Learning to See » Computer & Software

Oscilloscope Rock

Jon Roemer — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:23:50 +0000

In a tough week this made me smile. All the more appreciated because this is a song I can play on the guitar (I use the term “play” loosely.)

FCP X 10.0.3 – Time-lapse Creation

Jon Roemer — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:12:25 +0000

FCP X 10.0.3 Custom Sync Options for Multicam or Time-lapse.

Apple updated Final Cut Pro X to 10.0.3 this morning adding multicam and a host of other features. One less obvious one is the creation of time-lapses within FCP X. For an explanation of how to do this watch the Learn more about Multicam video on Apple’s FCP X software update page. It’s about 44 seconds in.

Larry Jordan on other FCP X 10.0.3 features.

Gary Adcock via MacWorld.

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle

Jon Roemer — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:25:23 +0000

Jumping to Lion.

Friday night, somewhat on a whim, I decided to upgrade my Mac Pro to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Lest that seem haphazard or foolhardy it wasn’t quite that spontaneous. A Mac Pro has four drive bays and I always have a full clone of my primary HD with the OS. I also made sure that my key software would be compatible and I jumped through all the hoops one normally would with an OS upgrade. My HD was freshly cloned, I repaired permissions, I made sure to unhook all external hard drives, and I copied all of the settings for my printers and the color profiles I have added to the system.

My Mac Pro was one of the first Intel Xeon models, a 2x – 3 GHz dual-core. It has performed well and I am amazed (knock wood) that it is still running and viable. Next fall it will be six years old. I will most certainly get a new one when the Mac Pro gets a refresh (the line hasn’t been updated since 2010) but until then I’ll tweak things a bit to get whatever boost out of it that I can.

Earlier in the day on Friday I had swapped out its OEM HD (a WD 250gb 7200rpm) with a new 2TB Hitachi drive. I didn’t need 2TB but this drive is highly rated and tested to be one of the fastest. The change proved easy (there were no permissions or software registration issues) and it provided a small but noticeable speed bump. Certainly to be expected with a ’11 drive vs. an ’06 one.

I think the ease of that switch along with an inkling to get going on Lion now that it is 10.7.2 and to jump into some iCloud features prompted me to make the leap.

Installation of Lion (you buy it via the Mac App Store) was quick and painless. It was done within twenty minutes. Instantly my system saw a big increase in speed. Booting up which took a couple of minutes (? – I never timed it) or plus another 30-45 sec. for email and my web home page to be up, running, and fully functional; now is done within 48 seconds with everything good to go. Programs open quicker across the board. Scrolling and other actions are lightening quick.

I like some of the new visual simplicity of Lion. All windows, scrolling, and GUI items seem to be tuned to making the content the king. It takes some getting used to what feels like reverse scrolling. This is similar to an iPhone or iPad where you scroll in a more logical/correct way, e.g. to scroll down the bottom of the page is pulled up. If you don’t like that behavior on a desktop you can always switch back to the old way in System Preferences. Similarly, moving back and forth between pages viewed in Safari is now done with a one finger swipe across the mouse, much the same way you would leaf through pages. The iOS influence doesn’t stop there, you can double-tap on an image or text in Safari to make it fill the window.

Notes:

-Immediately upon installing Lion I had one screen issue. Black boxes and bars where showing up as the mouse or a window was moved around the screen. Turns out this was because I had my desktop set to a jpeg image (flat grey, at 100, 100, 100). Switching that to an official desktop choice of dark grey (very close at 95, 95, 95) in the System Preferences corrected the problem.

-In prior OS upgrades information like custom saved printer settings, custom color profiles, software registration, and monitor calibration profiles were often lost. That is not the case with Lion.

-The only big bug I have hit so far is that Aperture would not send files to the trash bin in the dock. They would disappear into the ether. Some searching shows this to be a common problem and one thread in Apple Discussions has the solution. A reset to the trash bin needed. In my case, my Aperture library and all of my image files are on an external raid. To correct the problem the trash bin on my main HD had to be reset. ***Update 12/19/12 – Fix doesn’t hold. Problem reappears.***

-I have two Epson printers (a 3800 and a 7800) plus an Epson scanner (Perfection 4870 Photo). All work fine under Lion. The printers had to be deleted from the System Preferences list and then reinstalled. Both of the printers are connected via ethernet and the 7800 had to have its ethernet cable disconnected and the reconnected to get it to appear as a new printer.

One note about the scanner and Photoshop CS5. The scanner works fine running under Apple’s scanner import or Epson’s “Epson Scan” but you will no longer see the scanner show up in PS CS5. This was the case before Lion. PS CS5′s scanner interface, twain importer, no longer ships with CS5. You can get it from Adobe and install it but it will not appear within PS unless you force PS to run in 32-bit mode.

