The cool thing about Motion files is that the project format is a well formed XML file that Quicktime understands how to render. That’s how you get cool products like Digital Heaven’s Automotion. If you’ve got more of a DIY bent, that also opens up a lot of possibilities for creating cool projects via XML transforms and scripting. More to come as I explore some of the possibilities.

Update 03.08.2007

While I was researching, it looks likes the folks at motionsmarts have already been hard at work with cool scripts for Motion. After Effects Position to Motion Position script looks particularly useful for the kind of stuff I do.

/usr/bin/mdimport -d2 /path/to/pdf/file.pdf >& pdf.txt

It’s the raw text that Spotlight is using to index the file, so you’ll need to do some clean up, but your mouse hand will thank you.

(via Borkware Quickies)

timecodereader is a command-line utility that takes a path from After Effects via system.callSystem() and returns either the embedded timecode or the string . Right now the included .JSX script just writes that information to the console, but there are a lot of cool uses for Quicktime timecode in productivity scripts.

How to Use timecodereader

Download the zip archive, and either compile a new binary from the included XCode project or move the already compiled binary from build/release to a local binary directory. Since this is a command line tool you will want to move it to a location in your Path statement so you can use system.callSystem(“timecodereader ” + String(thisItem.mainSource.file))” instead of system.callSystem(“/path/to/timecodereader ” + String(thisItem.mainSource.file)) .

Update 09-09-2006: Lloyd Alvarez points out at aenhancers that AE preferers ~/bin/timecodereader when we set up as below. I’ve adjusted the enclosed script.

In the default Bash shell

export PATH="$PATH:~/bin"
echo 'PATH="$PATH:~/bin"' >> .profile

will setup a path to bin in your User directory. Move the enclosed script to your Scripts folder, select a Quicktime file in the Project window and we’re done.

When I run the script, I get these results (The 1:00:00:00 timecode is due to the fact that I’m using writeln to write to the console so the previous lines scroll up until they are out of view).

I’ve tried timecodereader with quite a few Quicktime’s but obviously there might be a few that aren’t handled well, so consider this a beta release. The compiled binary is a universal binary so it should work on both PowerPC and Intel platforms. One gotcha, is that if you have a codec that is not compiled for the supported platform you might get a dyld returns 2 log message that might futz with your script. You can either work around it via string handling or remove the codec since it won’t work anyway. You’ll need to turn on Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network and turn off Enable JavaSript Debugger so we can eat the errors.

timecodereader requires After Effects 7, and OS X 10.4+

Updated file: 09.09.2006

Fixed a problem with external Hard Drives and Mounted Volumes. After Effects does not add /Volumes/ to drive paths like OS X, so /Volumes/MyHardDriveName is reported as /MyHardDriveNameI’m basically checking all mount points and adding /Volumes when appropriate, unfortunately the response is a bit slower if you have disk images or a lot of volumes mounted. If anybody knows anything faster send it my way.

Also. I’m using metadata checks for com.apple.quicktime-movie to check whether the file is a quicktime file. This only works on volumes that are indexed, so it might not work on mounted server volumes. I can add alternative QT detection if anybody finds it useful or necessary.

Zip Archive of Binary, Script and XCode Project

Update 8/19/2006 2:50PM OK. It appears that downgrading the codec to version 1.2 fixes the issue. Run the uninstaller, and grab the 1.2 codecs at Aja’s site. I’m going to leave this up for any future Google searches and I’ll update it when there is an upgraded codec. Thanks to Evan on this one.

I’m running into a problem with Kona 10bit RGB output with trillions+ that I’m hoping somebody might be able to help with since I’m on a really tight deadline. I’ve been happily producing 10 bit RGB quicktimes with trillions + option for weeks now. I bought several new machines that have introduced a new endian option in the compressor options like so…

This is what all of our older machines with the same version of OSX, Quicktime and Kona drivers look like…

All of the Quicktimes we produce from the computers with the endian option produce black frames no matter what combination we use when trillions+ is selected. I’m aware of endian issues with the new Intel Macs vs G5 Macs, but I can’t seem to produce a working combination and like I said all software is up to date on all machines. I’m guessing a firmware issue or something. I’m hoping somebody has a working workaround and can send a comment or email to dale(at)creative-workflow-hacks(dot)com. Normally, I’d just go through tech support options, but my deadline is pressing. Thanks folks.

A dirty document in OS X is a document with unsaved changes. There is a clear way to indicate this. Here are a few examples in some Adobe apps.

In Photoshop, a document before making a change

In Photoshop, after making a change

In Illustrator, a document before making a change

In Illustrator, after making a change

Notice the filled in bubble on the left? Now let’s do the same thing in After Effects.

