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# 2024

# November

# 6th November 2024

Introducing Jumper by Witchcraft Software in Sweden. 🇸🇪

A powerful AI search engine for your footage.

No clouds. No uploads. All on device.

Please watch this launch video on YouTube:

I’m very biased, but it’s amazing. I basically describe it as Spotlight for your NLE.

You should stop reading this and go download it now from here.

Let me explain...

Now, firstly, this isn’t a LateNite project - this isn’t my (Chris Hocking’s) baby.

Jumper is the brainchild of YouTube and BadAss FX creator Arthur Moore.

But before I get into that, let’s jump back to 1st February 2023.

On Richard Taylor’s FCPRadio Episode 134 podcast, Iain Anderson explained:

I'm really excited by what's happening with the AI stuff, with stuff like Whisper...
But the problem with captions in Final Cut is they only go on a project...
I want them on clips as well, to make them searchable to a time so that you could search for a phrase you know somebody said and instantly find it in your rushes.
You could do that today, I'm sure with Lumberjack... but I think there's room for Apple to add a whole lot more AI smarts...
So the auto-tagging, you know, Apple should do that. Apple should be able to find where there's water in a shot, where there's a cat in a shot, where the shot is mostly red.
It should be able to detect all of that and just do it for you on the fly.

I was on that podcast, and what Iain asked for isn’t something new or groundbreaking - every video editor I know wants to be able to just search for "guy wearing green t-shirt" in their NLE and it gets found.

Over the years I’ve reached out to countless companies and developers to try and convince them to build something exactly like this - but never really got any bites. Machine Learning and AI is really hard - and I was already personally juggling so many things, I didn’t want to start learning machine learning myself, so I never even attempted to add any ML or AI features to CommandPost or standalone apps - I left that for people like the amazing Alex Raccuglia.

Avid’s had ScriptSync and script-based editing for decades. Resolve’s got face recognition. Final Cut Pro’s had the ability to "analyse video" for a decade - with options to automatically balance colour and find people. Ulti.Media has Transcriber and FCP Video Tag. Kino AI got people very excited for a few months (and I offered many times to help them get Kino AI working with Final Cut Pro!), until they decided to concentrate on Enterprise customers rather than freelance video editors. Strada is working on some incredible stuff - but it’s all cloud based - which is not an option for a lot of people due to privacy, but also slow internet (like we do in parts of Australia). There’s all this tech around, with so many options and possibilities - but there’s still no easy way to just search for "guy wearing green t-shirt" locally on your Mac... well, until now.

I first discovered Arthur Moore back in June 2019 when he posted an incredible video about using the Loupedeck+ with CommandPost in Final Cut Pro:

This wasn’t sponsored, he never contacted me in advance, and I had no idea he was doing it until I saw it shared online. I was absolutely blown away by the quality of the video, and how exciting it was. I was so humbled and amazed that someone was willing to do such an incredible video showcasing my silly little free and open source application - especially as I consider myself a filmmaker, not a programmer or developer.

Then a few months later in September 2019, Arthur did another video about CommandPost:

Again, I was simply blown away by the quality of his videos, and basically just really happy that people were getting something out of CommandPost - because it originally just started out as a way to make the playhead more visible for Scott Simmons!

Jump forward to December 2019, and Arthur sent me an audio message asking for help building an installer for his BadAss Fx apps.

Whilst this was something I was super interested in helping with (and eventually years later, I ended up helping BretFX bring their apps to the Mac App Store), alas, this never happened, as I went down the giant rabbit hole of adding Loupedeck CT support to CommandPost, with Arthur beta testing it.

This was a pretty massive job, as the Loupedeck CT hardware is insanely powerful - with knobs, touch screen buttons, physical buttons, LED buttons, vibration, an internal hard drive, etc. By February 2020 though we had a pretty reliable beta, thanks to Arthur’s feedback and testing.

Finally in January 2021, a massive CommandPost v1.1.0 update was released to the world with Loupedeck (original), Loupedeck CT, Loupedeck Live, TourBox, Stream Deck XL and Stream Deck Mini support. It was such a popular release that Loupedeck actually reached out to me to start building an official Loupedeck plugin for CommandPost (i.e. within their official Loupedeck app).

For the next few years, I didn’t really hear much from Arthur - but as a video editor, I continued to use BadAss FX on hundreds of projects. Then in March 2024, he reached out again:

Hey Chris! I'm developing something really cool with my friend. It's a local running AI that helps users search for footage. We got pretty far with Premiere and we are starting to move to Final Cut soon. I wonder if you would be interested in looking at what we have done and maybe joining us?

The timing couldn’t have been worse - at the start of this year I was totally burnt out, exhausted and overwhelmed. I declined the offer, but said I’m happy to offer help and advice as needed, as I do for lots of people and companies in the Final Cut Pro space (hence this website).

A few months later in June 2024, Arthur sent me a tutorial video for what they’d built in Adobe Premiere - it was super cool, but to build something like that in Final Cut Pro would be a big challenge, as unlike Premiere, Final Cut Pro has no official API for doing the stuff they needed to do... without CommandPost at least.

I was already juggling all my own apps on the Mac App Store, Arctic for Hedge, this website, two kids and a film and television production company, so I didn’t really want to take on yet another crazy project - however, I agreed to help offer advice, we set up a Slack for Jumper... and before long, I got fully roped in.

Jump forward to November 2024 - and after 4 months or so of some crazy hours in-between other jobs and commitments, as well as lots of long and sometimes loud discussions, we have something that’s pretty incredible.

