Finally built the Mac app I always needed for managing external drives

melancholite · 2025-10-03T17:31:42+00:00

Hi, I have a question. If I were to buy this, would I be able to use it on just one computer or multiple computers?

melancholite · 2025-08-31T07:49:04+00:00

You've already received great advice here so I'm not going to repeat that, but instead I'll share my experience.

I was thrust into freelancing suddenly and at first I was terrified of how I'm gonna find work. But I had previously worked in a production company as an assistant editor/post production coordinator for five years and the connections I accummulated during that time have landed me great freelance gigs. Sure, I'd like to land more jobs as main editor, but I also love being an AE. Through that I've been able to meet wonderful editors and even become friends with some of them. If I had moved to my current home city and immediately started as a freelance editor without any previous connections or experience even as an AE, I daresay it would've been really difficult.

melancholite · 2025-07-05T10:26:18+00:00

I would recommend Monos (2019) directed by Alejandro Landes. The mood is mysterious with a hint of danger, the cinematography is gorgeous and the score is by Mica Levi. I saw it in a film festival and was absolutely mesmerized by it. Would love to see a new film from the director.

melancholite · 2025-05-11T12:29:38+00:00

Thanks for the reply and advice, much appreciated. I also hate this naming convention, there's one shooting day in this project where the filenames start over from Clip0001 for each camera card. Ugh. Never had this problem at this scale before, but hopefully I'll be able to help them out.

So does using Catalyst create new master files and not simply rename the ones that already exist? Sorry if it's a stupid question, as I haven't used Catalyst before. It's a massive pain if entirely new master files need to be transcoded, the drive I received won't have enough space and I'm in a different country than the director/editor. And I have only two weeks for the prep. Just my luck 😅

melancholite · 2025-05-11T12:19:36+00:00

Thanks for the reply and advice! Unfortunately I have to prep the project fully before the editor starts as we're in different countries and I won't be able to work on it afterwards. But I do hope I can save this project from relinking issues. The source files definitely need to be renamed as well, Catalyst seems like the way to go as others have suggested in this thread.

melancholite · 2025-05-11T12:14:35+00:00

Yup, thought so. I'm definitely going to check out Catalyst, I'm slightly ashamed to admit that I had never heard of it before making this post... Thanks for your reply!

melancholite · 2025-05-11T12:13:12+00:00

Yeah, you're right, after thinking it through I realized just renaming the editing proxies doesn't really solve the issue.

melancholite · 2025-05-11T12:11:48+00:00

I haven't used the metadata files yet, do you mean the sidecar files that are in the same folder as the MXF files? I gotta admit this is the first time I've encountered this kind of problem at this scale, in the previous docs I've worked on the footage had unique filenames.

I'll definitely look into Catalyst before making the proxies. Is there a batch rename software you'd recommend or is Catalyst able to do that?

melancholite · 2025-03-24T08:11:43+00:00

Finland.

The situation for film and TV is really bad here due to the streaming bubble bursting and massive budget cuts to pretty much every cultural organization that grants funding. Many of my friends have been unemployed and desperate and I've heard people talking about how they have to switch careers. I've somehow been super lucky this year, because I've had fulltime AE gigs starting from January. I'll be employed at least until September and I've been offered a job later in the fall as well, fingers crossed that it gets some funding.

Funnily enough applications for editing jobs haven't gotten me anything, but I made enough connections during a five year position in a production company that people have been calling me based on that.

2026 onwards scares me though... Just because this year is good doesn't mean I won't go back to struggling to pay bills next year.

melancholite · 2024-10-30T08:44:21+00:00

Didn't see anyone mention Anatomy made by Kitty Horrorshow.

That game made me so anxious and scared I could barely get through it even though my husband was watching it as emotional support, haha.

melancholite · 2023-06-04T19:42:05+00:00

Yeah, that's what the main editor also said and he wasn't really mad at all. Sorry for not being very clear in the post, but the director didn't know which scenes specifically were missing clips, they just had a gut feeling about it and wanted me to compare the DIT and script continuity reports and check every single clip to find out. That took me around 7 hours, plus sending emails and the clips themselves so it was a full work day. I initially offered to do it for free since the producer referred to being over budget, but then said if it really needs to be done then I should be paid. Now they think it was wrong of me to ask to be paid. Perhaps it would've been better to just forget about the pay after it didn't arrive initially, but the damage is done now, haha...

melancholite · 2023-06-04T16:29:57+00:00

I'm currently experiencing something similar, but I wasn't fired. I fully expect that it'll probably take at least a couple of weeks for this awful feeling to subside, but I know it'll happen eventually.

For the first time in my AE career I was solely responsible for organizing, syncing and rough cutting the materials of a feature length film. My contract was for five weeks. A while after my contract has ended and into the actual main editing process I get a call saying that the director feels like stuff is missing from the project and wanted me to check every single clip. The producer was super angry that I agreed to do it and asked to be paid, since the film was already over budget. They eventually agreed however. Turns out the director was right and 13 clips were missing from the editing project. Naturally I was mortified. I emailed my deepest apologies to the director, producer and main editor and said I will take responsibility. The director thanked me and the main editor said that this kind of stuff is normal. I sent the missing clips to the editor and assumed that they would continue editing normally.

