Preference Manager 2.0.3 released

Preference Manager 2.0.3 was released earlier today with some minor new features.

Preference Manager is an application for managing the preference files of Final Cut Studio. Preference files store user preferences and other settings, and can cause strange behavior if they become corrupt. Preference Manager allows you to trash, backup, restore and lock these files for maximum flexibility.

Here are the changes in the latest version:

• Backup editing
  Backup settings can now be edited.
• Import Backup function
  The Import Backup menu item adds a backup to the library without automatically restoring it, unlike Open Backup.
• Project filenames are now listed below the backup name for convenience
  You can now see at a glance which project is associated with a particular backup.
• Support for Boris text plugin preferences
  Preference Manager is now capable of backing up preferences from the Boris text tools included with Final Cut Pro (Text Scrambler, Title 3D, Title Crawl and Vector Shape).

Preference Manager is completely free and is available for download here. View the user manual for a walk-through of some of the new features.

Preference Manager 2.0.2 released

We've just released Preference Manager 2.0.2, which is primarily a maintenance release but has a couple of small features too.

Preference Manager is an application for managing the preference files of Final Cut Studio. Preference files store user preferences and other settings, and can cause strange behavior if they become corrupt. Preference Manager allows you to trash, backup, restore and lock these files for maximum flexibility.

The main changes are:

• Better support for prior versions of FCP
  Preference Manager now supports all versions from Final Cut Pro 3 onwards.
• New icons to differentiate project-linked backups
  When you link a project to a backup, a linked chain symbol will now appear. Hovering over the icon will reveal the name of the project it is linked to. If the project does not exist, a red broken chain icon will appear.
• Selections in the Advanced dialog are now remembered when the application is closed
  A lot of people asked for this, so here it is. Also, when you launch Preference Manager for the first time, only preferences are selected in the Advanced dialog. Some people inadvertently deleted their button bars and window layouts because they didn't realize they were selected by default.
• Support for custom Compressor settings and destinations
  Preference Manager is now capable of backing up custom Compressor settings and destinations.

Preference Manager is completely free and is available here.

Mac OS X 10.5.7 released

Apple has finally released the much-delayed 10.5.7 update to Leopard. There was much speculation that it was delayed to coincide with the full release of Safari 4 which is currently in beta, however this is clearly not the case as Apple has just released Safari 3.2.3 and an updated beta of Safari 4 (you won't see this in Software Update until you update to 10.5.7 though).

The release notes are quite brief, however it is possible to get a much better overview by looking at World of Apple's seed notes for the 10.5.7 beta. This is not a comprehensive list but gives a good indication of the final changes.

There's some good stuff in there - lots of networking fixes and several changes aimed at improving sleep/wake reliability (I've actually stopped putting my MacBook to sleep because it either wakes up constantly every 10 mins or never wakes up at all). It also contains updated graphics drivers. There's really nothing serious in there so you can update at your leisure. It's very much a polish update.

If you are thinking of updating though, remember the Golden Rules:
1. Never update in the middle of a project
2. Wait a week or two for problems to surface
3. Perform a clone of your system before installing
4. You will experience greater reliability from the larger combo updater

10.5.7 Delta Update (10.5.6 -> 10.5.7)
10.5.7 Combo Update (10.5.x -> 10.5.7)
10.5.7 Server Delta Update (10.5.6 -> 10.5.7)
10.5.7 Server Combo Update (10.5.x -> 10.5.7)

The bundled security update is also available separately for Tiger users as Security Update 2009-02.

Update: Mac Mini users are reporting problems already. It seems like certain DVI displays are not being recognized correctly on Mac Minis.

Compressor error - "You must enter a name for this batch submission"

Sometimes when you submit a batch, you may get the error:
"You must enter a name for this batch submission. This is the name that identifies this submission in the Batch Monitor and History window."



This error pops up when you drag items into the batch window in the wrong order. You must drag the clip in first and then drag in the settings and destinations.

There really shouldn't be a specific order for doing this but unfortunately Compressor can be very illogical at times.

Hacking Firefox extensions to work on beta versions

This is a little off-topic but some people might find it useful. For the past three months or so, I have been using the Firefox 3.5 betas as my main browser. Why? Well, it is considerably faster than the previous version, renders pages more accurately (much less difference between Firefox and Safari now) and has some features I now cannot live without, such as the ability to restore closed windows as well as tabs.

