WebProNews

Tag: AVID

  • Google Chrome Revealed As Cause of Mass Mac Pro Failure

    Google Chrome Revealed As Cause of Mass Mac Pro Failure

    Earlier this week, studios and video shops in Hollywood and around the country went into collective panic mode when their Mac Pro workstations refused to reboot.

    News started hitting Twitter September 24 as Mac Pros started slowly crashing and refusing to boot up again. Almost immediately, keen-eyed users started noticing that affected systems were running older versions of macOS, as well as Avid’s Media Composer. In addition to a statement by the company, Avid’s CEO Jeff Rosica and its CTO Tim Claman released a video promising their engineers were working “around the clock” to address the problem.

    Despite fears the issues might be caused by a virus, by Wednesday, September 25 Google Chrome had been identified as the culprit. On Google’s Chrome Help site, a support manager made the statement:

    “We recently discovered that a Chrome update may have shipped with a bug that damages the file system on macOS machines with System Integrity Protection (SIP) disabled, including machines that do not support SIP. We’ve paused the release while we finalize a new update that addresses the problem.”

    This comes on the heels of a recent, high-profile article in the Washington Post labeling Chrome as spyware and encouraging individuals to switch to Firefox. Meanwhile, both Firefox and Apple have increased their privacy efforts in a clear shot across Google’s bow.

    While users may be willing to trade privacy for convenience, Google may have a harder time getting people to stay with Chrome if it gets a reputation for corrupting expensive workstations.

  • Professional Production Moves Away From Apple

    For years Apple has been the standard in professional video editing. Many of the practices and procedures developed in the industry were molded around the features engineered into Apple’s software. Six months after Apple’s newest editing software, Final Curt Pro X, was released, there has been a considerable amount of backlash and ship-jumping.

    According to many in the industry, Apple seems to have shifted its focus from the professional to the amature market. Of particular contempt for many, is the removal of the “Edit Decision List (EDL)”. This feature has become a staple of the industry where it is common practice to hold footage for post production. The list held information about what to keep and what to cut.

    Another set-back for Apple was the decision to remove the digital to tape feature on their software. By not allowing editors to output their finished work to tape, they cut-off a huge segment of the market that still needs this capability.

    To make the software even less attractive, users who have owned earlier versions of the software will find they are not able to import that work to Final Cut Pro X. They are not compatible with one another. What was Apple thinking?

    So what is the industries response to these changes? It has forced many to pursue other professional production solutions, like Avid. With any market, If the products aren’t offering the features consumers demand, no matter how innovative they are, they will fall out of favor. Their is always someone on the heels of the winner looking to be the next big thing, the new standard.

    [Source: ars technica.com]