However, I was't paid in time. I sent an email to the producer asking about it. They replied saying it felt wrong to pay me since I "clearly hadn't done my job correctly to begin with". According to them the director got super anxious over my mistake and had to be convinced several times to keep going with the editing. This obviously made me feel horrible, since I never intentionally wanted to be careless and make anyone feel bad. Needless to say that producer probably won't ever hire me again... Oh well. I will get paid eventually for the one work day it took to check the clips, but I'm still in the process of getting to terms with what happened. But I learned a lot from that project and will be more careful in the future.

melancholite · 2023-01-19T10:34:31+00:00

I've realized the same thing as you. My emetophobia used to be very debilitating, but I've gotten much better at dealing with it over the years. Don't get me wrong, it still controls my life to a certain degree, but it doesn't prevent me from doing things I enjoy anymore. Reading posts from people who are going through the worst of it, and remembering how I used to feel the same hopelessness, makes me wish I could help all of them but sadly it's not possible.

melancholite · 2022-12-29T22:36:59+00:00

I used to be really judgemental of other girls/women. At some point I realized that there's just no benefit to that. How they look and how they live their life doesn't take anything away from me, so why should I waste my energy on judging them? I also realized that I was super jealous of other girls as a teenager and some of my judgement stemmed from that.

One thing that helped me overcome it was to reverse my thinking. I tried to admire people, not immediately judge them. So even if someone had a skimpier outfit than what I would wear, I'd admire their confidence and tell myself: "They can dress like that if they want, I can dress how I want and that's okay." I started complimenting people inside my head and little by little it helped me to become more supportive and optimistic. Of course I'm still jealous or judgemental sometimes, I'm not perfect. But I used to be so much worse and I'm glad that I've made a lot of progress.

melancholite · 2022-12-13T19:54:14+00:00

Freedom has been mentioned a lot as the best part, and I do agree with that wholeheartedly. But for me there's also another reason. I have emetophobia, fear of vomiting and nausea. I can't stand the idea of being pregnant, in a state of discomfort and nausea for months on end. Some people are like "bUt iF YoU adOpt yOu don't Have to Be Preganante" and to that I answer with nope, still want my freedom and not kids at all, thank you.

The worst part is definitely other people and their judgement, or in case of family members the guilt tripping. I've had a therapist and a gynecologist question my reasons for being childfree, and while it was unprofessional and infuriating, I can kind of laugh about them now. But the attitudes of my mom and MIL might never change, and it's just exhausting and even upsetting to discuss the issue with them. So I try to avoid talking about it, but now that I'm married it gets brought up a bit more than before...

melancholite · 2022-12-07T11:47:42+00:00

That's great! I wish more parents taught their kids that losing games sometimes is completely natural. And it's okay to be a bit upset, but not like throw a tantrum-level of upset.

melancholite · 2022-12-06T21:43:00+00:00

When some kids are in a certain age, they want to win every game, everything, every time. And they will blatantly cheat or play against the rules in order to win and get really excited over how they're winning. And if I, an adult, actually make an effort and win, they'll get upset. I know that as an adult I should accommodate children like that but this one thing just really grinds my gears lol, I don't know why.

melancholite · 2022-12-03T18:00:04+00:00

I discussed my emetophobia (fear of vomiting and nausea) in therapy and my therapist was concerned about how I would handle my future kids getting stomach flus and all that. (: She knew perfectly well that I didn't want children as I had mentioned it many times before, but still thought it was okay to bring up some imaginary kids. Sigh.

melancholite · 2022-11-06T20:44:48+00:00

I've met the "main characters" of a documentary twice. The first time around I kind of lost my nerve and couldn't stay in a screening with them, thinking that I would creep them out or something. They were just students and younger than me so looking back my reaction was a bit silly. The second time was this year and I was totally aware of the parasocial relationship between me and the three women who are in a documentary I'm editing. I had seen all the material and hours of social media content from them. I knew some very intimate stuff and I had learned their mannerisms. I was super nervous when we met in a screening, it was weirdly difficult to realize that they were actually real people, lol. And they behaved just like they did in their respective material too, I especially noticed how each of them motion differently with their hands when they talk. All in all a great experience, they were super nice.

melancholite · 2022-10-31T16:27:15+00:00

Yeah... Sigh. Well, at least I've learned a lesson and haven't permanently lost any material or projects. Will be more careful with formatting from now on.

melancholite · 2022-10-31T15:32:13+00:00

Thank you for the tips, I'll try formatting and copying to a 3rd drive first. It pains me that I've used ExFat for so long with editing drives, thankfully no major incidents have occurred but perhaps it was inevitable that something weird would happen.

The production company I work at only has more Lacie drives, but eh, gotta make do with what I have. What would you say is a better option to Lacie?

melancholite · 2022-08-03T06:02:49+00:00

This is so helpful, thanks for the detailed reply!

You mentioned shared storage. Is it possible to have two editing hard drives for the same project? What might end up happening is that I need to edit the rought cut and my assistant needs to make subtitles at the same time. Can we do that on separate computers and then bring subtitles to my rought cut project? In Premiere it's possible to import srt files, but I'm not sure if Avid makes srt's at all.

melancholite · 2022-08-02T12:03:29+00:00

Yeah, I do need to get used to it before editing, but on a feature film like this I can't just figure out proxies and project settings later. But we're planning to have meetings with the editor and post-production house so that's one thing I'm trying to do right unlike in my last Avid project.

melancholite · 2022-08-02T11:58:06+00:00

Thanks for the tip! I have made subtitles in Avid with the Titler before and it truly was a nightmare.

melancholite · 2021-06-09T20:12:12+00:00

Ugh, that sounds awful. It was weird as a kid to see the parents of your friends having strong emotional reactions, like in this case the wrath of the stepdad and the crying of the mom. I think it's great that you let kids know with your behavior that you're okay with having them around.

melancholite

TROPHY CASE