Install FCStudio on an external drive.

[Ben Holmes]

No. The App has to be installed on the Mac drive. All the components required are intalled in various locations on your system, not just your apps folder. Although FCP etc. show up as one icon, they are a little more than a single file.

One of the things installed on your Mac is your registration information. Your user licence allows you to run FCS on one machine. OSX and Windows architecture would totally prohibit this type of installation for a pro app, imho. They require a degree of system integration that you could not achieve like that.

You can put the FCS media on an external drive, however.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.

FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk

[Lanzi]

I haven’t got the FCStudio package yet to test it but…

– cannot I not during installation select the external disk as location to be installed?

– if not: can I not then install it on the Mac drive, as you suggest, then find all the Final Cut folders and files and then drag them into the external drive?

(I have Final Cut Pro 5 installed on a 2nd internal drive, though,but with of course all application support and data files on the 1st system internal drive, libraries)

[Steve Eisen]

All your appplications must be installed on your system drive. Supporting Media files from Live Type, Soundtrack Pro and Motion can be installed on an external drive.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Director-At-Large
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Lanzi]

Basically I need to go on an edit job abroad. There is a G5 there, but they haven’t got editing set-up.

I was hoping to just take along an external hard drive with my new FCS installed on it and just plug-n-edit. Of course I dont’ want to install my FCS on their Mac!

No chance, then?

[Ben Holmes]

No and No.

Sorry.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.

FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk

[Bret Williams]

Well, you can certainly install OSX on your external drive and then install FCP on it. Then boot off that drive and run FCP. But the version of OSX you install will be tailored to your system, so if your systems aren’t identical it’s probably not a great idea. Plus, you’d need another drive for your media.

You had the best idea earlier when you said you didn’t want to install FCP on their system. Why not? Install it and put all your media on the external drive the way it’s designed to work. Then, when you leave, uninstall FCP and make sure you backup your project onto your external drive and go home, pop your external drive back on your system and then put the project backup on your internal drive and your up and running.

[Lanzi]

“Install it and put all your media on the external drive the way it’s designed to work. Then, when you leave, uninstall FCP”

Of course! Thats what’ll do.

Then again a portable drive edit-suite sounded so sexy….better invest in a MacBook Pro soon.

[David Roth weiss]

Lanzi,

All the other guys here are essentially right, however, I have achieved success doing exactly what you want to do.

A client of mine had a G4 and FCP 4 on their premises, when they received a partially edited FCP 5 project with all media on a firewire drive from their client. Of course they could not edit the FCP 5 job on their FCP 4 system, so they asked me what to do. Though I was pretty certain it would not work, I nonetheless brought a clone of my G5 system drive in a firewire enclosure with FCP 5 installed and just booted it up. Amazingly, it worked perfectly, and FCP worked too, and so we were able to edit the entire project. So, if a G5 system drive can boot and run FCP 5 on a G4, I would imagine that it would most certainly work on a G5.

DRW

[Jeremy Garchow]

Provided that the other SATA drive bay is free within their G5, get yourself another SATA drive and clone your system to that and pop that SATA drive in their G5. That way, you can bring your entire system with you on a SATA drive, all your apps, settings, and requirements will be with you on that drive.

[Jan Bliddal]

yes and no acturally. You can Install Final Cut on a externall harddrive, but you need to Installe the operating system as well for it to Work. I decided that solution when i upgraded to Final Cut Studio. My reason of doing so was to have a setup with Final Cut Studio and almost nothing else for Stability. I would not install anything put systemsupgrades and Final Cut Studio upgrades on that disc. It has work flawlessley until now. At One time I had to compress some huge files and I was able to borrow a considerbly faster Machine from my work. Up starting My external Harddrive up on That machine I was Asked to inter my serial number again. That was then again nessesary when I reconnected it to my own computer