Final Cut Pro 7 after Mac OS X Lion 10.7 upgrade

[David Roth weiss]

Paul,

I’ve been testing FCS 3 under Lion for a few weeks, and for the most part it works just fine, but it’s not perfect. Lion certainly does not seem to be as bad as some of the early reports and/or bloggers have lead many to believe, but it’s not perfect either. I’ve had several issues booting to my Lion partition for example, that require me to reboot while holding down the Option key. In other words, even though I wanted to boot to the same Lion partition currently in use, I was unable to do so automatically. Not a huge issue if you remember it before booting, but an annoying issue nonetheless.

For sure, if you want to test Lion you should build a separate bootable system drive or create separate bootable partitions as in my tutorial below.

Good luck,
David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

Don’t miss my new tutorial: Prepare for a seamless transition to FCP X and OS X Lion
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/FCP-10-MAC-Lion/1

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.

[Paul Escandon]

Whoa Dave, WHOA!!

I think a lot of us here have multiple machines, some of which are our primary production machines and some of which may be personal machines that also run a copy of FCP. It’s absolutely to be expected that some of us will start upgrading so that we can at least be informed of how the system performs and what caveats might be present. If anything, I’m going to have clients that may already be upgrading their edit bays to OS X Lion as we speak and I want to be prepared going into an edit what issues I might face.

Does that help provide some color on why I asked?

;]

[Everest Mokaeff]

There are no issues relating to Lion that I’m aware of. I use it routinely now for couple of months. Of course I have Mac OS 10.6.8 w/ FCS3 on different HDD. Should the problem arise I can switch to it. Beware, it’s not ready for production purposes yet.

Sony PMW-EX3, Canon Mark II 5D, FCS3 in Moscow
http://www.mokaeff.com

[Laura Scott]

FWIW this thread has several people saying that FCP7/FCS3 will not only run but install just fine on Lion: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3134652?start=0&tstart=0

Official Apple statement re compatibility: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4769

I may try running the Lion update tonight.

••• PINGV Creative

[Neil Patience]

For a quick experiment I did a clean install of Lion onto a spare HD and then used the migration tool to get my applications across.
I opened an old FCP7 project, first issue was having to move Motion 5 as got error message saying FCP not compatible with Motion 5. This was solved by simply creating a folder and putting FCPX and Motion 5 into that folder.
(This does not happen under Snow Leopard despite the file structure in the Application folder looking identical without having to hide Motion 5 away.)
The project is all HD ProRes HQ footage and tried playing sequence that has 3 video layers, unrendered playing in realtime.
Initially I had problems with playback in that the timeline was very sluggish. No dropped frames just a pause after hitting play for a second or 2, or spinning beach ball for a second or so. However oddly this seemed to work itself out after a few minutes and now seems pretty much OK. (Raid storage easily quick enough and fine under Snow Leopard)
Ran though all basics and everything seems to work.
No way would I use it for anything other than testing hence spare HD and just a quick migrate of Apps but on the face of it seems to work.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[David Gallessich]

David – we’re all-ears here:
Do you have any more details beyond boot-partition-issues?

David Roth Weiss:
I’ve been testing FCS 3 under Lion for a few weeks, and for the most part it works just fine, but it’s not perfect.

I just saw this super positive review (see text below)
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15663817#15663817
so I’m tempted to make a clone (not just a partition) and give it a try:

“I can’t believe how much better FCP7 is running on Lion. I’m finising a documentary and trying to do the final renders. For the last few weeks FCP has been crashing half a dozen times a day. Dumped the preferences, cleared out folders, ect. Loaded Lion this morning, both FCP7 and Motion 4 are flying. Hasn’t crashed once, renders are going through much faster.
Apple should’ve just released Lion and not FCPX, and people would be loving them right now.”

I mean, if it appears more stable and actually faster, seems worth $30 + the effort.
But first I would like to see some more evidence than this one post.

I guess we’re all beta testers now, unless we wait until the next full upgrade (“Housecat”?) …

There’s a followup with more details here
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15666385#15666385
along with one bumpy review, right afterwards, on the same thread.

[Michael Gissing]

[Laura Scott] ”
I may try running the Lion update tonight.”

After cloning your system drive first I hope.

[Steve Knattress]

Just given Lion a try on my MBP laptop.

Incompatible software SiliconImage3132.kext = Express34 card esata raid5 controller

and SxS Memory card.kext = sony SxS card driver

Now apple really are trying to screw professional editors!!!

[Scott Gosling]

Indeed. I already have an iPad, and therefore have no desire to turn my Macbook Pros into one of them. Its clear to me that apple released final cut X with the intention of ignoring any support issues with FCP for Lion. Despite the pointless gushing on the Internet, it will be sometime before I make the move to Lion, or the Final Cut X, which I believe is a glorified version of Final Cut Express.

I bought a state of the art 17″ MBP this year, and then had to fight the Sata III compatibility issues until about 2 weeks ago. The Apple support strategy was “its not one of our drives, and therefore we don’t support it.” This was the response for a user replaceable SSD hard drive. The whole issue made it clear to me that Apple has lousy QA, and has a low regard for its customers. This mentality nearly killed them the first time, and if they are not careful, could take them out for real this time.

After developing software for over 20 years, I’ve been burned too many times to jump on the newest shiny thing out there. I think everyone should hold back for quite a while before making the switch. With the forced AppStore download I think Apple is going to be in for a real shock. That first million downloads in the first 24 hours is going to generate support queries that will overwhelm them. One thing is clear with the release of Lion, and that is Apple is going for a mobile device strategy, and they are going to abandon everything else.

[Kim Krause]

at first my machine wouldn’t even boot…but when i did a safe boot it reloaded the os and now everything is fine…no real speed differences. so far my only real problem was the stupid mouse up and down direction, it has been changed…when you want to scroll up you have to drag the mouse down…very dumb but you can turn it off. and my magic trackpad is a bit sluggish when spreading out the timeline in color with a reverse pinch or whatever you call that move where you unpinch with 2 fingers…i love the way it was before…so easy to just zoom in and out of the time line in color….hopefully somebody will update magic menu for the thing and make it truly programmable.