The first script is called “Render Notification 1.0.2” by Josh Petok from the current cut. It is a nice little script that watches the processor usage of a few pre-selected apps and will email you when the load goes down. In other words it alerts you to your render finishing. This is possible in a few other ways, but there hasn’t been a nice clean solution that works across multiple apps before.
Josh’s version is available for download here.
I poked around in the code a little bit and enabled it to work with after effects. This is relatively untested, so it might give you an email too early or too late. All credit goes to Josh, as I’m just adding a few lines of code to his.
If you’re feeling lucky, you can try the AE compatible version here.

The second script is the strangely named “AE Suicide” (try to find an ad for that google!) from scott at http://scott.j38.net/. It is a great little app that does one thing: it kills after effects! AE has a pretty good crash control system built in so that if it crashes, then it generally will save a version of your project file to you current directory. The only problem is that AE also loves to hang. It will get stuck for hours if not indefinitely. What this app does is it gives AE the little nudge off of the cliff that it needs for it’s self-preservation to kick in and save out a file. The author does have a disclaimer saying that it doesn’t always work, but then again if it ever works it is better than the alternative.

You can download AE Suicide here

If you have any other useful workflow scripts I would love to hear about them! Hit me up on the “Contact me!” box to the right, or leave them in the comments!

In Compressor search for mpeg and right click on the mpeg-1 preset. Select duplicate. Now quit compressor and browse to home>library>application support>compressor> and you will find your preset.

Open that in your text editor of choice and you will see something like this:

I am sure you can modify whatever you want in there, but this is what I changed to get a larger frame size.

Tweak to your hearts delight. Save it. Restart compressor and you will have your new preset!

________UPDATE!________
Based on Chapper’s comment, I looked into it, and it turns out that this method used to be as easy as described above, but something (possibly a pro app update?) has thrown another wrench into the mix. There are three variables that compressor will choke on and will need to be changed. In the pic below you see them highlighted in red.

You are going to replace the two instances of “-100″ in automatic framesize with “0″ and set the framerate to your desired framerate. Now save, restart and you should be good to go!

Do you use any ingest management software? (such as fcp loader or flow by gridiron)
Network setup (do you edit off of a san / internal drives / external drives)
backup plan for old jobs?
do you have any network rendering set up? for what apps?
what do you use as your go-to codec?
do you have any must-have hardware?
how frequently do you version your project files?
(how) do you name your assets?
how do you arrange your folder structures?
Do you have a preferred bin structure in final cut?

Also, what are the worst parts of your current setup? Is there anything that you would like to implement but can’t?

Feel free to post in the comments, email me at r at this domain, or use the comment form in the sidebar. I can’t wait to hear what you have to say!

Well, Apple didn’t fix that. Thankfully the smartest man alive recently told me how to ease the pain by creating a shortcut for the unshortcut-able “Bring All to Front” in the compressor menu.

It turns out you can bind keyboard shortcuts to any menu items in in apple’s Keyboard system preference panel! Go to the apple>system prefs>keyboard and then click on the keyboard shortcuts tab.

Click on the plus sign under the main window. From the Application pulldown select Compressor. Now type the menu name in the Menu Title box EXACTLY AS IT IS SPELLED AND CAPITALIZED. Finally select a keyboard shortcut. I used command b. Hit add and then go to compressor and test.

This isn’t a ‘fix’ per se, but it is much easier than pulling down that menu item. This method can be used in any app that doesn’t have keyboard remapping like final cut does, so I’m sure there are plenty of great uses for it!

I would like to do a mpeg streamclip comparison, because I have heard some grumblings about how good / efficient fcp is in comparison. Even if it needs some work done, it is a big step in the right direction!

So word to the wise: something is up with streamclip’s implementation of the animation codec. Use compressor, or a different codec.

apps
perian – codecs for tons of odd formats all wrapped up into one package.
mpeg streamclip – great for batch encoding to prores, deinterlacing, or a lot of other useful procedures.
vlc – an alternate to quicktime when you find yourself dealing with a tricky file. VLC also correctly reads in pixel size more frequently than quicktime does.

helpers – not full apps, but still useful
compressor presets / droplets.
some applescripts like these
magic bullet looks

etc – not necessary, but will save you some googling
bookmarks to resources
after effects expressions

Oh yeah, one other thing. I don’t actually put this on a usb drive. I wash/lose/forget them far too frequently to keep one in my pocket. I put all of this up on my dropbox (free!) in a folder so I can access it anywhere the internet is.

UPDATE – 03.03.2010
Apps from Alex, linkified for your viewing pleasure

- BigTime (if the client has a pre FCP7 version)
- Flip4Mac (watching WMV files)
- Handbrake / MacTheRipper (for DVD ripping)
- Jes Deinterlacer
- NameMangler (for mass renaming – such a time-saver)
- VisualHub (for speedy conversions and DVD burning) seems to be discontinued.
- Senuti (Useful for ripping songs quickly off of my ipod)

Setup:
To set up a secure video podcast you need 3 main things: video compressed to the correct format, an xml file coded correctly, and a webserver with a restricted folder.