There’s basically four core team members in Team Sweden, and then I’m helping out from Melbourne, Australia - so timezones have been fun. Arthur and I are the crazy Final Cut Pro editors, and then Max and two of his best mates are the coding geniuses behind the scenes - who don’t actually have any background in film & television, or post production. It’s been super interesting and collaborative, getting feedback from people who have never even opened Final Cut Pro before, and don’t have decades of background (and baggage) when talking about fun things like Drop Frame Timecode, FCPXML DTDs, etc.

But at it's heart, Jumper really is a tool by video editors, for video editors. Arthur, myself and a giant team of amazing early beta testers have pushed hard to make the tool the most useful it can be in real-world scenarios for video editors. We’ve battle tested it on real jobs, with real deadlines and real pressure - sometimes it failed miserably, so we went back to the drawing board, iterated and improved.

Going back to March 2024, my original advice was to do everything with FCPXML, however for various reasons, the first betas of Jumper for Final Cut Pro were reading the Library files at the file system level - which worked great... until you have to support Multicam & Synchronised Clips. Jump forward to today, and Jumper now have exceptional support for Multicam & Synchronised Clips thanks to the feedback of beta testers and the Jumper community. It really has been a team effort by some incredible supporters, including some amazing business mentors and advisors in Sweden, and Australia.

Whilst this site, and my interests, mainly lie in the Final Cut Pro universe - Jumper is not just for Final Cut Pro editors - it originally all started in Adobe Premiere, and Witchcraft plan to release for DaVinci Resolve and Avid Media Composer soon. They are also working on Jumper Enterprise, which allows you to analyse all your footage on a local server, and then have unlimited clients all access that data over your existing shared storage and network - it’s super exciting.

The thing I love most about Jumper really is that it’s just like Spotlight for your NLE. I was editing a fast turnaround corporate job earlier in the year, and I had a client over my shoulder saying things like "find the footage of the guy with a purple shirt and a funny hat" - Jumper could just find that shot instantly, and the client was pretty blown away. You don't even have to get the spelling correct.

Whilst there’ll be some video editors that use Jumper all the time (i.e. documentary, nature, sports, etc), for others in the scripted world (i.e. scripted film & television), it may be less frequently used, because assistant editors will have already logged and organised the footage by scene, for example. However, just being able to open the Jumper Workflow Extension and instantly find ANYTHING in your Library is pretty insane. It’s a very handy tool to have in your toolbox - and I say this as someone who has built a lot of toolboxes over the years!

Whilst I have no ownership in Witchcraft (the newly formed company behind Jumper), and it’s not my baby - I’m super proud of Jumper, and all the work that myself and Team Sweden has put into it. It’s entirely possible that Apple, Blackmagic or Adobe will Sherlock it at some point in the future - but for now, it’s the only tool on the market that can do what it does... all locally, all on device.

I’m very glad Arthur took me along for the ride!

You can buy and learn more here.

Onwards & Upwards!

Discuss this news item

# 2nd November 2024

Well, I didn't have this on my 2024 Bingo Card!

The Pixelmator Team plans to join Apple.

They write on their blog:

We’ve been inspired by Apple since day one, crafting our products with the same razor-sharp focus on design, ease of use, and performance. And looking back, it’s crazy what a small group of dedicated people have been able to achieve over the years from all the way in Vilnius, Lithuania. Now, we’ll have the ability to reach an even wider audience and make an even bigger impact on the lives of creative people around the world.

What to expect Pixelmator has signed an agreement to be acquired by Apple, subject to regulatory approval. There will be no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time. Stay tuned for exciting updates to come.

Thank you We want to give a big thanks to our amazing users for your support over the past 17 years. Your feedback has played a huge role in shaping our apps into what they are today. As we step into this exciting new chapter, we can’t wait to share what’s next.

Well, this is big.

My GUESS is they want the engineering talent to help improve Photos on Mac and more importantly iPhone & iPad.

Discuss this news item

# 1st November 2024

Dylan Bates (aka The Final Cut Bro) is having a 24 hour sale!

Get 31% off for the next 24 hours only!

Use the discount code: Boo31

You can learn more here.

captionAnimator v1.0.2 is out now with the following improvements:

  • New feature: for projects with captions in multiple languages, use the Language popup menu to choose which caption language is used to make titles
  • Bug fix for detecting titles with custom roles applied

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

Pinch and a punch for the first day of the month! Woohoo!

EasyEase on FxFactory brings easing of keyframes directly into your editing workflow, allowing you to apply custom easing functions to the position, scale, and rotation of your clips and elements.

Unlike other plugins, which animate simply from point A to B without keyframes and offer limited easing options, EasyEase supports full keyframing of its parameters. This means you can create complex animations with multiple keyframes, adjusting the speed by changing the distance between them.

EasyEase provides a wide range of easing functions, including unique options like Back Ease In & Out, Back Ease Out, Ease In, Ease Out, Quadratic Ease Out and more.

By exposing and mimicking the Position, Scale, and Rotation parameters and applying these cool animation easing effects, it brings functionality to Final Cut Pro that hasn't been there before.

You can learn more and download here.

Discuss this news item

# October

# 31st October 2024

Waltzing With Brando will premiere at the Torino Film Festival!

Cut in Final Cut Pro X by the incredible and magical Michael Yanovich, ACE.

You can read more here.

finalcutgod has released a new YouTube video talking about captions in Final Cut Pro:

Caption Pop AI by StupidRaisins is out now for USD$34 for a limited time!

