Final Cut Pro 7 on a PowerPC

[Ian Liuzzi-fedun]

I thought FCP 6.0.6 supported AVC-intra?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Baz Leffler] “Maybe we might be able to download a pirated Intel Mac off the internet so we can use FCP 7? “

Yarrrrrrrgghhh, matey!

Jeremy

[Shane Ross]

[Ian Liuzzi-Fedun] “I thought FCP 6.0.6 supported AVC-intra? “

It does…it imports it as ProRes. BUT, FCP 7 imports it in the native codec…there is an AVCIntra codec in FCP 7.

Just to let you all know…hacking FCP to get it to work on your PPC might sound cool and fun, but if you earn a living with this machine and FCP, I recommend AGAINST it. Never hack software and expect it to work well. Apple didn’t make it Intel only because they want to make more money selling computers (althought it may appear so)…no. Many of the features of the new version require an Intel mac to use, like capturing to the new ProRes codecs, the AVCIntra decoder…stuff like that. So while your PPC might get to use those cool new Markers, you cannot use Log and Transfer to convert footage to ProRes Proxy, or ProRes LT…or work with RED footage as ProRes…or possibly get shadows to work in Motion…a host of other things.

So this begs the question…WHY get FCP 7 and hack it to work on your PPC when you can’t take advantage of what it has to offer?

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
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[Ben Pirouet]

We have 30 Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5ghz machines at work which are more than capable, and if Final Cut Studio 3 works on PowerPC machines, why should we be forced to replace them at massive expensive? Also it’s useless having a dual economy with Final Cut, it’s either one version or nothing, so even if all the features didn’t work, the advantage of having PowerPC support to us would be enormous.

Anyway I’m not even hacking the software itself, i’m just bypassing an Installer system requirement check. The software itself is completely untouched. This is not like what some people do with FCP6 and hack the program itself to make it work with machines that don’t have Quartz Extreme or what have you. This version of FCS3 was clearly designed to work on PowerPC machines, at least to some extent. From what i’m observing, it looks as though the Intel only decision was made right at the last minute.

I could understand your point if the new features of FCS3 didn’t work, but as you’ll see from these pictures below, they DO actually work. With the exception of AVC-Intra support as i mentioned, all the new features i’ve tested so far work and work very well. Admittedly i haven’t tried every single feature, but so far i’ve had nothing but success. Even Motion 4 which is very processor and GPU heavy actually works faster than Motion 3 did.

Some examples here:

https://www.bpirozzolo.com/powerpcmotion.jpg – The new features of Motion like Reflections, shadows, framing camera support and depth of field all work perfectly, and on our G5 PowerMacs with the 256mb Nvidia GPUs work smoothly and efficiently.

https://www.bpirozzolo.com/powerpcfcp.jpg – FCP7 as you can see loads fine, new features like the new speed tools work without problems. I outputted the FCP timeline display via a Formac box to a studio monitor, all with no issues.

https://www.bpirozzolo.com/powerPCSTP.jpg – New features in Soundtrack Pro work very well too.

So what doesn’t work? I’m not stupid as to think that i KNOW that everything is going to work, but from the testing i did today everything seems to work very well.

I would never recommend that you purchase FCS3 purely for a PowerPC machine, but if you’ve got some Intel and PowerPC machines and you know that you’re going to purchase the software anyway, i’d say it’s worth the risk just to see if it actually works for you! So far it does for me… We’ll see if that changes.

[Ben Pirouet]

One thing i forgot to mention, when i loaded FCP7 on an older 1.9ghz iMac G5 machine to test it, it said FCP required a 2ghz G5 processor, and this box was new, it didn’t look like the box you got on FCP6 when you were missing a required hardware feature. So FCP7 clearly is designed to work on a G5 processor. FCP6 needed a 1.25ghz G4 Processor. So it’s not as if it’s an old requirement stamp that has been left in the programming.

[Shane Ross]

[Ben Pirouet] “We have 30 Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5ghz machines at work which are more than capable, and if Final Cut Studio 3 works on PowerPC machines, why should we be forced to replace them at massive expensive?”

Again…my question is WHY upgrade? What will you get from FCP 7 that you can actually use? The codecs won’t work on the older machines, many of the FXPlug plugins and Motion may not work…so why cripple yourself when you have a perfectly good working setup with FCS 2? I just don’t understand this “FCS 3 came out and now I am stuck with FCS 2 and I can’t function properly” mentality. You have a good working setup…use it. Don’t muck it up by hacking FCS 3 and installing it and thinking it will just work. It is unsupported by the vendor…Apple. So when you have problems, you will have no one to go to and no one to blame but yourself. I think it would be highly irresponsible for you to do this on machines that you use to earn a living.

But…do what you want. In the end, you have only yourself to blame when you have problems.

[Ben Pirouet] “This version of FCS3 was clearly designed to work on PowerPC machines, at least to some extent. From what i’m observing, it looks as though the Intel only decision was made right at the last minute. “

You are wrong. Apple didn’t test this on PowerPC machines…G5’s. They only tested it on Intel macs and only support it on intel macs. Sure, you didn’t “hack” the installer in any major way other than to say “install this on my machine even though it isn’t an intel,” and you aren’t breaking any laws. But when things don’t work…well, you heard me already on that.

[Ben Pirouet] “So what doesn’t work? “

Capturing to or importing to the new ProRes codecs. Try that and see what happens. FXPlug plugins…try those and see what happens.

Whatever…if what you need to work, works…then fine. But if you come back for support here saying “this isn’t working,” or “I can’t do this…” Well, the answer would be pretty darn clear as to why not.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Ben Pirouet]

The current and new FXPlug plugins do work, you can see one of the new ones in use on my FCP screenshot above, and though i haven’t actually tested them, the new ProRes Quicktime plugin is ‘Universal’, though i will have a go at that tomorrow on a G5 to see how it performs.

I suppose the point i’m trying to make is that the new features work on PowerPC machines, so there must have been some conscious effort to make them PowerPC compatible, so why isn’t the software officially PowerPC compatible? Did Apple just say ‘na lets not bother testing it even though we’ve spent time making new features that work on PowerPC’ . I’d just like an explanation really.

And like i said above, FCS2 is still good software, BUT we can’t run a dual economy. We want to upgrade our Intel machines to FCS3 to take advantage of new features, but we can’t leave our PowerPC machines on older versions, they’d be useless to us.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Ben Pirouet] “We want to upgrade our Intel machines to FCS3 to take advantage of new features, but we can’t leave our PowerPC machines on older versions, they’d be useless to us.”

What are you going to do about Snow Leopard?

[Ben Pirouet]

As long as FCS3 works on both Leopard and Snow Leopard, it doesn’t matter if our Intel machines are upgraded to SL, and our PowerPC machines are kept on Leopard, we just want to be able to transfer FCP7 projects between PowerPC and Intel machines

If for whatever reason we need SL on all machines, then the PowerPCs will have to go, but if FCS3 works well on PowerPC machines like it appears to, there’s no point in getting rid of what are still potentially very useful machines to us.

[Shane Ross]

[Ben Pirouet] “there must have been some conscious effort to make them PowerPC compatible, so why isn’t the software officially PowerPC compatible? Did Apple just say ‘na lets not bother testing it even though we’ve spent time making new features that work on PowerPC’ . I’d just like an explanation really. “

Well, I know that they didn’t test the software on PowerPCs. And they made no effort to make the features work on PPCs…most of the stuff might just be leftover from the crossgrade code. They designed the software and the new features with Intel machines in mind, because they are looking ahead at Snow Leopard.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def