FCP 6-7 meets El Capitan

[Bobby Hall]

Michael,
I have a 2009 MacBrook Pro with OS 10.6.8 running FCP 7, and I recently bought a 15 inch retina MacBook Pro and also want to run FCP 7 on it. It came with Yosemite but asks me if I want to upgrade to El Capitan, and I didn’t know if it makes any difference in how FCP 7 runs.

My new MacBook Pro is 2.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core 7 with 6 MB L3 cache, 16 GB of 1600 MHz DD3RL SDRAM, Intel Iris Pro Graphics, and AMD Radeon R9 M370X graphics processor with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory.

[Michael Brown]

Hey Bobby,

I’m not the specialist around here, our hosts know much more about this stuff, but your config sounds very familiar to my previous one.

In my opinion you did well to go with Yosemite. I’ve been running FCP on it for 2 weeks now and it runs like a charm, except for the drive speed issues that I only suffer from in multicam, otherwise never have! I’ve read threads that both seriously warn against FCP on El Cap and some that claim ‘no problem’, but this way you can always upgrade (and perhaps even go back) if the need arises.

Now your new MBP sounds like it could well be tough enough to handle FCP 7, and if we follow Declan’s helpful advice by raiding externals to speed up disk drives, then you might be quite happy with FCP on your new MBP.

Having edited loads of projects on my old MBP for years, I can only suggest you make sure you have a real nice big ext. monitor to make your environment more comfortable, and considering the 15″ MBP, if you can hook up 2 externals with it, the better so. I couldn’t with my 2010 15″ MBP, but I don’t know about the new ones.

BTW: I’m very happy with my NEC Spectraview 23″, with it’s great advantage of having a matte screen. I’ve always missed my old aluminum MBP 😉

Glad to be of assistance 😉

Michael Brown

[Bobby Hall]

Thanks for the advice Michael!

[Greg Newman]

I have come across your posts and noticed that you installed FCP7 successfully. Like others above, I too like to use 7 for long form projects and X for quick and color fixes. Starting today FCP7 would not open. I have tried to open the program from a project or the launch and no luck. I thought that a new install would be the answer. It’s not. I’m told that my installation has failed. So I come to you for an answer; Do I need to remove other parts, (compressor, iDVD etc. in order to have a successful installation?

[Christopher Mcdonell]

There’s some long responses on here that have taken this thread into different directions. But as for your question Bobby, as I posted above, I’ve been cutting with FCP 6 on El Capitan for several weeks now and all is (mostly) fine. There’ve been a few hiccups along the way but nothing warranting a downgrade to Mavericks (or Yosemite). FCP 6 on Mavericks wasn’t perfect either.

A few new things I can report on:

1) The ‘pencil crayon’ selection in the Colour Grabber remains blank for at least one of the transitions. The spectrum, wheel, slider, etc. all work though. So no biggy.

2) Command-Z Undo, hit in rapid succession, has crashed FCP twice on me now. So I increased my auto-save to every 20 minutes.

3) Boot up or rending progress bar shows the percentage number overlapping itself until it’s unreadable. It’s been doing this to me since Mavericks though.

That’s it. In my experience anyway. To purchase an older iMac just because it comes with Yosemite seems a little nuts to me. El Capitan is a performance and speed-based upgrade. Most reviewers tout it as being far superior to Yosemite.

My specs: FCP 6.0.6, El Capitan, rMBP 15″ i7 2.6 GHz, 16 GB RAM

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Before re-installing FCS, you need to uninstall it properly by downloading and running Digital Rebellion’s FCS Remover. You can find it and read up on it here.

My specs: FCP 6.0.6, El Capitan, rMBP 15″ i7 2.6 GHz, 16 GB RAM

[Bobby Hall]

Thanks Christopher. I didn’t buy an older mac just to get Yosemite though. I bought the most recent retina MacBook Pro from Best Buy (at least they told me it was the most recent, and checking online I see it’s from mid 2015) and it came with Yosemite. I was just wondering if there’s any advantage or disadvantage to upgrading to El Capitan if I want to use FCP 7.

[Michael Brown]

Hi Greg, I read Christopher’s reply and he’s doubtessly right, however I only had my HD migrated from my MBP to the iMac and I had no need to re-install anything at all. Just fyi 😉

Also good to know: I have now experimented with the LaCie Thunderbolt drive, found it not satisfactory, raised it with a LaCie USB3 to split up some of my media (2 & 2 angles to begin with), and it still didnb’t help. Now I’m back on one drive (the USB runs smoother!) and I’m going to send the Thunderbolt drive back to where it came from. Multicam runs fine on Yosemite (here on my system), but you must choose 1/2-frames and medium or low quality to prevent it from bogging. Once I get to the 7-angles issue I’ll likely raid again, but will preferably try to stick to a WD (my best experience and much quieter than the LaCies).

Michael Brown

[Gary Goldblum]

Here is my experience. I’ve updated a MBPro and a Mac Pro to El Capitain…

DVD Studio Pro works until you hit the “simulate” button, then it completely locks up. Both Machines.

FCP 7 seems a little sluggish when I launch and importing from P2 cards. By this I mean I have to click the icon twice before it launches. I also have to select “log and transfer” twice before it opens the window. It does this on various windows. Aside from that it seems to work.

I have completely given up on Compressor since Yosemite as I found it to lock up a lot. I like the new version better and it is a lot faster. All the FCP Bundle worked rock solid in Yosemite.

I just started with FCPX and I must say I like it except for one thing. I HATE the rectified audio waveforms. How can anyone edit with these half ass waveforms???

Thanks for the post!!

Thanks!

Gary

[Jason Scholder]

I am going to chime in here.

I am on the same page as the people who are asking to please answer the question as opposed to judging the asker for using “old software” or wanting a new operating system, etc. I have my reasons for wanting to upgrade to El Cap but still use FCP 7. It’s because I want to use other software that requires the new operating system. So all of this presumptive dissing is really unhelpful.

My gratitude to those who did answer the question. I’m still unsure of what to do but I may go for it. For now I feel like I have two computers that are compromised b/c neither of them have all the software I need them to have. So it goes. Ironically. Because my purpose for buying a 2nd computer was to be able to work from home and office. Now I can’t do either unless both machines are in the same location. Fortunately one is a laptop.

OK. If anyone has more input that actually answers this very important question (to some of us, anyway) the more info the better! Thanks!!