The website says:

Introducing Caption Pop AI – the fastest way to make captions right inside Final Cut Pro! Forget about exporting to CapCut or waiting on other slow, clunky software. With Caption Pop AI, you can automatically create captions in just 3 easy steps: analyze your video’s audio, customize your captions, and drop them onto your video. Done!

Whether you're editing YouTube content, social media clips, or Caption Pop AI demos, Caption Pop AI delivers professional results in record time. Customize the look, enjoy accurate AI transcriptions, and work in 17 languages – all without leaving Final Cut Pro.

Get Caption Pop AI today and keep your workflow smooth and speedy!

You can watch an intro video on YouTube here:

You can download and learn more here.

What I didn't realise until now is that StupidRaisins has basically built their own versions of FxFactory - their own app, with their own marketplace - very impressive!

I've already downloaded Caption Pop AI and taken it for a quick test drive...

My first comment is I fricken LOVE the Stupid Raisins DMG!

My second comment, is their developers clearly haven't read my FCP Cafe documentation about why you should use greyscale icons for Workflow Extensions!

They also haven't set the minimum sizes correctly for their Workflow Extension:

Unlike MotionVFX's mCaptionsAI it seems like Caption Pop AI only support importing audio files:

After dragging in a WAV or AIFF you can select local or cloud processing and the model you want to use:

If you selected local, it then downloads the model:

It then processes the audio content:

Once complete, you have a lot of controls to play with:

To send back to Final Cut Pro, it's a bit more clunky than MotionVFX's mCaptionsAI - if you press Open in FCP, it will basically send a FCPXML across - prompting you to select a Library in which you want to import the FCPXML.

It then brings in a new Project with just the titles, so you need to copy and paste back into your original project/timeline:

Overall it does a pretty good job, using the recent Mac mini Announcement video as a test:

There is some maths errors/funkiness with timings, for example:

Overall though, it seems like a very useful tool to have in your toolbox, especially if you don't want to pay MotionVFX a subscription.

It'll be super interesting to see how well Apple's new caption tool compares to OpenAI's Whisper, which is what all these tools use.

It seems like Caption Pop AI is using whisper.cpp under the hood.

It stores all the models, temporary audio files, and FCPXML exports in '~/Library/Containers/com.urlaunched.StupidRaisins.StupidRaisins/Data/Library/Application Support/com.urlaunched.StupidRaisins.StupidRaisins:

If the Apple speech-to-text model is better than Whisper (which is unlikely), then I'd imagine a lot of these developers will start offering a FCPXML import option.

I think though, really the main benefit Apple has is that they can do the timing and handle timecode much better than Whisper can currently do - this might be the biggest selling point for Apple's tool.

Overall, it's great to see another non-subscription tool on the market!

Audio Design Desk v2.1.3 is out now!

It includes the following changes:

  • Track automation wasn't blocking mouse events on regions beneath, so it made it impossible to drag automation points
  • More region mouse event improvements and fixes
  • Improvements and fixes to Audio Unit manager UI for enabling and disabling Audio Units
  • Epidemic login button would be disabled if you canceled out of the web login forcing an ADD restart to reenable it
  • Audio tables wasn't updating with correct count after searching
  • Dragging multiple files from the library tables would result in overlapped regions in the timeline. Now, they will stack by default on new tracks, but you can hold the shift key to have them placed sequentially in a row
  • Misc UI fixes

You can download and learn more here.

Discuss this news item

# 30th October 2024

In their Mac mini Announcement Apple has leaked some features in the upcoming Final Cut Pro v11 update!

To be fair, I don't know for a FACT that it's Final Cut Pro v11 - but I think it's fairly safe to assume.

We already knew from WWDC that:

Spatial Videos can then be edited in Final Cut Pro for Mac, and shared and viewed in the new Vimeo app for VisionOS. This new professional workflow will be available this fall.

...so we knew that Spatial Video features were already on the cards, but we got some new surprises in the Mac mini video:

Specifically two new machine learning features:

  • Magnetic Mask
  • Transcribe to Captions

These are both features that I've been predicting and hoping for, for a long time.

In terms of Magnetic Mask, we can assume this is object-based masking - i.e. being able to easily "cut out" a person without the need for a green screen.

Meta/Facebook has been doing amazing work in this area, with Segment Anything Model 2.

It would be super interesting if Apple's actually using SAM2!

Blackmagic and Adobe already have their own solutions for this.

In terms of Transcribe to Captions, again this is something that's been lacking in Final Cut Pro, that other NLEs have.

It'll be super interesting to see the implementation though.

My initial thought is that people don't actually want captions on their timeline - they actually want titles.

It's currently unknown if there's any way to easily convert these newly generated captions to titles without third party tools.

However, by bringing Apple-level transcription to Final Cut Pro, even if it is limited to captions in the timeline, this opens up HUGE possibilities to third party developers like myself.

Interestingly, Intelligent Assistance, who have a close working relationship with Apple, have just announced captionAnimator.

captionAnimator converts Final Cut Pro Captions to "burned in" Titles, with Style captionAnimator uses one, or more, FCP Titles as a template to convert Closed Captions to open (regular) Titles. You can use any built-in Title (static or animated), or those from third party designers, or your own custom title created in Motion, as a template to convert, and optionally, animate your Captions into Titles.

You can learn more here.

You can watch a video explaining captionAnimator here:

It's safe to assume that Intelligent Assistance is on the Final Cut Pro beta (being close partners and collaborators with Apple), and maybe even Apple hinted at them to build this tool to solve workflow issues for this upcoming release.

