Foxvideo Productions

Air Display - It works!

05.04.2022 written by: Dave Farrants

After all the problems last week getting Air Display to work on one particular MacPro desktop, I got the chance to use it last Sunday. Connecting everything to the WiFi and using my new Mac Mini, I bought up the Keynote I’d prepared, I opened Air Display on the iPad (an old v2), the Air Display host on the Mac Mini asked to connect to the iPad and within a second or two, my ‘second screen’ was showing on the iPad.

Switching Keynote into Present mode, the projector display showed up on the iPad and the speaker could see the slides as I advanced them in time to his script which he’d sent to me earlier. There was virtually no lag and the display quality was very high, even video clips played on the iPad again with virtually no lag, overall for £12.99 I was very impressed.....if it had only worked on the older MacPro desktop, but the plus side is I‘ve now got a (fairly) new Mac mini (just don’t tell the missus!)

I killed my Mac! (Part 2)

01.04.2022 Filed in: Computers |Apple Mac written by: Dave Farrants

I was determined to find the problem with my Mac, to be honest, after all we’d been through over 12 years I owed it that much!

DosDude to the rescue again, I downloaded the High Sierra patch, installed it on a USB drive, and used the patch to download High Sierra. I booted from the USB, opened Disk Utilities and re-formatted the HD, then installed High Sierra.

With HS installed, I swapped the 1Gb GFX back to the 3Gb Metal GFX card to prove it was either faulty or working - it was working! So, leave the 3Gb card in, download DosDudes Mojave Patch and Mojave Installer, then disk Utilities, Format and then install Mojave.

Tags: Computers,Apple Mac

I killed my Mac! (Part 1)

01.04.2022 Filed in: Computers |Apple Mac written by: Dave Farrants

Just lost a very dear friend I’ve had since 2010. I remember finding it on eBay and driving over 100 miles to collect it. It ran my Final Cut Pro version 6 and 7 till 2015 when I bought a later model and upgraded it. Eventually, it found it’s way to becoming a ‘reserve’ Mac and over time, until late 2021, it went through various upgrades and configurations (including a processor upgrade) and it never let me down. It had started as a Mac 4.1, I upgraded it’s firmware to a 5.1, bought a 3Gb Metal GFX card and used DosDudes patch to install Mojave on it.

Tags: Computers,Apple Mac

PhotosRevive

19.03.2022 Filed in: Photography |Post processing |Photo editing written by: Dave Farrants

I’m still more of a ‘desktop’ computer guy than an iPhone or tablet and I regularly get email offers of Mac software, one in particular is Bundlehunt, you unlock the bundle for a few dollars then pick the software you want from the bundle at very reduced prices from normal.

A recent offer from BundleHunt included PhotosRevive, it can colorise (colorize) B&W photos, I’d used a similar software program some years ago but it was more of a manual approach and a little hit or miss with results.

Online Auction win!

18.03.2022 written by: Dave Farrants

I recently found an online auction site I’d not seen before - jobalots.com, it receives customer returns from some of the large online retailers, they are then offered as an auction item at considerably lower prices, many starting at £0.20.

I’d browsed the site a few times without spotting anything of interest, a few days ago I spotted an autocue bluetooth remote, it had a start price of £1.00, the normal Amazon retail was £23.38 so I thought it was worth a bid.

DAM!

04.05.2021 Filed in: Photography |Photo software |Catalogue software written by: Dave Farrants

DAM! - no I’m not swearing, I’m referring to Digital Asset Management. Since the digital revolution I’ve collected thousands of video clips, still images, audio files and graphics on a hard drive very much in those categories to use in edits. I’ve bought assets from video and photo libraries, special offer packages, Royalty Free music as digital downloads and CD’s which I’ve digitised, it’s a case of you never know when you might need to use them, the problem arises trying to keep track of them all and have fast access when trying to find something for an edit.

First 10 days with Resolve

20.04.2021 Filed in: Post processing |Davinci Resolve written by: Dave Farrants

‘Forget everything you’ve ever learned using tracks in Final Cut Pro’, that was the advice when Final Cut Pro X was launched in June 2011. I remember that day along with many thousands of others, awaiting the launch of FCPX, I’d been using non-linear editing since early 1994, originally with Media100 from Data Translation which was marketed as the the first ‘broadcast quality’ non-linear editor. In 2001 I switched to Final Cut Pro v2.1 which then, cost around £1600 if I remember. When Apple switched from Motorola to Intel chips, FCP 6 Studio2 was launched and I bought the new version for around £800, then later again the v7 upgrade, luckily I found a genuine boxed version on eBay for £150.

Tags: Post processing,Davinci Resolve

A Band shoot...

30.10.2020 Filed in: Video production |Audio written by: Dave Farrants

Over the past 20 years or so we’ve been asked to shoot a few artist / band songs, these usually involved shooting several takes in different locations and using a CD boom box to play the song out for lip syncing, then in the edit, use the CD as the main audio track to sync to the video using the recorded audio, then drop the camera recorded audio for the final video output.

Tags: Video production,Audio

I bought an iMac!

15.10.2020 Filed in: Computers |iMac written by: Dave Farrants

If you’ve been reading any of the previous posts you’ll have seen the problems with my 2010 MacPro Quad and it’s overheating on load. A new 4Gb GFX card failed to fix it, a software fan control program worked for a while but then the problem started again! Time on Google suggested the thermal paste used on the processor may be failing, after a stressful edit that needed to be mastered to a deadline, I realised it was probably time to look for a replacement machine……

Tags: Computers,iMac

Video tips for YouTube videos

05.08.2020 Filed in: Video production |Tutorials |YouTube written by: Dave Farrants

The appearance of Covid-19, lockdown and social distancing has created a huge rise in the number of people suddenly producing video content using webcams or phone cameras for Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Facebook and I’ve spent many, many hours recently editing videos shot for websites and YouTube.