But the trouble with using a bleeding-edge browser is that third-party developers take time to update their extensions to make them compatible. This can be frustrating, as often no code changes are necessary and all that needs to be done is a simple modification of the maximum version string.

There are two things you can do here - switch off compatibility checking or modify the maximum version of the extension.

Switch off compatibility checking

1. In Firefox, type about:config into the address bar.

2. Select "I'll be careful, I promise" if a warning appears.

3. Ctrl-click anywhere and select New > Boolean.

4. Enter extensions.checkCompatibility (note the capital C) as the name.

5. Select false as the value.

I have heard people report problems with this so if you want to specify exactly which extensions you want to make compatible, read on.

If the extension is already installed

1. Make sure Firefox is closed.

2. Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles.

3. You should see a folder with a gobbledegook name ending in ".default". Open this folder.

4. Delete or rename the file extensions.cache.

5. Open the extensions folder.

6. You will see more gobbledegook folder names. The only way to tell which one is the extension you are looking for is to open each folder one at a time and look at the contents of the folder's install.rdf file in TextEdit. The file's contents include the name of the extension, a description and compatibility information.

7. In the install.rdf file, look for the tag <em:maxVersion> and change the tag value to your current version (at the time of writing this is 3.5b4).

8. Save the file (you may need to change permissions on the file so you can write to it).

9. Launch Firefox and go to Tools > Add-Ons to verify that the extensions are now recognized by Firefox.

If the extension is not already installed

1. The Mozilla add-ons site won't let you download the extension if you have an incompatible version of Firefox. The easiest way to get around this is to fire up Safari, navigate to the add-ons page for the extension in question and download it manually (this works in Safari 4 - I don't have version 3 to test with).

2. Change the file extension of the .xpi file that is downloaded to .zip and unzip it. This will create a new folder on disk with the contents of the archive inside it.

3. Open install.rdf inside the folder and follow steps 7-8 above.

4. Select all files inside the folder, ctrl-click and click Compress X Items. You must compress the files inside the folder - do not compress the folder itself.

5. Rename the Archive.zip file to have an xpi extension.

6. Drag the XPI file into Firefox or go to File > Open File and navigate to it.

7. Firefox will now install it as if it was compatible.

Note - the extensions I modified were compatible with 3.1b3 (the previous version) so it was not much of a jump and I didn't experience any issues. I would not advise major version jumps (e.g. 2.x to 3.x) as this is likely to cause problems.

Recently updated AppleCare docs - 5/1/09

Here are the most recent AppleCare docs relevant to ProApp users, or ones that I found generally useful.

Hardware

Xserve: USB, FireWire, and optical drive do not respond
MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues
Can't connect two DVI connectors to Power Mac G5 (Late 2005), Mac Pro (Original), and Mac Pro (Early 2008) video cards
Xserve (Early 2009): Use the latest version of Server Admin Tools
Mac Pro: Power consumption and thermal output (BTU) information
Xserve (Late 2006 and later): Configuring Lights-Out Management (LOM)
Xserve (Late 2006 or later): How to configure Server Monitor to access Xserve
Xserve (Early 2009): Power consumption and thermal output (BTU) information
Certain optical digital audio source sample rates may not work for some Intel-based Macs

Final Cut Pro / Express

Final Cut Express: Camcorder support
Final Cut Pro/Express: Some imported PSD files may only contain the background layer
Final Cut Pro: Speed interferes with Smooth Cam
Final Cut Pro: Troubleshooting Basics
Final Cut Pro: Green frames or other anomalies on render with REDCODE
Final Cut Pro: Quality issue with movies you export from the Viewer with filters applied
Final Cut Pro: Log and capture with DV50 sometimes does not work in French or Japanese

Motion

Motion: Motion quits unexpectedly when exporting to REDCODE

Compressor

Compressor: Troubleshooting basics

Logic

Logic Express: Locating the Support ID and Serial Number

Xsan

Xsan 2: Compatibility of Xsan clients with Grass Valley SAN shared storage systems
Xsan 2: Xsan Admin Setup Assistant appears when opening Xsan Admin

Misc

Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts
Mac OS X: How to log a kernel panic

Compressor Repair 1.1.3 released

We've just released a quick maintenance update to Compressor Repair, bringing it up to version 1.1.3. This one improves Tiger compatibility and compatibility with foreign language versions of OS X.

Apple's Compressor relies heavily on the Qmaster service in order to work. Qmaster allows you to split rendering tasks across multiple machines in a render farm but it is still required even if you are only rendering on a single computer.