Unfortunately, we don't personally get access to any early betas or pre-releases, so it's always a bit of a mad rush to fix CommandPost, BRAW Toolbox, Marker Toolbox, etc when a new update comes out.

Another thing that people want is ability to search their footage for dialogue - but if these transcriptions are only happening in the timeline, again, this doesn't seem like it'll be possible out of the box (although we do know of some people working on this issue, which I hope to share more about soon!).

In the next update, we'll be able to make tools that take the transcribed metadata from FCPXML and do awesome things with it - I'm specifically thinking about the Titles to Keywords Toolbox in CommandPost for example.

Either way, this just makes the upcoming Final Cut Pro Creative Summit even more exciting, so if you haven't already booked - do it!

You can get 15% off your Final Cut Pro Creative Summit ticket here.

Onwards & Upwards!

Audio Design Desk v2.1.2 is out now!

It includes the following changes:

  • Dragging the region selection rect in the timeline might not select a regions under it as expected.
  • Improves resizing regions in the timeline, especially when they are very small. Much easier to grab now.
  • Issue where recently added regions would ignore mouse events in the timeline.
  • Timeline zoom sliders might not respond to mouse movement or clicks immediatel.
  • Region selection UI when dragging regions was positioned too high.
  • More accurate track selection when dragging regions between tracks or beneath them.

You can download and learn more here.

Discuss this news item

# 29th October 2024

DAWBridge v1.0.7 is out now with the following changes:

  • Updates to the underlying MIDI Timecode system, various bug fixes

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

PostWatch v4.2 is out now!

It includes the following changes:

  • Important update for Apple Silicon Macs: An issue was discovered in the detection of the System Screensaver and Display Sleep that affects the PostWatch Screensaver. Now works correctly on Intel and Apple Silicon.
  • Fixed: The PostWatch Screensaver was running on older macOS’s (Catalina) when it shouldn’t and was actually blocking the watching of Notifications.
  • New: Optimization Utility has been completely redesigned with enhanced navigation and improved error reporting.
  • New: The optional Notification Sleep Test has also been redesigned with an easier to use interface.
  • Improved: Error logs now expanded with better information details.
  • Includes many small fixes and stability improvements.

You can download and learn more here.

MotionVFX mCaptionsAI v1.0.1 is out now!

There's no release notes as far as I can tell, but I do know it improves captions for Chinese!

You can learn more here.

Discuss this news item

# 23rd October 2024

MASSIVE congratulations to editor Dinda Amanda, as The Shadow Strays makes it to 2nd spot on Netflix's Global Top 10 Charts!

Dinda cut The Shadow Strays in Final Cut Pro X.

Amazing work!

An an unexpected nice surprise the new iPad Mini is actually compatible with Final Cut Pro for iPad!

The App Store listing has been updated to note:

  • Skim your footage without ever touching the screen with Apple Pencil hover - Requires iPad models with M2 chip or later
  • Create stunning videos with an HDR workflow on the Liquid Retina XDR or Ultra Retina XDR display Requires iPad Pro (M4 chip) or iPad Pro 12.9-inch (5th generation or later)
  • Easily record in a range of video resolutions, frame rates, and formats including ProRes - Requires iPad Pro (M4 chip), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (6th generation or later), or iPad Pro 11-inch (4th generation or later)
  • Send your project to Final Cut Pro for Mac for additional tools including Object Tracker, advanced color correction, and third-party content - Requires Final Cut Pro 10.8 or later
  • Import projects created in iMovie for iOS to take advantage of the advanced editing tools in Final Cut Pro for iPad - Requires iMovie for iOS 3.0 or later

You can download Final Cut Pro for iPad here.

Audio Design Desk v2.1 is out now!

This is a major update to Audio Design Desk with lots of improvements:

  • Minimum required version is now macOS 11.
  • New Epidemic extension to get audio suggestions for video stills or return similar audio.
  • New timeline undo system
  • Improved stability loading 3rd party Audio Units
  • Improves dragging effects in Audio Unit list, responsive layout
  • Timestretch rendering is much faster
  • Many speed improvements for various multi-threaded processes
  • Many performance optimizations when dealing with large amounts of files
  • Better handling of canceling processes
  • Improvements to ADD Tags batch processing
  • Improved search speed
  • Many UI updates and improvements
  • Media Bridge: Allow web pages to upload files
  • Most timeline actions like replace, project load, region creation, etc have been refactored to be faster.
  • Much improved metadata guessing via audio analysis (in macOS 12+)
  • New status notification system which now allows cancellation in important cases
  • Optimize Trigger presets, doesn't block now on updates, will refresh presets menu dynamically on Home location change
  • Return known values for loudness analysis
  • System will better handle invalid files in sound packs
  • Tables: search, sort and general performance improvements
  • Updated Media Bridge with bug fixes and improvements

Bug Fixes:

  • Advanced search options for user triggers is persistent
  • Allow send to trigger button to work in sound pack playlist view in user triggers manager
  • Allow spot mode drag out of playlists
  • Element detector send to trigger
  • Hang on updating tables with large amounts of files
  • Hang that occurred when opening the metadata editor
  • Hide library panel is expanding metadata panel, but only timeline should resize on show/hide view events
  • Improvements in Sound Pack indexing and parsing
  • Key commands in some playlist views
  • Loading missing regions in projects without audio
  • Login fixes
  • Many fixes to Stacks editor
  • Master volume value in projects
  • Potential crash that could happen on opening files with invalid markers in them * Rendering in timeline, and loading projects with renders in place
  • Search is clearing current search criteria if there are no results
  • Stacks/Editor key commands when in a detached window
  • User Preferences being saved correctly
  • Resolve and Premiere extensions (edited)

You can download and learn more here.

