By Aharon Rabinowitz
Published on Monday, August 8th, 2011
Hey folks – We know you’ve been wondering what’s taking so long to update some of our plug-ins for OS X Lion. We’ve actually been hammering at it, and we wanted to give you an update:
First off, All Trapcode Products work perfectly in OSX Lion. We’ve seen no problems, nor have any users reported problems to us.
Unfortunately, On the Magic Bullet Front (specifically with Looks and Colorista II) we can’t say the same. And we’re as frustrated as you. The short explanation is this: There is a critical bug in Lion that causes Final Cut Pro to ignore custom data – data that is essential for getting Looks and Colorista II to work properly.
We’ve tried everything under the sun, but at this point, we have to give it back to Apple, and wait for them to make this fix. There is nothing more that we can do other than to strongly advise you that if you want to work with Looks or Colorista II, avoid Lion for now.
To our knowledge, all outstanding issues being cause by Lion are for FCP only. Magic Bullet products in other host applications (like After Effects and Premiere Pro) work fine.
Here’s a more technical explanation from our head of engineering:
The release of OSX 10.7 (Lion) introduced a bug into FCP7 that we have been unable to find a way to work around. We have contacted Apple and are waiting to hear when they will have a fix (either in the Operating System or with Final Cut Pro). This bug affects any plugins for FCP that make use of custom data. Essentially, Apple provides two methods for storing data related to a plugin – general sliders, for example, are a built-in method that Final Cut Pro provides for storing data related to an effect with your project. For more complex information, however, a plugin can define its own set of custom data that it will save within the project. This second method of storing data about an effect with your project is currently broken in the FCP7 / OSX 10.7 combination. It works fine when you run FCP7 on OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
Unfortunately for Red Giant plug-in users, we make use of custom data in both the Looks 2.0 and Colorista II plugins. The end result of this is that, while you can use the plugins with FCP on Lion, part of the data associated with the effects once they are applied will not be saved.
We are truly sorry for the inconvenience, but we’re at Apple’s mercy, at this point. Rest assured that the moment Apple has a fix, we will implement it.
Tags: Lion, Magic Bullet, OS X
August 8th, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Any updates on the changes for FCPX? I am sure that is a HUGE task!
August 9th, 2011 at 5:00 am
hi, I’m having exactly the same problems, but in After Effects CS5.. so it seems it’s not only an FCP problem (don’t even have FCP)
August 9th, 2011 at 10:20 am
Mark,
Please contact our support team so we can further look into this issue.
http://bit.ly/oPWGRp
Thank you so much!
Kaylinn
redgiantsoftware.com
August 10th, 2011 at 7:51 pm
Uh, yeah, not working in After Effects CS5 for me either. I’m on the latest version of 17″ Macbook Pro 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7. Worked fine until I upgraded to Lion.
August 11th, 2011 at 11:26 am
I’m having the same problem MBL 1.4 on Lion but with Premiere and AE CS5. Any word on a fix?
August 11th, 2011 at 12:57 pm
We don’t currently have an eta on when the update will be release. Although, the update will be for Looks 2 not Looks 1.4
Kaylinn
redgiantsoftware.com
August 14th, 2011 at 12:46 pm
I have magic bullet looks 1.4 and I can assure you it does NOT work with After Effects CS5. Get on it. Quick.
August 15th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
I’ve been having the same problem using Looks with Premiere and After Effects CS5.5. Colorista II works fine.
August 18th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Same troubles in Premiere Pro 5.5. Also, cannot browse existing looks, can only load them through the looks viewer. Help section is also missing.
August 18th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
It also appears that all of your MBS11 effects change the scale of R3D 5k sequences and end up squashing about 40 pixels from the bottom in Premiere 5.5. At first I thought it was just LUT Buddy, but the same thing is happening with Looks, Colorista and Mojo.
August 25th, 2011 at 2:34 am
I just learned the hard way. I spent almost a full day grading a project with Looks 1.43 only to open it the next day and find all the settings GONE! Now what? I can’t revert back to Snow Leopard.
August 31st, 2011 at 8:55 pm
Real cool Apple.
September 1st, 2011 at 6:07 am
Any news here?
It’s such an annoying bug.
September 7th, 2011 at 2:17 pm
“Well…….we’re waiting!” Judge Smails, Caddyshack
September 15th, 2011 at 7:58 am
The problem is still unsolved. We had to completely redo all effects on scratch with the FCP intern FX. Poor try. Hope Apple is really on it!!
September 15th, 2011 at 11:39 am
This really is frustrating. I love the new features in OSX Lion, but I am probably going to give up those features so I can use Looks 2.0. To me, Looks is more important right now than OSX Lion. Apple better get this fixed quickly. To Apple this may not be a huge deal, since they are not directly effected financially by this. Red Giant may just have to work around the bug. Are there any other plug-ins(by another company) not working with FCP7 in OSX Lion? If not, what’s their trick?
September 17th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Im a film student, and i use magic bullet and a lot of red giant products. I would be ok if this issue was still here after 2 weeks of its release date, but its almost 2 months after. I have done numerous class projects and music videos using looks, and you have no idea the workflow i had to go through to grade EACH AND EVERY SHOT. Im sorry but it is really annoying, please fix fast..PLEASE!!!!