The link between the two is so important that if the Qmaster service fails to launch, Compressor will be unable to submit batches. Should this occur, Compressor Repair checks for problems that could be preventing Qmaster from operating correctly. It checks for missing files, incorrect permissions, an invalid hostname, and attempts to manually start the qmasterd process.

Compressor Repair remains completely free and is available here.

Preference Manager 2.0.1 released

We've just released Preference Manager 2.0.1 (if you're wondering what happened to 2.0.0, that was exclusive for FCP SuperMeet visitors).

Preference Manager is a utility that allows you to trash, lock, backup and restore your Final Cut Studio user preferences. Unlike other apps, it supports all applications in the Final Cut Studio suite, not just FCP. It is useful as a troubleshooting tool and as a simple means of transferring your preferences to another computer.

Version 2.0.x is a complete rewrite with a redesigned and improved interface. It was designed to be easier for casual users while still being useful for power users. So if you click Backup or Quick Trash in the Basic tab, this will just trash or backup all of your preferences, which is fine for most users.



People who want a bit more control can click on the Advanced tab, where they will have more precise control over what is trashed or backed up, and also have the option to lock files to prevent modification.

You can also assign categories to better distinguish backups. There are three categories - User, Project and Workflow. These categories are just different ways of representing the backups and have no bearing on the content stored in the file or the operation of Preference Manager - they're purely for organization (incidentally, I am open to suggestions for additional categories).

However, it is possible to optionally link a project to a Project-categorized backup. This doesn't just apply to FCP projects either - you can add Motion projects, Color projects, Compressor jobs, etc. Whenever you launch the project, the backup will automatically be restored before the application launches. This enables you to easily set scratch disks and other settings on a per-project basis (you must open the project file in the Finder - you can't click File > Open).

As these are major changes to the application, I would fully appreciate feedback on what works for you and what doesn't. Everyone uses the app in a slightly different way, so it'd be interesting to hear what would improve your particular workflow. Just reply to this post, use the feedback form at the bottom of the Preference Manager page, send us an email or contact us on Twitter.

Preference Manager remains completely free and can be downloaded here. If you are running version 1.0.7, you will need to download and install the update manually due to a bug with the updater in that particular version.

RED Rocket announced

Many within the RED community have been clamoring for an official conform tool to simplify online/offline RED workflows. Well, RED's gone one better with RED Rocket.

Rocket is a hardware R3D decoder and debayer capable of realtime output of up to 30 fps @ 4K or 24 fps @ 5K. This completely removes the need for an offline (at least with the RED One - Epic will still need it at high resolutions), allowing you to work with 4K directly in FCP, Premiere, After Effects, RED Alert!, REDCINE, REDrushes or any application using the REDCODE SDK.

It is PCI-Express (laptop users are out of luck here), is compatible with Windows, OS X and Linux, and features Quad-DVI and Quad-HD-SDI.

This is bad news for DVS which just introduced Clipster at NAB, however there could be a place in the market if they can undercut Rocket's $5k pricetag and beat it to market. There is currently no ETA on RED Rocket.

Update: Jim says two months but RED's release dates have been pushed back on many occasions.

NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 for Mac Pro

The 2009 Mac Pros don't have a great range of graphics cards to choose from. You can go for the cut-down GeForce GT 120 or the more advanced Radeon 4870, and that's it unless you plump for an older card (not to mention of course the fact that you must buy one card for every Mini DisplayPort monitor you own, which screws up FCP).

There's now another one to choose from - the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800. It's incredibly powerful with 1.5 GB of memory, 192 CUDA parallel processing cores (!) and 76.8 GB/sec memory bandwidth. But its price tag matches its capabilities - $1799.


I would not actually recommend this for ProApp use, as the Quadros have not traditionally been optimized for Core Image operations (not to mention the small number of ProApps that utilize the GPU significantly) so a lot of that power goes to waste in Final Cut Studio. However, this card is often used for 3D modeling and visualization tasks.

Why was this not released with the 2009 Mac Pros? One explanation could be the fact it requires OS X 10.5.7 which has not been released yet. The card is scheduled to be released in May, which suggests 10.5.7 would also be released around that time too.

It is compatible with the 2008 and 2009 Mac Pros. Apple have not announced anything on their site so it remains to be seen if there will be a BTO option. Interestingly, NVIDIA's site only mentions Dual-Link DVI as a display option and does not mention Mini DisplayPort at all.