Colourlab Ai 3 Pro is out now!

This is a major update!

Gen3.2 Color Matching Engine: Colourlab AI 3.2 Pro introduces the first neural engine to work natively in ACES. It’s a multi-modal engine, supporting multiple types of image analysis for optimal color matching results. Trained on over 10 million custom-developed images, it automates color management without relying on metadata—purely analyzing the content of your image. The new auto-balance feature is just the beginning.

Native Integration with DaVinci Resolve, Nuke, and Baselight: Colourlab AI Pro now works natively inside these platforms. No more sending sequences in and out—just drag and drop the plugin onto your clip to access the full functionality previously available only through the desktop application.

Floating License, Server-Based: With this release, Colourlab AI Pro can now operate as a server-based application. One system in your facility can handle all the color matching, allowing all other systems to connect and use the same smart color metadata for perfect results.

Real-Time Performance: Colourlab AI Pro works in real time, supporting 4K and even 8K workflows, depending on the power of your system. The AI processing happens entirely on your device—no cloud, no extra costs—ensuring faster and more efficient work.

Flexible Color Management: You’re no longer limited to ARRI Log C. Colourlab AI Pro works seamlessly in ACES, DaVinci Wide Gamut, and virtually any color space you prefer. The new Colourlab AI OFX plugin supports all imaginable color spaces, giving you maximum flexibility.

Reference Sharing: Just like its desktop counterpart, Colourlab AI Pro allows you to share reference looks and images across projects effortlessly.

You can learn more here.

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# 22nd October 2024

MotionVFX mRotoAI v1.1 is out now!

It's now up to 25% faster!

You can watch a short video on YouTube demonstrating here.

You can learn more here.

MotionVFX mFlare 2 v3.1.5 is out now!

It now supports for high resolutions - up to 16k.

You can learn more here.

Alex Raccuglia has released a new video on YouTube titled:

Unlocking "Success": How My Apps BeatMark 2 & Pro Transformed Editing for Filmmakers! (😳)

You can watch on YouTube here.

Discuss this news item

# 20th October 2024

BRAW Toolbox v1.4.0 (70) is out now!

It has the following changes:

🔨 Improvements:

  • Added support for Fujifilm X-M5 Blackmagic RAW clips.
  • Added support for Panasonic S5D Blackmagic RAW clips.
  • Updated from Blackmagic RAW SDK v4.2 to v4.3.

🐞 Bug Fix:

  • Fixed a bug when using macOS Sequoia where the hero BRAW Toolbox application would fail to set the correct folders when trying to grant sandbox permissions when first setting up BRAW Toolbox. For example, it would default to the user's "Documents" folders, rather than the user's "Movies" folder and the user's "ProApps" folder. Thanks for reporting Karl Winegardner, Robbie Myers, Jens Pluimes & Edwin van W!
  • Re-designed how we render error messages in Final Cut Pro using Core Image and Metal. Hopefully this will fix random crashes some users are seeing on older versions of Final Cut Pro running on older Intel machines.

You can download and learn more here.

Gyroflow Toolbox v1.2.0 (21) is out now!

It has the following changes:

🔨 Improvements:

  • We've updated to the latest Gyroflow Core Renderer. HUGE thank you to the amazing AdrianEddy for all his ongoing help, assistance, genius and support!
  • 4606 lens profiles have been added from the hero Gyroflow project. Thanks to EVERYONE who has submitted lens profiles and another HUGE thank you to AdrianEddy for all the work that goes into managing them.

🐞 Bug Fixes:

  • Fixed a bug when using macOS Sequoia where the hero Gyroflow Toolbox application would fail to set the correct folders when trying to grant sandbox permissions when first setting up Gyroflow Toolbox. For example, it would default to the user's "Documents" folders, rather than the user's "Movies" folder. Thanks for reporting Roman Gaufman!
  • Re-designed how we render error messages in Final Cut Pro using Core Image and Metal. Hopefully this will fix random crashes some users are seeing on older versions of Final Cut Pro running on older Intel machines.

You can download and learn more here.

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# 18th October 2024

The trailer for Steven C Miller's upcoming Werewolves movie is out now, cut in Final Cut Pro!

You can watch the trailer here.

MotionVFX's mRotoAl v1.1.1 is out now with the following changes:

  • Improved tracking speed and overall stability
  • Fixed support for FCP 10.7 and below

You can learn more here.

XtoCC v1.2.46 it out now with the following fix:

  • Bug fix for detecting the DTD version in FCPXML

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

Larry Jordan has a heap of amazing interviews from NAB Show New York 2024.

You can check them out here.

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# 16th October 2024

For those that missed it live, you can now watch Jenn Jager's live stream talking about the Final Cut Pro Creative Summit on YouTube below:

Jenn Jager, Final Cut Pro Guru Mark Spencer from Ripple Training, Writer/Director and Squirrel Me Bad creator Daniel Cohn, Director of Product Marketing for Continuum at Boris FX Nick Harauzand, and myself (Chris Hocking) chatted about all things related to the upcoming Final Cut Pro Creative Summit!

Enjoy! If you have any questions that weren't answered, feel free to ask them in the comments below!

evrExpanse 5 is out now!

After months of development, this major release brings a host of new features, including:

  • 3D LUT Application: Easily burn LUTs into transcoded files for enhanced color grading.
  • Enhanced Final Cut Pro Integration: Leverage metadata with Smart Collections, improved searchability, and automatic metadata porting.
  • Plus, enjoy up to 10% faster transcoding!