-I have a third printer, a Lexmark laser printer, and it had no hiccups. It was there working with no need to delete and reinstall.

-Canon DPP looks to work fine in Lion but Canon EOS Utility does not. For those of you shooting tethered you’ll need another route (e.g. tethering via Aperture). Canon is promising a Lion compatible EOS Utility in the first quarter of 2012.

-A quick check to FCP 7 along with Soundtrack Pro showed them to open and work fine. I was able to open an old FCP project and everything was intact. FCP X, of course, is fine as well.

-X-rite, née Gretag-Macbeth, Eye-One Match is not compatible with Lion. I knew that going in. X-rite has a listing of compatibility and upgrade paths here.

-NEC Spectraview II works fine but you’ll need to set it to save profiles to “per user of this computer.”

-Saving the best for last, hard to believe on an almost six year computer, but the speed bump in Aperture going from 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.7 Lion is ~25%. Processing out the same 206 raw files (Canon 1Ds Mark III) to jpegs averaged 13.73/min in 10.6 and 17.17/min in 10.7.

You Say You Want a Revolution

Jon Roemer — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 21:05:30 +0000

From "Young Egyptians Spread Their Message." Ed Ou for the New York Times.

I photographed Steve Jobs once. Some time in ’86 or ’87. Jobs was in a suite at the St. Regis in New York pushing NeXT computers. I remember getting there early and watching him prep.

I don’t have the photos (my employer owned them) and at the time I didn’t think to grab some of the extra prints. Maybe that says something… I saved odds and ends: Mario Cuomo at the opening of the Javits Center; Joe Raposo, Judy Collins, and a cat at a Purina Cat Chow event in Lincoln Center; Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble in Fred’s car for AAA; Spanky from the Little Rascals promoting the Little Rascal motorized scooter. But no Steve Jobs.

I spent the 90′s with a shared NEC PC and then a couple of Dells until I hit a wall. A custom Dell configuration failed me. It couldn’t support a few scanners and an early digital camera. Many emails back and forth with Dell, including a couple from Michael Dell (yes, times were different then) and it turned out that Dell had not vetted the computer completely. They could not fix the issues and they could not recommend an alternative. At that point, about 1997, my Mac odyssey began.

In thinking about how much my iPhone has integrated with my DNA and in how much I couldn’t survive without my Mac Pro or my MacBook Pro when working on location, it’s actually two other thoughts which come to mind with Jobs’ passing.

This past year with the Arab Spring, demonstrations, and calls for democracy; it was common to see photos where in the mix of all that was happening a Mac laptop or an iPhone was present. Jobs must have seen these, the two examples here were on front pages of the New York Times, and he must have seen in them a culmination of his vision to truly *change the world. It wasn’t just about changing the culture in the United States or making a profit. It was about giving the world the tools to institute change.

My other thought is to my personal experience in switching from PCs to Macs and how, with hindsight, it shows what has always been at Apple’s core – the user experience. When I got my first Power Mac not only did it run all my peripherals seamlessly but when you opened it up it was a sight to behold. Brushed metal on the inside with slight circular patterns to it. Everything neatly arranged and easy accessible. It was the opposite of my PC experience. Going inside a PC was like trying to find your way through the back room of a storage facility. The think different here was Apple recognizing that a Power Mac user was going to open it up, otherwise they wouldn’t need a Power Mac. So, Apple made the experience positive – aesthetically and functionally.

I can’t help but think that up above there’s a room somewhere with Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Edwin Land, and others. When yesterday’s news spread Bell got on his phone, rang his assistant, and said, “Mr. Watson – come here – Steve’s arriving.”

Jalalabad, Afghanistan; volunteers build a wireless network with off-the-shelf components. Keith Berkoben/Fab Folk

–

*When hiring John Sculley, a former Pepsi CEO, Jobs asked him, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”

Young Egyptians Spread Their Message from the New York Times. The photo ran on the front page, above the fold, on February 9, 2011.

US Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors, from the New York Times. The photo ran on the front page, above the fold, on June 12, 2011.

[FCP X] x 30 + 2

Jon Roemer — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 03:32:10 +0000

Create a FCP X preset to optimize videos sent to Vimeo or Flash players.

A few more FCP X notes:

-FCP X searches all of your hard drives for FCP X Event files whenever it boots up. If, like me, you have two hard drives or two raid arrays backing each other up you’ll want to take the backup offline prior to opening FCP X. If you don’t FCP X can get confused and not see the primary hard drive/raid array.

