This is the time of year for upgrades and new releases for Mac users. However, it is important to remember that our job is to get our work done – on time and with minimal stress. Don’t rush to upgrade – wait for software to settle down.
Help needed: Robin is seeing black frames in his video which fail to export in Final Cut Pro 10.6.x and display severe artifacts in Premiere Pro. Why is this happening?
The OWC Jupiter Mini server is a capable, cost-effective, general-purpose desktop server that, once you get it setup, provides high-speed performance with the ease-of-use that you expect from a server. Here’s my detailed review.
You can’t use what you can’t find. Logging and tracking clips in a single project is supported by all NLEs. My question is what do you use to track media across projects? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Camera archives appeared with the initial release of Apple Final Cut Pro more than a decade ago. However, they aren’t talked about too much these days, which is a shame, because they have several useful functions.
This webinar, and excerpt, focuses on video editing, specifically organizing and backing up media, optimizing preferences, and the other small decisions you make at the start of a Premier or Final Cut project. Presented by Larry Jordan.
This webinar focused on video editing, specifically organizing and backing up media, optimizing preferences, and the other small decisions you make at the start of a Premier or Final Cut project. In this short excerpt, Larry Jordan discusses the difference between USB-C and Thunderbolt.
This webinar focused on video editing, specifically organizing and backing up media, optimizing preferences, and the other small decisions you make at the start of a Premier or Final Cut project. In this short excerpt, Larry Jordan presents the routine maintenance you should do with a Mac computer to keep it running smoothly.
Apple Final Cut does not support exporting markers – or anything else – displayed in the Timeline Index. However, there’s a cool work-around that works perfectly. Here’s what you need to know.
It is generally possible to expand the storage capacity of an HDD RAID, without buying a new enclosure; which can save hundreds of dollars. Here’s what you need to know to add storage to your RAID.
Lou asked: “Should I partition the internal drive of a Mac to get the maximum speed for video editing?” The answer is no – but not for the reasons you might suspect. Larry Jordan provides the details on maximizing system speed.
For video editors, any M-series Mac computer is a vast improvement over any Intel system. In this detailed review, Larry Jordan looks at setup and performance tests of the M2 Mac Studio computer using Adobe Premiere Pro.
Time Machine is a built-in feature of the macOS that automatically backs up personal data, including apps, music, photos, email and documents. But, does it backup personal files stored on iCloud? Here’s the answer.
Recently, while writing a review of the BenQ PD2725U monitor, I realized that I have described how to change color space settings on external monitors incorrectly for years. Here’s the key rule you need to know.
About a month ago, I purchased a BenQ PD2725 monitor because I wanted a color accurate monitor for scanning still images and video editing. Based on what I’ve learned and seen, I’m comfortable making color and composition decisions based upon what I see with the BenQ PD2725U.
The need for EXTREMELY fast storage is a special case. Most of us will be fine with a single-bus Thunderbolt device. But, if maximum speed is your need – this dual-drive SSD lash-up is amazing – and faster than Thunderbolt!
Displaying video full-screen in Adobe Premiere is as easy as pressing a single key. However, for best results, when you have two monitors, this quick tutorial shows how to change preference settings to create a separate view and grading monitor.
In the old days, to monitor video to see exactly what it looks like for color grading required an external video monitor. Today, that’s no longer necessary. Here are three different techniques to view full-screen video from cheap to high-quality.
Most USB drives are formatted as FAT32. This older format is highly compatible, but very limited in terms of file names and size. A better option is to reformat the drive as ExFAT which is supported natively by both Windows and Mac systems.
Most of the time, Final Cut just “works.” Which is great, because we can get our work done. But, then there are those other times which drive us nuts. Try these ten trouble-shooting tips before contacting Apple Support.
Yes, we want the latest-and-greatest immediately. But staring at a disabled system is no fun. For this reason – especially given the current problems with the 13.3 update to macOS – turn off automatic system upgrades for Macs. Here’s how.
It seems counterintutive, but you don’t need massive amounts of RAM for video editing. This explains why the duration of your video project does not determine the hardware you need. It also explains what DOES require faster hardware.
macOS 13.3 has bugs both big and small that directly affect video editors. If you haven’t upgraded yet – hold off. Apple just released 13.3.1 – but we don’t yet know if this fixes what’s broken.
While accurate storage speed measurements are still elusive, here are settings you can use to improve the accuracy of AJA Speed Test Lite to check the speed of your storage.
