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  • A warning about Catalina and the 2019 Mac Pro

    Posted by Herb Sevush on January 28, 2020 at 1:25 am

    Yes, I did it. I bought a new Mac Pro. It arrived last Friday and I figured that by the end of this week I would be posting a glowing review along with a discussion about various upgrades and configurations.

    But that is not going to happen.

    Tomorrow , after 3 straight days of formatting, installing, re-installing, re-re-re installing and a lot of phone calling and e-mailing, I’m going to be boxing this elegant computer up and sending it back to Cupertino.

    The issue is Catalina and my workflow, which is Premiere Pro based, with a whole lot of very specific plug-ins that help speed me on my way. So be advised that those working with FCPX will probably have nothing to fear (but that’s only probably.)

    The combination of Catalina, Ppro and my specific plug-ins are apparently explosive. It’s possible I could run Ppro stripped down with Catalina but why would I want to? The whole idea of dropping 10K on a computer is to speed up my work, and the lack of plug-ins would slow me down more than anything the nMac Pro can offer.

    I was not quite foolish enough not to consider this possibility; my fallback plan was to take the clone of my 2013 trashcan and make it the startup disk and then clone it’s Mojave OS onto the 2019 Mac Pro. It’s a technique I have used with Mac’s for over ten years. I’d work with Mojave until all the bugs had been ironed out and then upgrade the nMP to Catalina at that point.

    However,

    It turns out that you can’t start up the 2019 Catalina MP with any external disk that is also not Catalina (and that’s not easy to do either.) There is no way to wipe the drive of the 2019 Mac Pro and install an earlier OSX. None. It has something to do with Catalina and something to do with the security chip in the 2019’s boot drive.

    So after 3 days of trying, and 3 nights of crying, it’s box it up and wait for UPS.

    This has not been a pleasant few days. Catalina has a unique bifurcated (that’s”2-way” for the rest of us) folder structure that I think is part of the reason it behaves so badly with older software that wasn’t written for it. Even using Finder is a bit of a challenge. I hope it’s worth it for the future because for now it’s a major.

    PITA.

    Herb Sevush
    Zebra Productions
    —————————
    nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
    \”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

    Drew Lahat replied 4 years, 11 months ago 20 Members · 34 Replies
  • 34 Replies
  • Shane Ross

    January 28, 2020 at 3:15 am

    I thought these were able to be rolled back to Mojave. That’s not the case?

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

  • Herb Sevush

    January 28, 2020 at 3:19 am

    [Shane Ross] “That’s not the case?”

    Not the case. Apparently any new computer that comes with Catalina installed is very difficult to roll back to Mojave, including new Macbook Pros and Imacs, but as far as I can tell it’s currently not possible at all with the 2019 Mac Pro.

    Herb Sevush
    Zebra Productions
    —————————
    nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
    \”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

  • Oliver Peters

    January 28, 2020 at 1:49 pm

    A friend of mine went through similar issues. He was migrating his drive from a 2013 Mac Pro to the new Mac Pro. Ultimately 6 days of hell, but it was finally all resolved. He had to first update his trash can to Catalina and then create a new Time Machine back-up of it. Then that could be used to “recover” onto the new Mac Pro.

    Did you check 64-bit compatibility with all of what you had installed before beginning this process?

    Personally I would only advise doing a fresh start on this machine, de-authorizing and then re-authorizing any licensed third party apps and plug-ins. This is a new machine and the T2 security chip introduces a lot of gotchas.

    As far as OS roll-back, you generally have never been able to do that with Macs. At least not in a supported way. It’s usually the case that the earliest you can go back to is the current OS at the time that machine was shipped. This would be Catalina for the new Mac Pro. Catalina changes the OS structure for better security so that apps cannot be modified by malware.

    FWIW – Avid still has not qualified its software for Catalina.

    – Oliver

    Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

  • Herb Sevush

    January 28, 2020 at 2:51 pm

    [Oliver Peters] “Did you check 64-bit compatibility with all of what you had installed before beginning this process?”

    Yes.

    [Oliver Peters] “Personally I would only advise doing a fresh start on this machine, de-authorizing and then re-authorizing any licensed third party apps and plug-ins. This is a new machine and the T2 security chip introduces a lot of gotchas.”

    Eventually I tried that. Still had problems with Ppro that I’m guessing is tied to one or more of my Plug-Ins, they might be 64 Bit but that doesn’t mean their aren’t any bugs.

    [Oliver Peters] ” He had to first update his trash can to Catalina and then create a new Time Machine back-up of it. Then that could be used to “recover” onto the new Mac Pro.”

    I will give that a shot before sending it back. thanks for the tip.

