files. This can be done even with the cheapest version, although they will be watermarked. It also displays time, frame count, or timecode.

Depending on the version you buy, you can also check embedded captions or attach and check sidecar caption files or descriptive audio files. Same thing, depending on version, you can also check multichannel audio, like individual 5.1 channels, or loudness metering.

The second is as a transcoder for single files. Switch includes all of the encoding features of Telestream’s Episode encoder, but only for individual files (no batch encoding). You can also use it to quickly export frame grabs at any point where the file is parked.

In our daily use, I have the cheapest version installed on every workstation for viewing. Then one station has the upgraded version for QC. Does that answer your question?

BTW – if you just need another encoder, I was made aware of Shutter Encoder over the weekend reading an Avid forum. A few of the editors mentioned it highly. It’s a free download with donation requested. Seems pretty full-featured and it’s 64-bit Windows and Mac.

https://www.shutterencoder.com/en/

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

Aside from the somewhat limited issues with RED files on some Nvidia Macs and the FX9 camera issue, how is everyone finding this update to work out for them?

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

The easiest/cheapest way to do this would be to roundtrip through Resolve. Even the free version can do this, but exported clip sizes are limited to UHD with the free version. Send an FCPXML to Resolve. Import that into Resolve and make sure the timeline is correct. Then go to the deliver page and export a new FCPXML, plus clips with handles. Then open that new FCPXML into FCPX and make sure it’s right. This is now your final master sequence, since you plan to delete the original 90 min clips.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

Digging a bit deeper into this FX9 issue with Jeremy’s help…

The clip in question can be exported back to the same codec using both Sony Catalyst Browse and/or Adobe Media Encoder. This exported clip will then open in QT Player and import and play fine in FCPX.

Comparing the original to its copy in Catalyst, the difference between them seems to be two things. First, the original has a ton of camera metadata that’s stripped out of the export. Second, the original has in-camera stabilization metadata, which is also stripped out. My gut feeling is that this stabilization (or other) metadata is somehow in conflict and not the camera or the codec per se.

It obviously worked before (with this metadata) and works now using the same codec (without the metadata), if you wash it through another app. Hopefully this turns out to be a bug that can be fixed or updated.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Gerry Fraiberg] “For what it’s worth…the FX9 is not on the list of supported cameras.”

Thanks for posting, but I’m not exactly sure what that list is supposed to show. Technically support isn’t for a specific camera model, but rather a codec, frame size, frame rate, or a card structure (when importing directly from a card) – or a file structure (RED, P2, etc.). For example, the list excludes ARRI LF models, yet ProRes files from LF cameras appear to be fine.

The FX9 is a fairly new Sony camera and its omission from this list might simply mean Apple’s list is not up to date. You can record a number of different codecs with that camera. If, in fact, Apple deprecated an additional codec in this update, then they should simply admit it.

Plus FX9 clips were supported prior to this release. And now it records to ProRes RAW via Atomos. So does Apple’s position also mean they aren’t supporting ProRes RAW files coming from that camera? Seems odd.

Nevertheless good info, especially when someone is deciding whether to use FCPX or a different NLE ☺

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com