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FCP and Lion 10.7.4 on a MacBook Air
I am working on getting a rough cut for my documentary done and need your advice, please.
Is the following a good working setup? One main mac + a second mac.
1) My current MacPro 2008 with FCP7 works although slow.
Quad Core Intel Xeon on OSX 10.6.3; 16 GB RAM
FCP 7
Quicktime 7.6.6 (and also running QT 10.0)
Using two 6 TB esata drives + one esata internal drive
Using some Red Giant plugins2)I am prepping a second mac (for my assistant to do selects, sync, organize clips and folders and use compressor to transcode clips)
MacBook Air 1.8 Ghz Intel Core i5 running Lion 10.7.4, Quicktime 10.1
Just did a partial install of FCP Studio 3 – only installed FCP 7 and compressor (no color, motion, soundtrack, or cinema tools)
I won’t install the Red Giant Plugins either to avoid issues
I opened a FCP7 short project and it plays fine.
I am planning to upgrade the RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB (maximum)
Planning to clone the two 6 TB drives to 1 Thunderbold drive (need to buy) and 1 firewire drive (already bought) for my assistant to use in this MacBook Air.
The idea is that she access a duplicate of the entire project but only works on certain sections at a time. Whatever works she does, I can bring it over to my main machine – the 2008 MacPro and duplicate it in the original FCP7 project.Is this a good setup?
Any issues to be aware of?
Is it fine to stay with Lion 10.7.4 without upgrading to Mountain Lion?
I am aware that the max allowed RAM in the Macbook Air (8 GB) may be an issue and it may cause the project to be too slow?
We could duplicate the project, just keep the essential footage and sequences and have my assistant just work on those without having to have the whole project? Then, copy the work she does to my original FCP project?What 6TB thunderbolt drive do you recommend? Lacie? G-Drive?
Can’t afford the Promise Pegasus Raid for now.By the way, what’s the best way and easiest way to clone the drives?
Copy them manually? Use a software like Super Duper or else?
Any how-to links that you recommend?On a side note, I would like to upgrade my main machine (old MacPro 2008) to a newer Imac in the near future but concerned about the stability of Mavericks or Yosemite with FCP7 on a long form project.
We don’t want to go to Premiere unless we know Premiere Pro will take all the markers, cuts and sequences we have already created.Thank you very much for your insights!
Mabel
Mabel Valdiviezo
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1 Reply
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Mabel, FCP7 is a 32bit application and as such can only address a theoretical 4gig of ram, in practice 2.5gigs. So it doesn’t matter how much ram you throw at it, it can’t use any more. FCP7 is not processor aware, so it cant use the extra processors or cores as separate instances in the way that Compressor can. For these reasons we all wanted Apple to give us a 64bit version but they didn’t.
FCP7 is fine under 10.7 but is not supported in the newer operating systems such as Mavericks and Yosemte. You are OK with your Mac pro but if you get a new mac of any description you wont be able to instal an earlier operating system in order to run FCP7.
I’m a big fan of G-Tech drives. They are so well put together and crucially have top quality drives inside.
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