    [Oliver Peters] “As far as OS roll-back, you generally have never been able to do that with Macs. At least not in a supported way.”

    Supported or not, in the past if I used Carbon Copy Cloner I could clone a drive from an older machine and then use the clone as a startup disk on a new piece of Apple hardware. Once I was up and running I could then use CCC to clone the external to the internal startup drive and voila, new machine with rolled back OSX. This is now no longer possible, he says after wiping up his tears.

    Herb Sevush
    Zebra Productions
    —————————
    nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
    \”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

  • Oliver Peters

    January 28, 2020 at 3:04 pm

    [Herb Sevush] “Once I was up and running I could then use CCC to clone the external to the internal startup drive and voila, new machine with rolled back OSX. This is now no longer possible, he says after wiping up his tears.”

    I’d bet that’s one of the things Catalina is trying to clamp down on. Although it might still be possible through Time Machine or with an upcoming version of CCC (speculation only). Both CCC and SuperDuper are still working out the kinks of Catalina compatibility.

    – Oliver

    Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

  • Martin Jaeger

    January 28, 2020 at 4:27 pm

    Any chance you could expound on which plugins you suspect were giving you issues? Setting up a new Mac Pro today so.. Thanks!

  • Eric Santiago

    January 28, 2020 at 4:51 pm

    [Oliver Peters] “I’d bet that’s one of the things Catalina is trying to clamp down on. “

    This seems the be the norm even in the Windows world.
    Part of my day job deals with Digital Signage and one of the stumbling blocks is the Windows 7 to Windows 10 upgrade.
    We were just told that our old practice of taking a new player node (small form PC) and using a clone drive (Win7 was the compliant OS at the time) to update for our digital signage is illegal.
    Now we are forced to pay a fee for each unit that we’ve cloned.
    Any new player with Windows 10 has to stay put from now on.

    Not sure if this is all related.

  • Herb Sevush

    January 28, 2020 at 5:04 pm

    [Martin Jaeger] ” which plugins you suspect were giving you issues? “

    I’m still working on it, will post something if I ever figure it out.

    [Martin Jaeger] ” Setting up a new Mac Pro today”

    If you’re not using it with FCPX you have my sympathies.

    Herb Sevush
    Zebra Productions
    —————————
    nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
    \”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

  • Greg Janza

    January 28, 2020 at 5:45 pm

    [Herb Sevush] “I’m still working on it, will post something if I ever figure it out.”

    Maybe just list the plugins that you use regularly. Without knowing which plugins are in your workflow it’s hard to determine if your problems will affect others.

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmprods
    tallmanproductions.net

  • Herb Sevush

    January 28, 2020 at 9:08 pm

    [Martin Jaeger] “Any chance you could expound on which plugins you suspect were giving you issues”

    I’m up and running but there are still a few plug-ins I haven’t re-installed and I’m guessing one or more of these is the culprit.

    Before I get to naming names I must say here that Catalina is an all devouring monster, especially if you’re running Adobe Apps. Dyamic link between Ppro and Audition (which is a huge part of my workflow) is broken and has been broken for months. Adobe upgrades come and go, but still no answer in sight. This is NOT GOOD !!! and has nothing to do with the computer you’re on – its a Catalina/Adobe issue.

    I use a Blackmagic Ultrastudio Mini Monitor to get SDI to my Flanders Scientific broadcast monitor – but the latest BM drivers doesn’t work for me, I had to roll back to the 10.8 driver.

    Izotope RX 7 was eventually installed, but not without a fight. First make sure you have the latest download, 7.0.1 (not 7.01) then you have to restart OS X in safe mode (hold down the shift key when starting) then keep manually setting the permissions to Read-Wright for all possible choices and in all possible locations, then restart again in safe mode and keep trying to install till it finally takes.

    Uninstalled (as of yet) Plug-ins:

    Mocha Pro 5
    Cine X tools
    Colorista IV
    Waves Vocal Rider

    I’m having problems getting the Waves installer to work on Catalina but I think it’s solvable.

    Colorista IV was easy to load yesterday and I don’t think it caused any crashing, but I’m going one plug-in at a time today (tonight?)

    Mocha Pro 5 is on the highly suspect list, but I don’t know if I have the latest version, so maybe that will help.

    Cine X is my guess for the culprit, but that would be a shame. Cine X allows you to do “punch ins” on a finished ProRes file from within your native editor. For anyone who has to deal with QC deliveries of ProRes material it’s a miracle app, but it will be the last thing I test.

    So as of right now the biggest problem is with Adobe, and I might just have to go back to working on the trashcan while I play with this in my “off” (when is that?) hours.

    Herb Sevush
    Zebra Productions
    —————————
    nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
    \”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

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