September 19th, 2011 at 3:51 am
I’m using the trial version of MOJO with FCPX and LION. I can’t seem to find the presets (Mojito, etc). Are they turned off for the trial version? Or hidden somewhere in FCPX? Or am I looking in the wrong places!? Thanks.
September 19th, 2011 at 9:10 am
Bailey,
Mojo’s presets are not available in FCPX as of yet. Here is a link to the values for each of the Mojo presets: http://bit.ly/oMaYHD
Hope this helps!
Kaylinn
redgiantsoftware.com
September 19th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Has apple showed any interest at all in helping you guys with this? Do you think we are days or weeks or months off? I’m just getting ready to finish a feature film project. Sound editing is almost complete and then I move to color grading. If there isn’t a fix for looks, I may have to completely revert back to Snow Leopard. Help! :/
September 20th, 2011 at 3:37 pm
We are currently working with Apple to get these issue resolved. Unfortunately we do not have an eta at this time, but rest assure that we will make an announcement once we are compatible with OS X Lion.
Thank you,
Kaylinn
redgiantsoftware.com
September 28th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Just a heads up, I thought perhaps the issues wouldn’t persist in older versions of looks but the “edit not opening window” and “copy/paste doesn’t copy attributes” bugs persist. as does one where you have looks applied to a large clip, split the clip with the razor, and the new clip loses the attributes.
the move the playhead solution does open up the window in 1.4.1 just like it does in 2.0 but no solution for the copy/split issue yet.
Hopefully we can see fixes from Apple/Red Giant soon.
October 4th, 2011 at 6:09 am
any update on this? currently on the trial but would like to buy colorista but waiting for this issue to be solved – not being able to paste colorista’s attributes between clips in FCP is a pretty major obstacle..!
October 4th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
David -this is all Apple. No update to OS X Lion has been released, so there is no change here. Like you, we’re hoping they fix their bug soon.
October 6th, 2011 at 4:46 am
Did you not try your software with developers OS X Lion, before it was released?
I should hardly come, as now, as a supprise…
October 6th, 2011 at 5:44 am
Claus – we hear you. But you have to understand that no amount of testing would have solved the problem. There is a serious bug in OS X Lion that makes it impossible for certain plug-ins to work properly (Red Giant’s and many others). Unless we were going to completely redevelop Looks, which would take a very long time to get it done (and so you still would not have a working product immediately), we have to wait for Apple, who, we know, is working on a fix. We hope to have the issues resolved shortly.
In the meantime, if you follow our blog, you can see that, even as we anxiously await a bug-fix from Apple, our engineering team still continuously updates our products, fixing any of the issues we actually do control.
We feel your pain, but we know the wait will be worth it.
October 8th, 2011 at 9:11 am
Ok – cool. Thanks for the quick reply, gues. All the best…
October 12th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
Here’s to hoping the OS update today had a fix for Looks/Colorista.
ps. Red Giant = Magic Makers
October 13th, 2011 at 1:33 am
Apple Lion 10.7.2 update solved the plug-in problems so far.
Now Looks parameters can be saved and copied from a clip to another.
November 11th, 2011 at 9:14 am
Has the update been a success? Does Looks and Colorista work for FCP on Lion?
November 14th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Bill,
Colorista II in Final Cut Pro 7 should work just fine in Lion. Please contact our support team if you have any further issues with this product.
Thank you,
Kaylinn
redgiantsoftware.com/company/contact-us/support/
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:40 am
Hi there – you say in the last post that Colorista works fine – what about Looks, has that been fixed?? Great software, I need it!!!
November 22nd, 2011 at 10:54 am
Dan,
Here is an post about Lion and Red Giant products:
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/blog/2011/10/12/osx-lion-and-red-giant-happy-together-at-last/
I believe everything should be working fine. Please contact out support team if you run into any issues.
http://bitly.com/dhxFXy
Thank you,
Kaylinn
redgiantsoftware.com
November 30th, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Salve ho istallato magic bullet su 2 differenti MAC, lo uso con FINAL CUT 7.0.3
e qualsiasi LOOK provo ad usare mi dà l immagine tutta a righe ..( tipo interlacciata)
come risolvo?
November 30th, 2011 at 3:20 pm
Esto es algo que nuestro equipo de soporte con la necesidad de mirar. Por favor, póngase en contacto con nosotros:
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/company/contact-us/support/
Gracias,
Kaylinn
redgiantsoftware.com
February 17th, 2012 at 9:34 am
Hey…just adjust rendering method to CPU and not GPU (Open GL) in the prerefences of the magic bullet. It works on Final Cut 7.0.3. I can´t believe it!! Thank you!!
August 20th, 2012 at 6:01 pm
Heya. What happened to “Rest assured that the moment Apple has a fix, we will implement it.” when ‘happy together at last’ was 10 moths ago.
August 20th, 2012 at 6:03 pm
(note: previous is regarding FCP x and Primatte)
November 12th, 2012 at 6:03 am
I take pleasure in, lead to I discovered exactly what I used to be taking a look for. You have ended my four day lengthy hunt! God Bless you man. Have a nice day. Bye