-FCP X has crashed on me a few times but that is over many hours of work. In each case, no data was lost and FCP X reopened exactly as it was prior to the crash.

-Titles were always unreliable for me in FCP. They often would not stick. I have had better luck in FCP X. They stick for the most part but I do have one case where a lower-third banner title which is set to the opposite side (the right side) does not stick. If you open the project that title’s text often needs to be reentered.

-Prior versions of FCP suffered from what is commonly called the Quicktime Gamma Bug. Create your movie in FCP, export it, re-open it in Quicktime and find that it looks significantly different from what you expected in terms of brightness and tonal scale. FCP X seems to have conquered this – movie files look 100% consistent between FCP X and Quicktime. While that’s great, I have found that publishing the movie online via JW Player, FLV Player, or Vimeo can cause the video to look too dark and too contrasty. I don’t know if one gamma bug has been traded for another or if this is a different issue. The work around I have developed is to create a preset within FCP X which boosts the white point a tiny bit and the mid-point a bit more. I apply this to movies going to these types of players after all of the edit work is done and after making the project within FCP X a compound clip. That way it can easily be applied to the whole movie and it can easily be turned off.

[FCP X] x 30

Jon Roemer — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:42:19 +0000

FCP X window; project with over 100 clips. Click to enlarge.

I have been using Final Cut Pro X extensively over the past month and I have to say – I really like it. Maybe it’s using Aperture for so long but FCP’s new interface, which is similar, is a breath of fresh air. I was never an expert in the old Final Cut Pro (v7.x), I used it for personal projects and for client work for about a year. It always felt kludgy and the interaction between it and Apple Color a bit of a dark art.

FCP X brings a consistent interface, intuitive design, and it delivers on its promise of keeping clips in sync. That latter is something I had grown to fear in the old FCP – reopening a project could open new wounds; edits lost, clips out of sync. The round trip to Color and back often required a lot of work to get the timeline back to where it had been.

There are many critics of FCP X but they come at it from a different perspective. If you are doing DLSR based video and don’t need legacy plug-ins or some of the above and beyond features of v.7 then FCP X will work very well for you.

Notes:

-Syncing Audio: If you recorded using second system sound and used multiple mics (e.g. lav & shotgun on a boom) you’ll want to pick which audio you want first before syncing the sound. You can do this in the inspector window for the sound file.

-FCP X has built-in utility to sync the sound. It works well but it is simple. Unlike Plural Eyes you don’t want to do a many to one sync command. Many video clips to one sound clip. FCP X works better if you sync one video clip at a time to one audio clip at a time.

-FCP X has a bug where syncing audio to a 1080p video clip will cause the synchronized clip to read as 720p. This will correct itself automatically if the synced clip is put into project which already has 1080p clips in it. If you are putting the synced clip into a new project you can reset it to 1080p by clicking the gear icon in the project library project inspector and changing the setting. I don’t know if this bug was corrected in 10.0.1 update.

-Even though FCP X is more intuitive it still helps to have a guide. I bought Ripple Training’s $40 Apple Pro Video Series: Final Cut Pro X. Well worth it!

-As expected, you can copy and paste settings between clips in FCP X but I don’t see a way to copy and then paste only select parameters between clips. One work around to paste only audio or only video settings is to detach the audio and video. Another method is to use the video animation or audio animation buttons. Either way, I’d prefer to be able to select what I am pasting via an options window instead of potentially deactivating and then reactivating settings on a clip.

-Apple updated FCP X to 10.0.1 yesterday. The update is only available via the Mac App store (similar to how an iPhone or iPad updates apps.) If, like me, the Mac App store tells you it cannot update FCP X you still can. TheC47 has a work around.

-Larry Jordan, in his blog, has a full post on what 10.0.1 addresses.

The last four videos on my Vimeo page were edited in FCP X. They can also be seen on this blog in the prior three posts tagged with video.

If you are curious to try FCP X Apple has added a free 30 day trial.

Everything is a Remix Part III

Jon Roemer — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:51:57 +0000

Kirby Ferguson has just published part three of his four-part series looking at innovation.

Everything is a Remix Part III

Parts I & II are in my blog post – Genius.

Final Cut Pro X

Jon Roemer — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:05:22 +0000

Final Cut Pro X is now available in the Mac App Store along with Motion and Compressor. The latter two being sold as stand alone options for $49.99 each.

First Look by Gary Adcock at MacWorld.com.

Larry Jordan’s Inside Source.

Steve Martin First Look on KenStone.net.

–

Update – 6/24/11: The straight skinny from Apple in response to professional editors’ direct questions and complaints about FCP X, via David Pogue.

–

Update – 6/29/11: Apple Official FAQ.

