• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  FCP 7 Balking

  Posted by Ty Ford on January 13, 2015 at 10:30 pm

  Hi,

  For reasons that don’t need discussion, I’m still running FCP 7 on a Mac at one of my work stations.

  I was working on a 2K HD project this afternoon on internal drives and had to shift to FCP X on a newer machine because FCP was balking at even playing files on the timeline.

  Is there a consensus that the shift from SD to 2K HD is normally too much data for a mac to handle, or do I need to get the wrenches out?

  Regards,

  Ty Ford

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  Ty Ford replied 11 years, 7 months ago 4 Members · 6 Replies
• 6 Replies

• 

  Shane Ross

  January 14, 2015 at 9:38 am

  Well…you mentioned a newer machine. Faster processors always help…and also, how was the drive connected to the computer? Mainly I’ll wager it’s the processors…plus the fast that FCX is newer and more capable of editing 2K than FCP 7 is.

  Shane
  Little Frog Post
  Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
• 

  Walter Soyka

  January 14, 2015 at 12:44 pm

  What codec was the video?

  Walter Soyka
  Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
  Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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• 

  John Rofrano

  January 14, 2015 at 1:04 pm

  [Ty Ford] “Is there a consensus that the shift from SD to 2K HD is normally too much data for a mac to handle, or do I need to get the wrenches out?”

  “A Mac”… that’s not a lot of information to go by. 😉 This would be like us asking you, “Is there a consensus that you can’t record the sound of a jet engine clearly with a microphone”. You would probably ask us which microphone and instruct us to put our ribbon mic away and use a dynamic mic instead.

  A mac is quite capable of editing 4K extremely smoothly. Whether “your mac” can or not is a different story. I just helped someone the other day who was using a G5 Mac which is 11 years old now, to edit HD so if you’re expecting some old outdated Mac to edit modern video formats that’s probably not going to work so well. Also, discontinued software like FCP 7 isn’t optimized for video formats that didn’t exist when it was being developed. New formats usually require software updates.

  If you can tell us which Mac you have, and what video format you’re trying to edit, we can probably make a better recommendation to improve your performance although, as you have seen, and “newer” Mac with FCP X doesn’t have problems with 2K HD.

  ~jr

  http://www.johnrofrano.com
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• 

  Ty Ford

  January 15, 2015 at 1:40 pm

  HI,

  It’s a 2 x 2.6 GHz tower, no special video card.
  Dual Core Xeon
  12 GB RAM.

  What codec?

  I dropped the file onto the time line and got the usual, “do you want me to change the session to these specs?” and said yes.

  Gotta say FCP7’s laundry list of resolutions and codecs is pretty impenetrable for me.

  The files work fine on a newer mac with FCP X

  Thanks for any advice.

  Regards,

  Ty Ford

  Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
  Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog
• 

  Ty Ford

  January 15, 2015 at 6:01 pm

  Dave,

  Thanks for the gentle nudge.

  XDcam EX 1080p

  Regards,

  Ty

  Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
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• 

  Ty Ford

  January 16, 2015 at 12:54 am

  Dave,

  thanks for shining a light into my problem.

  and, of course, when I went down to the studio this afternoon, I hit the space bar and the files played just fine.

  However, your insights were really valuable to me. Parts of that whole codec thing slip away from me if I don’t have my face in it regularly.

  Thanks again,

  Ty Ford

  Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
  Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

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