FCP4: CHV Text-Collection plugin update available
 

For those of you who have the CHV Text-Collection plugin to generate subtitles and end credits but have been unable to use it since you upgraded your FCP to version 4.0, a free update is now available.

Go to the CHV site and follow the instructions in the "News" box.

A Follow-Up Note
 

The CHV Text Collection filters are still not compatible with FCP 4. They consistently crash the application.

Too bad, because it's actually a good set of text handling tools, particularly for handling rolling credits. Hopefully the developer will eventually get this product back on its feet.

What's better about the CHV plugin vs the way that FCP regularly handles scrolling credits? I've never heard of CHV and am suddenly a bit interested (if they fix whatever their problem is).

Ted,

The CHV plugin allows individual formatting of words including color, size, font, placement on the screen, etc. You also have control over gutter sizes, kerning, scrolling direction (or no scrolling), and you can add photos and graphics to the end credits as well (perhaps clips, I haven't checked on that yet).

Until this incompatibility issue sprang up with FCP4, I loved using it. The only downside was that the render times were long. This new version, once it's made FCP4 compliant, is supposed to have faster rendering times.

Does their Morph pluggin work in FCP 4?

I've no idea. But I would be suspicious of any of their plug-ins FCP4 compatibility. The developer's remarks suggest that he doesn't really know what's wrong with the text plug-ins and he implicates FCP4 for his troubles. Bad sign.

Check out the forum on the CHV site for info related to specific plug-ins, Andrew. Earlier today I sent a message to Christoph asking him to join in the discussion here. Hopefully, he'll chime in.

As a FCP plugin developer, I've not found any plugins that I've written, so far, that work differently on FCP 4 v FCP 3, but I must admit, I've done no plugins that deal with text yet.

I develop on 3, test in 3, compile in 3, test in 4, usually with both versions of FCP open at once, to make sure that plugins work on both.

The only big issue in 4, I think is that alpha blending & YUV is handled differently - or perhaps it's just more sensitive to being done right.

The major problem for any FXscript user, is that the development environment is poor, with little or no diagnostic tools to help, and the test viewer is RGB only, which makes for testing with YUV a slow process, as FCP must be restarted each time to load the newly compiled plugin in.

Thanks guys,

I'll do a bit more research before buying the "Morph"

cheers!

Hello,

Thanks to SursumFilms I have found this thread. :-)


To your problem: I know about the crash-problem of FX-Script-plugins (which are mine). The "FCP4 has unexpectedly quit" problem is a problem of Final Cut Pro 4 (4.0 - 4.0.2).

Actually it is not possible to create a crash of Final Cut Pro with FX-Script plugins. Trust me... I have tried it and I dont have any chance to create a crash. :-)

You have to see it this way: All FX-Script plugins only "use" the internal functions of Final Cut Pro. Even if you try to devide by zero or if you try to create a way too big image-buffer or something else, Final Cut Pro does not crash. It simply tells me the error on a red screen with a "FX-Script error" message.

I have also seen that these crashes occur more often, the bigger the plugins are. Well..... My plugins are the biggest FX-Script-plugins with the most functions you can get on the market. Plugins like you see in the Text-collection are very complicated and they have to calculate quite a lot of things. This is why these plugins are so big (take a look at the size....).

We already know crashes like these with the current version of FCP4 (4.0.2). Last year before FCP3 went to the last updated version 3.0.4, FCP3 also was buggy and crashed when you have used big plugins. After Apple released the 3.0.4 update all of the problems were gone and FCP3 did not crash anymore. I (and all te others) am/are waiting for such an update of FCP4 impatiently. I hope we will see such an update soon.

Take a look into your user-folder. There you will find the file:

Library / Logs / CrashReporter / Final Cut Pro.crash.log

Open this file in a text-editor and take a look at the "Exception:" and "Codes:" lines. There you will find lots of errors like:

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x12796000

These are errors I cant possibly create with FX-Script.....

I hope Apple will solve this problem soon like they did last year with the last update of FCP3.

Hello Christoph,
Welcome and thanks very much for stopping by and offering your comments.

As you know, we've standardized on your credit generator plug-in for the entire Lady X Films series. John Locke (in Tokyo) has had to freeze on FCP 3 and I have had to maintain a second system running FCP 3 just to accommodate your text collection plug-in. It's been worth the discomfort as the plug-in creates the best credit roll available. But we certainly look to the FCP4 compatibility problem being resolved one way or the other.