Canon E1 Plugin v1.2

Jon Roemer — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:04:44 +0000

Canon E1 plugin for Final Cut Pro is coming (timed to NAB.) It will not require the memory card’s root structure to be present. This should open the door to saving and organizing clips in something like Aperture prior to working with them in FCP.

~~Release date via Canon Europe is April 25th.~~

Please read the end of the post – it appears that neither the US nor the UK versions of the plugin listed as v1.2 are the ones bringing the feature set listed in v1.2.

–

Update 4-16-2011: This plugin is here already via Canon’s USA site (select Mac OS X for Operating System and it’s second down on the list.)

More information from Canon’s DLC on v1.2 and background on how the E1 plugin works here and here.

Note too that there are new versions of EOS Utility, DPP, and the Picture Style Editor.

–

Update 4-22-2011: It appears the Canon v1.2 dated 4/16 may not be the real deal. It’s labeled as v1.2 under the “Mac OS X” pull-down but it looks like we’ll know for sure on Monday. 4/25 is the release date mentioned in various outlets include the Canon DLC page linked above.

–

Update 5-18-2011: Looks like Canon UK’s version posted 1.2 on 4/25 is the new version. Check out this entry from Chris Marino on Wide Open Camera.

–

Update 5-18-2011: I’ve tried both plug-ins (USA v1.2 & the Canon UK v1.2) and neither will recognize the Canon movie files if the directory structure is not present (*.THM files).

One FYI I learned in this process – if you need to delete a Canon FCP plug-in it’s not easily identifiable. It can be found here: HD>Library>Application Support>ProApps>MIO>RAD>Plugins>*.RADPlug. For the E1 Plugin it’s CanonE1.RADPlug.

Putting the sRGB Back in WordPress

Jon Roemer — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 20:09:40 +0000

WordPress 3.x admin window showing duplicate images created for a blog post.

WordPress v3 works well and has attempted to think through everything. When it comes to images though a bit more is needed. WordPress automatically creates duplicate images at different sizes whenever you upload an image for a blog post. The idea behind this is great, it saves you the trouble of manually creating multiple sizes for thumbnails, feature images, post snippets, and the like. It also makes short work of linking everything; it’s all there done for you.

The problem lies in the fact that WordPress neglects to embed the color profile or the metadata in the duplicates. There’s not much you can do about the metadata (if that’s a concern then you should create your own image variations) but there is an easy way to re-embed the color profile associated with the original image file.

First off, what am I talking about and why do this? The web runs on sRGB when it comes to image files. sRGB is a background color space and is the lowest common denominator. Its gamut reflects the original CRT monitors and the bulk of the displays still in use (even LCD’s.) There are certain web browsers which are more color sophisticated (they display an image accurately if it has any embedded color profile) but there’s no guarantee that people are using them or that they have configured them properly. There are also differences in operating systems. Mac, despite of its reputation for graphics, assumes your monitor’s profile if none exists in an image file where Explorer assumes sRGB.

What all of the above means is that all bets are off when your images are viewed online and the only way to get accuracy and consistency is by having the correct color profile embedded in your image files.

1. Start off with an image in the sRGB color space and have that setting embedded in the image file. If you are converting from raw files then your raw convertor will allow you to select the color space of the processed file, if you are using Photoshop’s Save for Web there is a check-off box to convert to sRGB and embed it in the image file.

2. Go about your WordPress business as usual, make your blog post, upload your image files.

3. Go to your Mac OS Library (sorry this is Mac based info. only) and open the Scripts folder. Inside that open the ColorSync folder, and within that you will find the Embed script. Copy the Embed script to another location (e.g. your desktop and you can rename it if you like.)

4. Open your ftp client, navigate to your WordPress folder and open the Uploads folder (most likely blog/wp-content/uploads.) In Uploads go to the current year and month and in there you will find the image file(s) you just uploaded and the duplicates which WordPress created. Copy the duplicates to a folder on your desktop.

5. Open the duplicates folder, select all, and drag the files onto the Embed script. You will be prompted to select a color space, select sRGB. The sRGB profile has been reinserted into your files.

6. Upload the files back to where they came from in the WordPress Uploads folder on your server and you are done.

It sounds like more work than it is. It saves you having to open and re-save each file and it’s still less work then creating your own duplicate versions of files and having to manage and link them. It ensures that all of the duplicate images on your blog (thumbs; small, medium, & large versions) will look like the original you uploaded.

Since the question will come up – with color profiles there are always two options -> to assign or convert a color profile. In this case, by re-embedding the sRGB profile you are essentially assigning it. This is because it has been inadvertently left out, you are replacing what is missing.