You can find the full release notes here.

You can download and learn more here.

SendToX v1.2.6 is out now!

It contains a critical bug fix for translated XML that fails DTD validation in certain titles created in Premiere Pro.

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

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# 14th October 2024

The MKBHD team (aka Marques Brownlee's YouTube team) gives a full masterclass on how they make high quality video.

Why is this relevant? They cut in Final Cut Pro - woohoo!

It's a really awesome video - and Mariah Zenk gives some amazing insight into how and why she cuts things together. She's awesome.

What I find most interesting is the lack of emoji's in the Library!

All the event names and underscores just make me feel like a technician - not an artist.

I'm personally a BIG fan of using emoji's - it makes Final Cut Pro more colourful and fun:

You can watch the editing section on YouTube here:

Thanks for sharing JonnyLewisFilms!

I've just linked straight to the editing section above, but it's totally worth watching the whole thing - especially the audio section, which is super fun and interesting.

Although I am very surprised they're using Sennheiser MKH 416 Shotgun Microphones for their interior shoots, as opposed to a hyper-cardioid microphone, like a Schoeps CMC641, Sennheiser MKH 8050 or a Audio Technica AT4053B (this video is worth a watch for anyone interesting in learning more!).

I'm also surprised how far away they're positioned the microphone - generally you want the microphone to be as close as possible to the talent, ideally no more than a foot away.

Here's some screenshots from the video:

I LOVE that the MKBHD is so open and happy to share all this amazing insight! Great work team!

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# 12th October 2024

We have another amazing developer case study online by the incredible Alex Raccuglia!

You can read all about Transcriber AI Metadata here.

Mike Greaney's short film Holy Nountain has taken out Best Tall Short at Nouns Fest in LA!

MASSIVE congratulations Mike!

The sound design was handled by LateNite - edited and mixed in Final Cut Pro by Kevin Luk & myself (Chris Hocking).

You can read more on Animation Magazine.

You can watch a trailer for the short film here:

You can find out more about Nouns Fest here.

Let's talk the future of editing!

Join the amazing Jenn Jager, Final Cut Pro Guru Mark Spencer from Ripple Training, Writer/Director and Squirrel Me Bad creator Daniel Cohn, Director of Product Marketing for Continuum at Boris FX Nick Harauzand, and myself (Chris Hocking) chat about all things related to the upcoming Final Cut Pro Creative Summit!

You can watch on YouTube Live here:

Dylan Bates (The Final Cut Bro) has released an update to his Pro Zooms plugin.

He explains:

I have added a zoom offset slider, which will now let you adjust the size of the zoom, without using the on screen controls. This is definitely a hacked together solution, but I was getting tired of waiting for an update from Apple to completely resolve this issue.

Just know, if you use the zoom offset slider, the on screen controls will no longer accurately show exactly what you will be zooming into.

If you were having no issues with Pro Zooms in the past, there is no need to update. This is only to help the few that can't seem to adjust the controls for whatever reason.

You can learn more here.

iodyne has just released a major firmware update to their Pro Data hardware.

Our second major firmware update of the year, Pro Data 1.5 has been released for all existing customers. Were very excited about the Multi-Reader Sharing feature which many of you, particularly in post, have been anticipating.

You can read more here.

Color Finale v2.10.1 is out now!

It contains the following bug fixes and improvements:

  • Resolved a color discrepancy issue with the published mask Cutout Mode in HDR projects.
  • No longer offering the Adjustment Layer Motion Template installation. Please use your own template.
  • Enabled new film emulation tools to function within HDR video workflows.
  • Updated the Color Finale app interface to include license information and an option to deactivate the application directly from the computer.

You can learn more here.

Captionator for Final Cut v2.1.0 is out now!

Whisper Turbo now runs substantially faster and more accurately. Choose the Whisper Large v3 Turbo model.

Plenty of new changes:

  • Rewritten text editor for editing captions
  • Total removal of CoreML
  • Addition of Largev3-Turbo (A Much faster model)
  • Set a default framerate if Final Cut doesn't produce one
  • Multi-threading for even faster transcription
  • Many fixes for the custom motion templates
  • Validated downloader to ensure all model downloads are not corrupt

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

Worx4 X v1.3.11 is out now with added support for FCPXML v1.12.

You can download on the Mac App Store here

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# 3rd October 2024

November is RAPIDLY approaching, and if you haven't already considered going to the FCP Creative Summit you DEFINITELY should.

I'll be there!

You can read why Iain Anderson thinks you should come here.

You can get 15% off here:

There's some great speakers in the mix, but probably most exciting:

Fitness+ How We Use Final Cut Pro
Speaker: Apple Fitness+ Team

Last year at the Summit Apple told us:

One interesting point to note is that even though the Scary Fast event wasn't cut in Final Cut Pro (yes, it was cut in Premiere) - everything for Apple Fitness+ is - over 4,700 videos, 15 hours every week, all cut in Final Cut Pro using ProRes. Apple is eating their own dog food, at a major scale. Also, all the WWDC talks this year were cut in Final Cut Pro.

They also hinted that they were doing some special/funky metadata stuff for Fitness+ but didn't go into any deep details - so HOPEFULLY we learn more this year.

There will be LOTS of new tech discussed at the event.

MotionVFX has just released a tonne of new products, which I'm sure everyone will be talking about.

Wes Plate from Automatic Duck will be presenting - so we can all safely assume he'll announce something amazing (I wonder if you can guess what it is!).