Best regards and thank you for your hard work.

Hello Ken,

I understand what you mean. Do you have FCP3 on a separate Mac or do you have it on the same machine as FCP4 ? There is no problem in having both versions run on the same machine. I also have Final Cut Express installed on the same Mac.

The crash-problem of FCP4 is also a big problem for me. I receive a lot of emails asking me why this happens, what we can do about it and the only thing what I can say is, that this is a problem of FCP4 itself. If it would be some kind of a software error on my side, the problem would always happen always at the same same frame. But it does not... Sometimes you render without a problem, sometimes you have to start it 3 times.

I hope FCP4.0.3 will solve this problem, as we have seen it last year with FCP3.0.4.

A separate Mac. Only one Mac per version. <g>

<<<-- Originally posted by Andrew Hogan : Thanks guys,

I'll do a bit more research before buying the "Morph"

cheers! -->>>

I have recently purchased this and slowly started playing around with it. As of yet, I have not had any problems with this plugin in FCP 4

Some good news:

After the last update (last week) of the "render-plugin" from Apple FCP4 didnt crash anymore. I seems that this problem has been solved.

Thanks Apple!


How about you, Ken ?

I don't know of any update. I'm running 4.02 but have not received any Software Update notice. Nor do I see such an update listed on the FCP support page.

The update is listed in my logfile like this:


Saturday, October 25, 2003 21:59:03 Europe/Berlin: Installed "FCP QT Render Plug-in" (4.0.2)


Have you updated to Quicktime 6.4 ? I dont know exactly if the "Render Plug-In" is only available if you run QT6.4....

No, I've not yet installed QT 6.4 since it has not been certified for FCP and, in fact, causes some breakage. So that's probably the missing link here.

Addendum
I found the article and the download on the render plug-in update here.

Still bugs in 4
 

Glad to hear Christophs' plugins are working again, but there are still plenty of significant bugs in FCP4's FXScript implementation which are a pain to isolate and workaround. Just off the top of my head:

* DrawStringPlain placement, alignment and aspect ratio adjustments
* RTExreme freaking out on frame sizes
* GetTimeCode is completely broken.

The text engine in 4 is new. This is especially evident when comparing things like tracking and letterform drawing. It's better overall, but still needs some kinks worked out.

I was running 3 and 4 side by side as well, but can't since upgrading to 10.3. It's a bummer, but everything else in Panther is worth the inconvenience.

Joe Maller
www.joesfilters.com
Joe's Filters for Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express

Hi Joe,

Good to have you chime in. So have any of your filters been affected by FCP4?

Hello Joe,

plenty of bugs ? :-))) Sounds like english understatement. I dont want to start a list here... this message would become one of the biggest ones ever written in this forum.

As long as I know how to work-around those bugs, I can make my plugins better than anybody should expect, who took a few steps in FX-Script.

I have also ordered Panther and it should arrive within the next couple of days (Apple store tells me that they already have delivered it). Why cant you run 3 and 4 side by side ? Will FCP 3 be "deactivated" after the upgrade to 10.3 ?

best regards
Christoph Vonrhein
www.chv-plugins.com

You can't run the same named app at the same time as another same named app. It's some sort of checking that's going on in the "fast user switching" code that trys to stop two users running the same app.

OS X 10.3 gets confused and thinks FCP3 is the same app instance as FCP4, and hence it brings up the dialogue that Joe mentioned. It's painful as I'm used to having both 3 & 4 open to help develop the fxscripts to be compatible in both.

Graeme

Hi Graeme,

ok... thats not as bad as I thought for one second.

It looks like that this thread now becomes a developer-forum. :-))

I use FCP 3.0.4 for the development (most stable FCP ever) and two additional Macs for testing purposes. I have never ran 3 and 4 at the same time, so it doesnt matter.


Btw: Am I right that you dont have a Dual-processor Mac ?


best regards
Christoph Vonrhein
http://www.chv-plugins.com

:-) Developer forum! That might be fun, but given the small numbr of people involved I'd guess dropping an email would suffice.

I don't have a dual processor mac at home, but I have a few at work that I use for testing.

Well, I bought the CHV Morph Collection plugin yesterday and did some experimenting for an hour or two, no problems or crashes. Running latest FCP 4 etc G4 DP800

:o)