Mac Pro Tower – OS X 10.7.5 – FCP X 10.0.8

[Roger Poole]

It depends which model of Mac Pro you have. The 2008 3.1 and later will run Mac OS X El Capitan and the latest version of fcpx. FcpX 10.3 now has customisable workspaces which will allow you to set things up across two monitors. As far as I’m aware there is no way of setting external monitoring without a card such as blackmagic or aja. As you have probably discovered FcpX looks for an AV device, (card) for external monitoring. Personally I wouldn’t try to use that version of FcpX. I tried it and gave up on it, but 10.3 is changed in many ways and is a great improvement on how things used to be. One thing to be aware of though is that if you have any third party hardware such as a raid controller it may not run under El Capitan, and as I discovered, a replacement Highpoint Rocketraid, though good, will not work on anything earlier than Mountain lion, so that would be a problem for your Fcp7 installation.
Also if you had a blackmagic card working in Fcp7 under Lion you would find that when booting into El Capitan the Card would require a firmware update for it to work. The downside to that is that it would no longer work on Fcp7. :O/

[John Bolton]

Thanks for the information. I am sure I read somewhere that this particular version was at its highest OS X version of 10.7.5 but I will check the serial number and look up the details. I think I am not going to be able to make any changes which is a bit sad but will let you know the details.. Thanks again…

[John Rofrano]

[john bolton] “I am sure I read somewhere that this particular version was at its highest OS X version of 10.7.5 but I will check the serial number and look up the details.”

You are correct. What Roger was suggesting is that if you had at least a 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 you could install OS X 10.11 El Capitan on another partition or external drive and boot from it and install FCP X 10.3 and get the latest features. I believe his point was that 10.0.8 was not worth using and I tend to agree with him. If you are going to use FCP X, use the latest version.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Bolton]

Hello Roger and John… I expect John has seen me in the Sony Vegas/Magic forum from time to time…. ☺

Been using SV for years but never had a MAC but help a friend with his production on FCP 7..

So the details obtained from the serial number is :-

Misc information – Model ID: – MacPro 1,1
Model: – Mac Pro (CTO)
Processor
CPU speed: – 2 x 2.66 GHz
CPU Type: – Intel Xeon (Woodcrest)
Build Year: – This unit was built in 2007.
Build Week – Your Mac was built in week 12 of that year (March).
Production Nr.: – This unit was number 642 to be built that week.

and lots of other info………………….

Have read somewhere that EI Capitan can be used it you use a different Boot loader on Models 2006/2007.

Not quite sure how this works or how it is implemented..

Anyway, it looks like I am out of luck but thanks again for the professional informative information.. Quite refreshing

[John Rofrano]

[john bolton] “I expect John has seen me in the Sony Vegas/Magic forum from time to time…. ☺”

Hi John, Yea, WOW that’s an original Intel Mac Pro 1,1 introduced in 2006 with 2 dual core CPUs. Not much you can do with something that old, although it’s a testament to how well the Mac is built to still being used 10 years later for production work. FCP 7 was discontinued 7 years ago so I’m guessing that your friend firmly believes “if it ain’t broke… don’t fix it”. ????

That Mac Pro came with OS X 10.4 Tiger and can run the last version of OS X 10.7 Lion if upgraded to at least 2 GB of RAM but that’s as far as it goes. I’ve also read of “hacks” to get OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion installed but the problem is that the older Mac’s have a 32-bit EFIs while the newer OS’s need a 64-bit EFI to boot and checked for it. That’s why you would need to hack the boot loader. Unlike Microsoft that to this day still releases 32-bit versions of Windows causing all sorts of problems and extra work for developers, Apple simply cut over to 64-bit and never looked back which, IMHO, was the right approach.

Bottom line: While your original statement is true that FCP X is a much better platform to use, early versions were lacking important features and the later versions require more modern hardware to run. I’m running it on my 6 year old 2010 Mac Pro so it doesn’t have to be incredibly modern but more modern that 10 years old. lol ???? I would stick with FCP7 until your friend is willing to buy a new Mac. It doesn’t have to be brand new, it could be a used 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 from eBay, but it has to be at least as new as that.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Bolton]

Hi John…
hahah.. yeah is a bit old but does the job quite well….and as you say.. if it isn’t broke…….. The only reason he wanted to upgrade was the Slow Mo it is bit poor ( unlike Twixtor in Vegas ☺ )

He even has an older MAC running Media 100 which work very well but was limited to only 2 audio channels. We did update that version of Media 100 but was very buggy so decided to go to a G5 and FCP 7 a few years ago..

The only other pain is the Sony cam he has is HDV 1440x1080i and trying to get the right project settings and capture setting correct is a bit of a nightmare as various tutorials on it do not seem to get the correct result. I think it is because if it is down scaled in the cam to I-link then the settings used are DV – PAL anamorphic but at HDV is seems it is not. Don’t have this problem with Vegas,,,,,,,,,,,

Thanks again for you guidance Much appreciated…