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FCP under Leopard, is it good to go? – I tested it under fire – here’s my opinion
I just got back from a five-day very high-pressure job working on a brand new MacPro octo-core running under Leopard, and and I’m happy to report that everything ran smoothly the entire time, almost without a hitch.
So, while I didn’t hit every button, use every feature, or try every plugin, everything I did do worked well, and so I’m going out on a limb to tell you all that Leopard has arrived, its very tame, and in my opinion, its good to go right now.
BTW, I also got to use a brand new AJA Kona IO HD, and that too worked like a charm, although to be perfectly accurate, I must admit that our first one came right out the box with faulty component and Y/C outs. However, the great folks at AJA overnighted a replacement unit to us and it worked perfectly.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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29 Replies
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[David Roth Weiss] “so I’m going out on a limb to tell you all that Leopard has arrived, its very tame, and in my opinion, its good to go right now.”
Except for those of us running Adobe After Effects. Definitely not ready to go yet. Adobe has never updated their statement that an update would come in December 2007. So we’re not touching any of our three edit systems yet.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow! -
The real question is, do you think it’s any better than Tiger? Does FCP seem faster, snappier, magically work better?
Jeremy
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[walter biscardi] “Except for those of us running Adobe After Effects.”
I hear ya Walter, thankfully that’s not a problem for me.
Funny thing is, Autodesk Combustion, which I use instead of AE, works quite nicely under Leopard, as did all of my Eureka plugins. So, I had no worries on the job I just completed, and I’ll just keep using Leopard at my place from now on too, since I installed it as a test last week.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “do you think it’s any better than Tiger? Does FCP seem faster, snappier, magically work better?”
Hard to say, cuz I was working on a much snappier system this past week than my own. It was also spritely clean, with 8gb of new RAM, and fresh, empty SATA drives too. It was mighty snappy, but can I say that was due to Leopard??? No, not really…
In any case, there is no glaring reason to fear Leopard, unless, like Walter, AE is an important part of your workflow. I guess Adobe had best get on the ball and deliver on their missed December promise. It seems everyone else has delivered…
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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I am having major problems with machine control. Dropped frames on input and an error message siting slow drives on output. I would love to hear some ideas. The system is at work and I don’t have access to it this weekend, but we’re trying to prepare for a job on Wednesday the 16th. I don’t know exactly what kind of drive the media is one except that it is an internal fixed drive with a terabite of storage. This is at a very high level professional post house that is trying to branch into FCP.
Thanks,
Jon
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FCP itself has run without any crashes for weeks under Leopard. However,
my problem is after the update Qmaster doesn’t work anymore. You can’t
access it from the Apple System prefs or make it work. I really need it
so I’m working with our VAR to talk to Apple to see what I need to do.
Other than that hiccup, it’s been fine.Dan
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[Jon Fordham] “I am having major problems with machine control. Dropped frames on input and an error message siting slow drives on output. I would love to hear some ideas.”
Jon,
Where are you located? What are the specs for your machine, decks, and capture card?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Hi,
I’m in NY. We’ve got the Kona 3. Imported quicktimes look fine and play down without hangup. All tests thus far have been with HD footage (that is the upcoming gig.) As for the drive, unfortunately I can’t answer that question. The system is a new multi-core mac with two internal drives for a total of around 2 terabites. (how do you spell that?) The original thought was to have a separate volume to load Tiger onto in case there was a problem with Leopard which came loaded with the system. A raid was made of the other volume and that didn’t seem happy once we started importing media. Again, we were getting dropped frames on input and an error on output claiming the drives were not fast enough.
Thoughts?
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[Jon Fordham] “Thoughts?”
Yes, I have a couple of thoughts for when you go back to work…
1) First, click on the apple in the upper left corner and then click on Software Update and make certain that you have all of the latest updates for both the OS and for FCP. You must keep updating and rebooting and updating some more until you finally get a message that says that your software is up to date. Many people simply don’t realize that so very many update passes have to made, and they stop way too early. It happened to my client on this latest job, and I had to spend quite a while tracking down the problem and then doing the updates, after I was assured they were done.
2) If indeed your Apple updates were not up to date, then you should uninstall the Kona drivers afterward, using the uinstall utility that gets installed with their drivers, and then reinstall the drivers.
3) Depending on the type of HD you’re working on, one SATA drive may not be enough, you will need to stripe at least two or more together. What flavor of HD have you been testing?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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quicktimes in DVCPro codec. One sequence with sequence settings to match and another set for 1080i 59.94
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