Drobo announced a new Gen 3, 4-drive Drobo earlier this week. Designed for the prosumer market, the unit provides better performance with a lower price than preceding Drobos. It connects via USB-3, delivers data at about 150 MB/sec, and has an internal battery backup to protect data in case of power failure when transferring data.

Units start shipping in late April. The starting price is $399 and Drobo offers a discount to existing customers. Visit: www.drobo.com/storage-products/drobo/ to learn more.

Earlier this week, Andreas Kiel, of Spherico FilmTools released a FREE, new utility that easily disables, enables, or deletes effects that are applied to clips in a Final Cut Pro X project. Using an XML export, this displays all the effects or templates applied to clips in that project. From there, you can select to enable, disable or remove  some or all of these effects.

Even better, this process is non-destructive as your original project is not changed. Download the free application here.

Over the weekend, I updated my trouble-shooting guide on how to trash preference files for Final Cut Pro X. There are lots of little changes throughout the article, so you might want to skim it quickly just to refresh your memory. Read it here: larryjordan.biz/improving-fcp-x-performance/

As long as I was updating files, if you are a subscriber to my video training, I also updated the instructions on how to create a Favorite movie, or flag a movie to watch later. You can view the updated article here: larryjordan.biz/new-features-for-video-subscribers/

Rich Lavon was frustrated that there was no way to save a "tweaked" effect. So, he came up with a workaround:

"This seems better than opening up Motion 5 (which I don't have yet) the way I have seen in other tutorials.

"Basically you copy and paste your effects and positioning and drop shadow and what have you onto a placeholder. In order to get the placeholder into the browser I made it a compound clip, and saved it to a "Placeholder" event I created in a [Graphics Effects] GX library. Now all I need to do is double-click the compound clip, copy and paste the effects into the new project. Not very elegant, but a workaround. 

You rename the placeholders according to the effect. I even type out a brief description on the placeholder itself using the text option. Downside is another library needs to be open, but so what?..I could see lots of effects, positioning keyframes and the like saved as placeholders as well. I'll keep you posted."

If you are using an iPad app for production or post, I'd like to know so I can share your recommendation with others.

Drop me a note via email, tell me what you are using and why you like it. I'll add your comments to future newsletter issues.