During the edit of a 60-second spot using RED footage I used QuickTime proxy files. Although this meant continuous rendering of transitions and effects it was painless. Eventually I needed to conform the proxies to their 1080/24p ProRes 422 counterparts. I didn’t bother with Crimson because there were only about 20-30 cuts.

With speed changes and video effects reapplied I prepared for the final render. It wasn’t long before Final Cut Pro generated this error message:

The effect ‘Scrub’ cannot be rendered in a sequence of this size with the current graphics card.

The Scrub filter had been successfully used throughout the entire edit: from proxy files to scrubbing the timeline in ProRes. I tested different video effects and received the same error message.

A forum post at CreativeCOW describes a similar problem. This was just one of many issues plauging my project so I took the easy way out by replacing the Scrub filter with one from Joe’s Filters.

While I was writing this I found a solution at LAFCPUG. Modify the render depth from 10-bit to 8-bit in the sequence settings.

This solution is also referenced in an Apple Support document. Unfortunately it doesn’t address why late-model Apple video cards generate the error. Lack of 10-bit color support or a bug?

The upgrade from VMware Fusion 1.x to 2.0 was smooth except for an error from Windows XP’s Device Manager. Before I could install the newest VMware Tools, Windows complained about “missing driver for Base System Device.”

Dismissing the error I installed VMware Tools 2.0 but the error persisted. On this tip I reinstalled VMware Tools using the Custom option. The VMCI driver was already selected (a head scratcher since this would suggest it was previously installed) but I continued the installation. Upon restart the missing driver was found.

Today I was tussling with a client’s computer in an effort to remove malware. During the process Windows XP decided it was no longer activated and during a reboot demanded to be activated or I would be logged off.

Windows Product Activation was either hosed and/or the malware prevented me from properly accessing the Internet. I decided against the 4-to-8 hour reinstall of Windows and application software while preserving existing user data. My shortcut? A spare hard drive and legit copy of Windows XP.

Cracking open the PC case I plugged in the spare hard disk, disconnecting the original one. The next hour was spent installing Windows XP to the same Service Pack level (WPA has changed over time). Without installing any additional updates I copied the WPA data file (c:\windows\system32\wpa.dbl) to a USB flash drive.

Reverting to the original hard disk I booted into Safe Mode (which recognizes USB flash drives) and copied the wpa.dbl file to its respective location on C:. Reboot.

At login, Windows asked to be activated and prompted me with choices - I was no longer stuck. The rest of the process was quick and painless.

Regardless of your backup strategy consider keeping a copy of the WPA file. Lest I forget to mention it, the malware was successfully removed.

It’s said that history repeats itself every twenty years, especially with fashion or music. Twenty-plus years ago computers were manipulated using text commands at the command prompt of DOS or UNIX.

Macintosh and Windows ushered in the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and made the command line near obsolete except for the most technical of users. I’ve thought back to the old days of the C: prompt and the relative simplicity of getting things done. To compare with conventional English grammar, an action verb, adjective, and subject was all that was necessary.

find "milk" *.txt
dir /s todolist.txt

Modern GUIs provide shortcut keys like Ctrl-S to save and Cmd-P to print but that’s all. What if we could do just a little more? A blending of old-school command line with the GUI.

According to BetaNews, Mozilla is experimenting with Ubiquity, software to provide command line functionality within their browser software. It’s akin to what QuickSilver can be made to do but intrinsic to the host application. Whether Ubiquity is an improvement to QuickSilver is yet to be realized but it’s an interesting effort for advanced users.

Ubiquity is available as a free download for Firefox.

I’ve been using IMDb to research the relationship of film editors (and assistants) with directors and having difficulty because the web interface doesn’t provide any type of advanced searching and reporting. IMDb Pro purports to have these features and, lo and behold, the Advanced Search page has every field you’d want to use when generating a custom report.

Anticipating great things I entered an extensive amount of search criteria spanning decades, film grosses, English language, etc. The results were a mess: not a single criterion was met.

Thinking I was taxing the system with complexity I tried this simple search with the intention of finding popular films in 1990:

• Released films from 1/1990 to 12/1990
• US Box Office Gross between 10M and 999M

Result? Films from the 1970s through 1990s and the BO gross was disregarded completely. Not good.

I sent a tech support request to IMDb and their answer wasn’t reassuring:

Greetings from the Internet Movie Database;

Thank you for contacting us.

Unfortunately, our current search forms do not provide a way to find this information. We are working on a number of enhancements to the site that will include a way to perform this search. There is no announced launch date for this new service.

You can also try posting your question in one of our online message boards (http://pro.imdb.com/boards/). One of the boards, called “I Need to Know”, is the right place to post questions you don’t know the answer to. Perhaps one of your fellow IMDb users can help:

http://pro.imdb.com/board/bd0000001/threads/

Please let us know if we can offer further assistance.

Nice to know what I’m paying for doesn’t actually exist but that’s another discussion. On the positive, IMDb offers their entire database as downloadable files for personal use. After downloading gigs of text files I opened one and expected to see a record format like this:

"Snyder, Zack","Watchmen"
"Snyder, Zack","300"
"Synder, Zack","Dawn of the Dead"

Instead:

Snyder, Zack[tab][tab]Watchmen
[tab][tab]300
[tab][tab]Dawn of the Dead

This is nearly unusable because it needs to be parsed into a column format for import into a database system. I attempted to use IMDbPy, a Python search library, for custom reporting but getting it to run is another matter. I decided against using software such as Eric’s Movie Database and JMDB because their reporting features weren’t detailed.

This leaves one option: writing my own software. Considering I don’t need to report on all IMDb data (just movie titles, editors, and directors) it makes the work a bit simpler. A record parser is being written in Perl to generate a properly formatted CSV file then imported to FileMaker Pro or Access where customized reports are a no-brainer.

It’s unfortunate IMDb Pro’s reporting feature is broken. Even worse that they advertise it as feature.