How do you know if a Mac application needs Rosetta? And, if it does, what do you do? Here are the details.
This you won’t believe. I tested to see how many streams of 4K media Final Cut Pro can edit in a multicam clip. The answer blew me away. These are the details.
A frequent question is whether a computer has the power an editor needs. Here I look at what Adobe Premiere Pro needs for 4K multicam editing and the speeds your storage needs to support. The answer is not what you expect.
A frequent question is whether a computer has the power an editor needs. Here I look at what Apple Final Cut Pro needs for 4K multicam editing and the speeds your storage needs to support. The answer is not what you expect.
While both ProRes 422 and ProRes 4444 are much larger than the original HEVC (or H.264, for that matter), the structural design of ProRes makes it more suitable for faster editing performance, especially for multicam editing. These details illustrate the difference.
The macOS 13.2.1 update fixes a significant bug in the current version of Apple Final Cut Pro. Here are the details.
Apple Final Cut Pro is a very stable program. But, sometimes, it gets confused. When it does, the first step to reset Final Cut is to delete its preference files. Here’s how.
Digital video no longer requires state-of-the-art hardware. We no longer need the biggest, fastest, most powerful system to get our work done. Here’s what you need to consider for a video editing system today.
Apple is famous for killing useful technology. For media creators, meant the death of software to create DVDs. With his livelihood at stake, Richard Osso went on a mission to find a way to continue creating DVDs for clients. This is his story.
Here are some real-world speed tests of 2-, 3-, and 4-drive SSD RAIDs using the OWC Thunderblade. Speeds are fast, but none fully fill a Thunderbolt 3/4 connection. Still, they are more than fast enough for almost all editing.
iBoysoft Data Recovery for the Mac brings missing files back to life. It does so for a wide range of files and devices. But the interface is flaky, core features are unreliable, and the entire application needs someone to pay much closer attention to it. Here’s Larry Jordan’s review.
macOS Ventura is significantly (masses of megabytes!) slower than macOS Monterey for both ExFAT- and APFS-formatted SSD drives. No one know why. Worse, formatting drives is now harder than before. Here are the details.
If you are wondering whether it is time to upgrade, 13.1 is a good place to start. Just give yourself time to get everything sorted once the upgrade is complete. Here’s a detailed look at what to do, the problems I ran into and links for more information.
“Ask Larry Anything!” is a free-form conversation about video editing technology. In this short tutorial, Larry Jordan illustrates real-world speeds for SSDs and RAIDs, along with details on how much storage speed we actually need for editing video smoothly. The answers will surprise you.
This tutorial measures and illustrates the difference in speeds between different SSD (Solid State Drive) RAID levels. This also provides definitions of these different levels and recommendations on which to use for your storage.
How fast does our storage need to be to edit video successfully? In other words: How fast is “fast enough?” Surprising, the answer is: Not as fast as you think. Here’s what you need to know.
Measuring the speed of storage is an exercise in futility for a whole lot of reasons. Here’s what you need to know when you want to measure the speed of your system.
Here are the step-by-step instructions for creating or deleting a multi-disk RAID 0 or RAID 1 storage system using Apple’s Disk Utility, which ships with every Mac.
The speed our storage transfers data, is surprisingly variable and complex, especially regarding SSDs, RAIDs and Thunderbolt. In this conversation with Tim Standing, from OWC, learn what limits the speed of Thunderbolt storage and what you can do to maximize it.
Larry continues his on-going report on configuring and using a media asset management system – and making it accessible to remote users. His example features axle.ai software.
There is a large, significant difference in measuring storage speeds when using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test versus AJA System Test Lite. The problem is that we don’t know which one is more accurate. Here are the details.
Is there a speed difference between the three Thunderbolt ports on an 16″ M1 MacBook Pro? Larry Jordan tests his system to find out.
In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan explains that Thunderbolt, though very fast, still has speed limits, especially for video editing. And those speed limits vary, depending upon what you are doing.
In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan explains what affects computer system performance for video editing, what can slow down your data and what speeds we should expect from our gear. There’s a lot that can affect the performance of your system.
One of our favorite – and most wide-ranging – sessions returns with “Ask Larry Anything!” Presented by Larry Jordan, this is a free-form conversation based on questions submitted by viewers. In this short video tutorial, Larry explains the challenges of maximizing performance when using hard disk drive RAIDs for video editing.
The speed of a local-area network is dependent upon a number of factors, some of which we have more control of than others. Here’s a list of what to check to improve your network speed, without replacing the server.