Video Setup:

The video setup is pretty simple. Use one of the presets in compressor. You can find them under Apple>Apple Devices. If you are going to be using iPhones or iPods choose one of the two sizes available. If they will be previewing it in iTunes, then feel free to use the apple tv preset. If your footage is not the correct aspect ratio, then choose the appropriate selection in the geometry tab so it comes out letterboxed or pillarboxed.
Two options for the compression are to add timecode or file naming. Those are both in the filters tab, and are titled ‘timecode generator’ and ‘text overlay’ respectively. These could be worth their weight in gold seeing as you don’t need to import the footage into fcp in order to add timecode.



XML File
The xml file can be thought of as a bookmark for the podcast. It has some simple info in it about the nature of your podcast, when it was last updated, and where to find the files. Copy the sample xml file from apple, change out all of the dummy info for your real info and save to a text file with the extension .xml at the end. The example file has several entries and multiple itunes tags. Your first xml may only have one entry, and it doesn’t technically need the itunes tags. This file will need to be placed somewhere on your website that is web accessible and not password protected. If you really end up getting into this there are apps that handle the creation of podcast xml files. If you enjoy hand coding; be my guest!

Server Setup
Your server has to have both of the previous files on it. Ideally the video file will be in a directory that is password protected, and the xml file will be publicly accessible. In order to password protect a folder you can either go through your webserver’s internal control panels, or you can use .htaccess files. Here is a link on how to set up an .htaccess file. It is just a text file that you upload to your webserver that tells the server how to protect certain files and folders. The way to check it is to put the link for your movie file into a web browser. If a dialog box asking for a login and password comes up: (and it works when you type in the info) you’ve got it right!
To reiterate: the movie files go in the password protected folder and the xml file goes outside of that folder, somewhere still accessible on the web.

Configuring your clients
In itunes go to Advanced > Subscribe to podcast. Type in the address of your xml file and hit return. It should ask you for the login and password. Once you put that in you are finished! You can change the permissions to check for updates more or less frequently, and you could set up some ipods so that they are subscribed and sync the video when they are plugged in.

This could become a bear if it is left unmanaged, but it could also take a lot of work off of your plate, by allowing iPods and iPhones to auto sync the dailies. This could help to close the feedback loop, and end up with everyone feeling more in touch.

Let me know if you have any trouble setting this up. I’d love to hear how it fits into your workflow!

This script is from macworld, (osx only) but the way they posted is not only horribly un-user-friendly, it also wouldn’t compile without a lot of text massaging. I decided to put it up here to save you the trouble and explain 3 ways it can be used. What it does is to look at a file and see if it is the same size as last time it checked. You can change the interval based on the application, and you can tell it what to do once it has detected the file is “finished”

Here are three (of many) ways it can be used. These are all based on the script below, but they would require you to add code in the section below commented with “–this is where you put your “do when finished” code” The script as it is written will beep 3 times once the file is finished and 5 times if an error occurs. If you end up writing something useful to go with this post it here for others to see!

Firefox download monitor
Set this script to alert you when a big download finishes. A small interval ought to work out provided your connection doesn’t timeout.

Compressor secondary action
If for some reason you don’t want to run an applescript through the default compressor interface you can do it through here. This could be because you are watching it from another computer on the network, or maybe you have other specific needs. This will also allow you to open the exported file directly with an application, which compressor doesn’t let you do.

Export from fcp / after effects secondary action / alert
I guess AE dings when an export is done, but FCP doesn’t do a damn thing. If you run this on your export then it will do your bidding once the exported file is finished.

Here is the code!

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
-- this is the standard intro for a folder action
try
repeat with f in theItems
-- wait for the item to be all there
set Was to 0
set isNow to 1
repeat while isNow ≠ Was
-- the basic idea is that the script loops until the file size is the same for more than 30 seconds. That means the file has finished copying.
set Was to size of (info for f)
-- this section is getting the file size of the video
delay 30 -- modify this for delay time
set isNow to size of (info for f)
-- this section is sampling the file size 30 seconds later
end repeat
--this is where you put your "do when finished" code
tell application "Finder"
beep 3
end tell
end repeat -- get next item f in thisFolder
on error error_message number error_number
if the error_number is not -128 then
tell application "Finder"
beep 5 --if the script errors out, beep 5x
end tell
end if
end try
end adding folder items to

Copy the code and paste it into Script Editor. Then you can save it, apply it to a folder as a folder action and you are on your way!

PS> as a side note, isn’t it weird that userfriendly doesn’t have a good antonym? anti-user? Userunfriendly?