Of course, Michael Cioni from Strada will be doing a keynote talk, Bet on the Future, bet on Yourself. Michael is one of the best public speakers in our industry, so his talks are always amazing.

I'm also currently helping Arthur Moore of BadAss FX fame on a secret project, that will HOPEFULLY be out by the Summit too!

So come along - it'll be awesome.

Yesterday MotionVFX released DesignStudio, mExtension and mCaptions.

But before I rant, watch Jenn Jager's amazing video on YouTube reviewing DesignStudio:

We're MASSIVE fans of MotionVFX. NOT including their subscriptions I've spent over AUD$7,596.53 on MotionVFX products.

The MotionVFX team are next-level talented, and create absolutely beautiful products that no other company can compete with.

That said... for us at least, yesterday's launch really didn't go that well.

We couldn't even pay the very expensive USD$682.82 cost because "something went wrong":

We tried multiple credit cards from multiple banks.

With MotionVFX being based in Poland, and LateNite being based in Melbourne, Australia, getting through to live chat support took a while.

Eventually they tweaked the error message, but alas, it still wasn't working for us:

To be fair... we think this was most likely an issue on Paddle's end - the payment provider that MotionVFX uses, however, as someone who knows the backend of Paddle quite well, I found it pretty disappointing that MotionVFX support couldn't just manually upgrade my subscription - as I was already paying for CineStudio 2D + 3D, so they already had my credit card details.

MotionVFX's live chat support staff were super lovely and human, which is always nice. But there was no special treatment here - no offer of a discount, no offer to some how fast track things. I basically just had to keep trying until it worked.

This kinda sucks - as MotionVFX have such a big team - I would expect better support, where they just do whatever it takes to get me up and running.

Eventually, after about the 100 time of trying to submit, I got a SMS from my bank about unusual activity on my credit card, which I accepted, and then, thankfully, I tried buying the Ultimate Plan, and it worked, woohoo! I have no idea why I didn't get this SMS on the first attempt, or the next 99 attempts, but it must have been a bug somewhere in the Paddle flow.

In addition to the existing mInstaller, we now have mExtensionInstaller:

I'm not really sure why they didn't just put this in mInstaller - it kinda makes no sense, but anyway...

First up I tried mExtension.

It's a Workflow Extension that contains:

  • Addons
  • Backgrounds
  • Camera Movements
  • Compositing Elements
  • Effects
  • Infographics
  • Intros
  • Overlay Effects
  • Placeholders
  • Social Media
  • Transitions

Once you find something you like you can simply drag it to your timeline, and like magic, it just works.

There's a HEAP of stuff - and as you'd expect with MotionVFX, the design work is AMAZING.

My only complaint is that this Workflow Extension just seems to be a fancy webview - so it's loading off the Internet, and it's SLOW - at least in Australia.

There doesn't seem to be any local caching or persistence - it requires an active Internet connection and doesn't really alert you to if you're offline - it just kinda... stalls.

When you download an item, it just gets added to your regular Motion Templates folder, so in future you can just access directly from Final Cut Pro:

There is a daily limit on how many things you can download:

Overall, it seems like a really solid product, with lots of great templates - and having it directly in Final Cut Pro is amazing. I'm really surprised it took them this long to build a Workflow Extension to be honest!

Next up... we have mCaptions.

Here's the official tutorial featuring the amazing George Edmondson:

Confusingly... mCaptions doesn't create Captions - it creates Titles.

Ironically... whilst we're very confident that we'll see automatic captions support in Final Cut Pro 11 at the Final Cut Pro Creative Summit, we're less confident about automatic titles.

My GUESS is that Apple and MotionVFX have probably already discussed this, and my GUESS it that mCaptions won't compete with Apple's native captions support.

HOWEVER, once we have native caption support in Final Cut Pro, we could use that metadata to generate our own titles, so that's only matter a time before a third party developer solves this once FCP11 is out in the wild - it could even potentially be a CommandPost Toolbox.

But for now... we have mCaptions.

Like Ulti.Media Transcriber and Builder NLE it's using OpenAI's Whisper under the hood.

In this case mCaptions is using Whisper.cpp's Large V3 model.

Our first test was with some Strada test clips (that have been provided to Strada beta testers), in Mandarin, and it failed miserably.

Next we tried some other Strada test clips, but they had multiple audio channels, and mCaptions wouldn't even import them:

It would be great if mCaptions was smart enough to read the enabled channels from the FCPXML and only use the enabled channels for transcription. Maybe in a future update.

It also can't import SOME video files, which is a shame. There's no error message though, so it's hard to know what works and what does without just trying.

So basically, currently it seems mCaptions is basically limited to mono or stereo AIFFs or WAVs.

Next up we tried a 02:27:46:40 long audio clip (a podcast ripped from YouTube).

Sadly, it doesn't seem to push CPUs and GPUs as much as you'd hope (compared to WhisperKit in MacWhisper for example):

It writes verbose error logs in /private/tmp/logError.txt and /private/tmp/log.txt so you can see what it's kinda doing under-the-hood.

After 10 minutes I was only up to 11%, so I basically gave up transcoding this 2.5 hour clip. For reference, MacWhisper can do the same clip in under 5 minutes.

Next up we tried a 4 minute H264 - a pitch video that we did internally, which is mostly dialogue (all English) but with some subtle music underneath.

That seemed to work MUCH better, and was pretty fast to process:

Overall though, I'm not sure that mCaptions is any better than Ulti.Media Transcriber, and definitely has far less options and control - although having it as a Workflow Extension in Final Cut Pro does save a lot of mouse clicks!