In After Effects, a document before making a change

In After Effects, after, umm, making a change

In After Effects we lose an OS X interface cue. My guess, is this is an oversight from creating the interface with non-standard GUI widgets and that’ll get fixed in a later verson. But it is a great example of what happens when you try to go it alone in interface land, especially with Mac users who are a notoriously finicky lot. So, when I talk to Adobe developers, I’ll be sure to put in my voice for letting each platform retain its own individual personality.

btw…I am aware of the asterisk next to the file name cue, but this isn’t an either/or situation, so many interface cues are practically subliminal, and if a quick glance to the left corner doesn’t give me what I’m looking for, I’ll just think that it isn’t Mac like without really knowing why.

What I’ve done is written a small Cocoa foundation tool that works on the command line to move between the formats of interest. The tool takes the following switches.

pathconvert -u pathurl

Takes a pathurl of the form file://localhost/Volumes/Storage/Users/Dale/test used by Final Cut XML and converts it to an AbsoluteURI that After Effects will be happy with, including using stringByAbbreviatingWithTildeInPath to resolve directories in the User Home folder, such that the pathurl above becomes ~/test.

pathconvert -f fullpath

Takes a fullpath of the form /Volumes/MyHD/Users/Dale/Test and returns a short cut tilde path when appropriate. The string above would become ~/Test.

pathconvert -t abbreviatedPath

Takes a short cut path of the form ~/Test and returns a full path when appropriate. The string above would become /Volumes/MyHD/Users/Dale/Test.

This utility, combined with system.callSystem() in After Effects 7 will make our work with Final Cut Pro XML a lot more friendly in a scripting environment. Next up is an updated tutorial on working with Final Cut XML and After Effects scripting and more detailed instructions on how to install and use this utility. I wanted to post this now to get feedback from power users and developers on potential problems and gotchas. I’m not much of a c hacker, so I’m enclosing both the XCode project files and a compiled binary. Please send any improvements or ideas to me and I’ll share them here. As always, feedback and improvements to dale(at)creative-workflow-hacks(dot)com.

Compiled Binary and XCode Project files available here

mdfind 'kMDItemKind == "QuickTime Movie"'

mdfind is the command line version of Apple’s spotlight technology. Combined with the new Quicktime metadata API and system.callSystem() there’s a lot for a hungry developer to chew on.

The script, osX 10.4(Tiger) and After Effects 7 only (I know, I know)

var myProject = app.project;

var osString = "mdfind 'kMDItemKind == \"QuickTime Movie\"' | wc -l" ;
var numberOfQTs = system.callSystem(osString);
//After Effects seems to choke when I feed it more than 41 items at a time, so let's use sed to give it 40 to chew on at a time
for(x=1; x < numberOfQTs; x = x + 40){
	var osString = "mdfind 'kMDItemKind == \"QuickTime Movie\"' | sed -n '" + x + ", " + ( x + 40) + "p'";
	//alert(osString);
	var systemCall = system.callSystem(osString);

	var movArray= systemCall.split("\\n");

	for(y=0; y < movArray.length; y++){
			try{
				var my_io = new ImportOptions(new File( movArray[y]));
				var myItem = myProject.importFile(my_io);
			}catch(e){
				//eat errors
			}
	}
}

And the downloadable version

importEveryQuicktime.jsx.zip

followup 5/4/2006 2:30P EST:

So, most folks working in motion graphics have a lot of quicktimes on their system and don't necessarily want to take a long time to import all of them into an After Effects project as a proof of concept ( I told you this was a Stupid Scripting Trick). Therefore, here's a version that imports the first 20 of them with head -n 20 to act as a proof of concept for you busy people .

Here ya go:

import20Quicktimes.jsx.zip

You'll need to turn on Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network and turn off Enable JavaSript Debugger so we can eat the errors. As in anything that allows write access to your file system, be careful in experimenting with this script.

If I call

var systemCall = system.callSystem('ls');
alert(systemCall);

I get a nice alert box with my local directory. If I call

var systemCall = system.callSystem('ls -a');
alert(systemCall);

I get a nice alert box including . entries (which is really just to test using the -a command switch to make sure I can send parameters through system.callSystem()). If i call

var systemCall = system.callSystem('ls -la');
alert(systemCall);

I lock up AE7. I’m guessing it doesn’t like the multi-column output? Because if I pipe the ls -la to awk like so

var systemCall = system.callSystem('ls -la | awk '{print $1}');
alert(systemCall);

I get a nice listing of my directory permissions which is the first column of the ls -la standard output.

So, it looks like the workaround if you freeze After Effects 7 with a system.callSystem() command that ouputs multi column output is to grab each column of interest with something like awk’{print $1}’ where $1 etc. is the column to grab. Not sure if this is a bug or a limitation of the standard output to After Effects. Would love some feedback from anybody that knows for sure.

THE SCENARIO

My boss approached me about a weird slowdown he was having where his machine was slowing to a crawl. Trying to move the cursor was taking a lifetime to move a couple of inches. There wasn’t a beachball cursor indicating an application was sucking up resources and I was able to launch programs, just very S L O W L Y.