Having said that... it does have a very unique feature not found in other tools (so far)... word-by-word animation is amazing, and something I've already used on an actual job. When it works (i.e. clean English), it works amazingly well.

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on MotionVFX's latest offerings!

Thanks team!

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# 1st October 2024

Builder NLE v2.4.9 it out now with the following bug fix:

  • Critical bug fix for adding new multicam clips to an existing event

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# September

# 29th September 2024

MotionVFX is working on something new, and something really cool, most likely called mExtension.

We can only ASSUME that it's a new Workflow Extension based off their videos...

It looks like it has:

  • Addons
  • Backgrounds
  • Camera Movements
  • Compositing Elements
  • Effects
  • Infographics
  • Intros
  • Overlay Effects
  • Placeholders
  • Social Media
  • Transitions

To be honest, we're surprised it's taken them this long to build a Workflow Extension, as normally MotionVFX are first to market when it comes to Final Cut Pro tech.

Their first hint was:

A new era of creativity is on the horizon... ✨

Their second hint was:

Something big is coming... 👀

Their third hint was:

Final Cut Pro is about to get bigger! 💣

And their latest hint is:

Open endless opportunities in Final Cut Pro ♾️ #videoediting

You can see some screenshots of the above videos here:

It's yet to be seen if this will be subscription or if it just has access to your existing MotionVFX purchases.

We're excited.

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# 28th September 2024

The draft program for the 2024 Final Cut Pro Creative Summit is now live!

You can view it here.

There's some great speakers in the mix, but probably most exciting:

Fitness+ How We Use Final Cut Pro
Speaker: Apple Fitness+ Team

We can't wait! Hopefully see you there!

You can learn more here.

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# 18th September 2024

If you're a developer who works with Final Cut Pro Workflow Extensions, you may have noticed that things break when you upgrade to macOS Sequoia 15.0 and Xcode 16.0. Doh!

Thankfully the fix is fairly simple once you know the trick...

If you're seeing this:

Simply change this:

To this:

This is because in Xcode 16.0, a clang fix was made that now requires a space after the entry linker option -e to disambiguate this option from other options that start with the letter e.

To fix the error, you simply need to separate out the -e from _ProExtensionMain in the Other Linker Flags build setting.

As of today, the Workflow Extensions SDK hasn't been updated, but hopefully we'll see this fixed in the Xcode template soon.

Thanks to Phil in the CocoaHeads community for helping me work this out!

It's nearly your last chance to get 30% off the amazing Apple Motion Masterclass by Dylan Bates (aka The Final Cut Bro)!

Simply use the promo code MotionTime30. Offer end 20th September.

It's time to stop ignoring Apple Motion and make it a part of your daily editing life.

This course will take you from knowing absolutely nothing about Motion, to knowing how to create advanced templates, graphics and VFX with over 7.5 hours of high quality videos. Plus there's even more on the way!

This course is 100% satisfaction guaranteed! Not happy with it? Let me know and I will offer a full refund.

You can buy now here.

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# 17th September 2024

macOS Sequoia 15.0 is out now!

So far there's very little to no reports of any issues with Final Cut Pro, so we think it's safe to upgrade - but of course, make backups and tread with care!

You can keep track of our latest recommendations on our Upgrade Guide.

BretFX has released Speech Bubble 2 on the Mac App Store and on the BretFX website.

You can learn more here.

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

Creator's Best Friend v1.3.1 is out now with a new app icon!

It also now has a "Keep on Top" checkbox to control floating of the app window.

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

Frame.io v2.7.1 is out now!

It includes the following improvements:

  • Support for uploading media to V4 accounts
  • Watch Folders now work with V4 accounts
  • Full support for Final Cut Pro 10.8
  • Bug fixes and performance improvements

We're big Frame.io users here, and we're also on the V4 beta, so HUGE thank you to the Frame.io team for all their Final Cut Pro improvements!!

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

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# 8th September 2024

X2Pro5 v5.0.42 is out now with the following fixes:

  • Preventing crash during WAV parsing
  • Maintaining access rights for locations
  • Correct pass-through of track names and timecodes for certain source file types

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

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# 7th September 2024

The amazing Dylan Bates (aka The Final Cut Bro) has released an Apple Motion Masterclass.

Use the promo code MotionTime30 to get 30% off.

It's time to stop ignoring Apple Motion and make it a part of your daily editing life.

This course will take you from knowing absolutely nothing about Motion, to knowing how to create advanced templates, graphics and VFX with over 7.5 hours of high quality videos. Plus there's even more on the way!

This course is 100% satisfaction guaranteed! Not happy with it? Let me know and I will offer a full refund.

You can buy now here.

evrExpanse v4.6.0 is out now!

Use the promo code EVRE460INTRO to get 30% off until 22nd September.

This release includes:

  • UPDATE: New Process Selection Interface: Users now select between the main processes: Metadata Export, Transcode, and Offload directly from the main process window, streamlining the workflow and reducing confusion.
  • UPDATE: Transcoding Mode Moved: The Transcoding Mode selection has been moved to the Transcode Settings, providing a cleaner and more intuitive user experience when setting transcoding preferences.
  • UPDATE: Renaming of Passthrough Mode: The "Passthrough" transcoding mode has been renamed to "Rewrap" for better clarity.
  • UPDATE: Minor UI/UX Enhancements: Various small improvements have been made to alert messages and pop-up windows for a more polished and user-friendly experience.
  • NEW: Demo License Activation: Starting with this release, the Demo license must be activated to use evrExpanse.

You can learn more here.

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