So, what did we do?

I’ve done this stuff for a while and you start to get a sense of what seems like the usual suspects when you’re debugging an OSX problem. I’m going to run through the process I use and tell you about what we found out.

THE PROCESS

Step One.

We back up a lot of data at Primal Screen. We do both SD and HD video and have about 10 Terabytes of online storage and 5 Terabytes for near-line archive storage, combine that with individual client machine backups, and we, unfortunately, end up backing up during business hours. So when I hear about a mid-day slowdown, the first thing my “spidey-sense” goes off about is back-up. We use Retrospect from a central server so I did a quick check to see if it was running the client backup on Doug’s machine. Nope.

On to step two.

I also knew that Doug had recently installed Tiger(OSX 10.4) on his laptop. We are relatively late adopters on software for production machines and we’ve had enough problems with Tiger that it still isn’t universally adopted. One of the “features” we struggle with is Spotlight. Spotlight is a great idea. It indexes your data and allows for quick context sensitive searches, but it’s definitely a version 1.0 technology. The interface is a bit wonky and you can sometimes run into the next problem I suspected, Spotlight indexing. Spotlight needs to “index” your computer to gather all of the information that it uses. Indexing means that spotlight goes through the folders on drives that are searched by Spotlight and gathers the metadata from your files so that you can search it. While this is happening your machine can slow down and become unresponsive. So that’s the next place we look.

If you open Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor (or for the geeky who like the command line, via Applications/Utilities/terminal top -o cpu), the process mds is active when Spotlight is either indexing or searching. The mdimport process is also active during indexing. If we were having Spotlight problems, those processes would be active and using excess CPU cycles. Nope, in this case.

If this turns out to be your problem, a great resource is available at thexlab.com on various ways of stopping and altering Spotlight indexing.

This is also the step where we would look for other programs taking too many CPU cycles. Sometimes you’ll have a spinning beachball cursor and not be sure of the source. Here’s where you’d check that.

On to step three.

THE SOLUTION

We now take a stop at Applications/Utilities/Console. The console is where applications send data about their current state. You’ll find errors, status and crash information here. The GUI hides a lot of interesting information from you. Some of it is a bit geeky and extraneous but you can pick up a lot of info and understanding about your computer by checking out the console.

So, we open it and I notice these entries….

SoundGrinderCMPlugInFactory-I-Debug
AllocCMPlugInType-I-Debug
SoundGrinderCMPlugInQueryInterface-I-Debug
SoundGrinderCMPlugInAddRef-I-Debug
SoundGrinderCMPlugInRelease-I-Debug
SoundGrinderCMPlugInExamineContext-I-Debug
SoundGrinderCMPlugInPostMenuCleanup-I-Debug

This looks promising…

hmmm, a CMPlugin is throwing debug info. A CM Plugin is a Contextual Menu plugin. Contextual Menus appear when you Control-click or Right-click (yeah, even macs work with two button mice these days) in a “context” that allows their use. Ok, but what is Sound Grinder?

Ahh, yes. Sound Grinder is an audio conversion utility we were checking out to convert some audio clips. Doug had removed the program when he decided to use a different app. But why was I still getting debug info? Sure enough, in /Library/Contextual Menu Items/ a SoundGrinderCMPlugIn.plugin file.

So, we’re definitely suspicious of this file. Let’s remove it. Another quick search for “uninstalling Sound Grinder” revealed:

To uninstall Sound Grinder you can simply drag the Sound Grinder folder to
the trash, and trash the plugin located at: /Library/Contextual Menu Items/SoundGrinderCMPlugIn.plugin. If you
wish to delete the preferences, look in the preference folder for a file
called "com.monkeytools.soundgrinder.plist", and drag to the trash.

We removed the plugin and that cleared up the problem. BTW, Sound Grinder seems like a very nice program and I’m not sure exactly why I was having the slowdown problems that we found related to the CMPlugin, although it probably didn’t help that we had yanked most of the rest of the program from the expected location.

I do think a nice universal OSX uninstall utility for programs that install things outside of the application bundle would be a good thing. I’ve got bits and pieces of no longer used detritus all over the place.

REFERENCE

So, in this case we caught our problem in the triage stage. Sometimes, you don’t find your problem here though. Where to next? I’ve had great success with Jaguar, Panther and Tiger Cache Cleaner from Northern Softworks. It runs a bunch of standard maintenance and utility scripts that tend to ferret out corrupt caches and permissions problems. For disk problems, I recommend DiskWarrior and avoid Norton (mainly for it’s insistence in leaving bits and pieces of itself everywhere, go figure). I’ve also been greatly assisted by John Gruber and his Daring Fireball site. His rundown of the Software Update process is a great piece of info and his font cache problem exposé is at least vaguely the inspiration for this post.

Hope you’ve find this helpful, and here’s hoping your avoiding these gotcha problems in your workflow.