New Mac Pro and FCP7 reality check

[Shane Ross]

Personally, I’d get an iMac, and then install Mountain Lion on it, and not Mavericks. As Mavericks was written without FCP 7 taken into consideration at all. When you stick to older software, you need to also try to stick to older, supported OS versions that it was written for. This might also mean that you need to use older computers, as some cannot run the older OS, like the new Mac Pro.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Vincent Strader]

Interesting post, we’re in the same position. With a municipal budget we move even slower with decisions. Once a purchase is made we’re stuck with that purchase for a LONG time.

What I worry about is, if we do continue on the old route or getting an Imac (everything mentioned above) how long support will last?

Back around 2004 we were still clutching on to our Discreet *Edit. Discreet (Now Autodesk) completely dropped support for it and maintaining our turnkey became more difficult. Are Apples easier to maintain even after support as been dropped? Can you order an Apple without Maverick now that the OS is Maverick? Or do you have to go through an independent to make sure its upgraded just to that point where FCP7 still functions properly?

Everything is such a mess now, throw in Adobe Cloud and it’s chaos. It’s like somebody is trying to make things more difficult as an experiment.

Vinnie

[Declan Smith]

And apple dropped Shake at a moments notice. It’s annoying that the newer models don’t support the older software. I think this is more of a marketing decision rather than a technical one.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[John Pale]

“I think this is more of a marketing decision rather than a technical one.”

Yep. It happens all the time. Apple loves playing that game. Until recently, everyone accepted as fact that the Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 could not run the 64 bit kernel and could never upgrade to Mountain Lion and Mavericks. Turns out some gamers figured out how to write a boot loader that bypasses the EFI limitation and those Mac Pros can run “pure” 64 bit no problem.

[Mark Suszko]

I too work for government, and we had Discreet Edit*. (sigh)(wistful look)

We’re in a transitional period the same as you: we got new iMacs and moved over our copies of FCP 7, while the guys are starting to learn FCPX in their spare time. We have not yet officially decided between jumping from FCP7 to FCPX or to Premiere. The recent release of the updated FCPX 10.1 looks like it may now be worth looking into, and it’s cheap at $300. You can download a free trial. What you need to tell the bean counters in your government is that the current software has been end-of-lifed for a couple of years now, and has no more support, so they need to budget for an upgrade in the coming fiscal.

FCP7 does currently work with Mavericks, to my continued amazement, but nobody should make a bet that that will always be so. You and I are working on borrowed time with FCP7, unless we decide to just freeze the OS where it is now and never upgrade. That *can* work, but eventually, it will begin to hobble your operations over time.

I think if you *must* stay with FCP 7, get iMacs instead of the Pro Tube, because you get a better price/performance ratio on a government budget, and FCP 7 can’t really take much advantage of the pro’s architecture. I saw iFixit’s tear-down of the new Pro, and it looks easy to service or upgrade yourself, *provided* you get the proprietary graphic card upgrades from Apple.

The iMacs are also relatively easy to service for replacing an internal drive or something like that; the screen is held on with a little glue and some magnets – it pops off and there’s the guts, ready to work on. I have had my home iMacs’ internal drives serviced/replaced by a local PC shop, instead of an authorized Applecare dealer, and it was no problem at all.

With the imacs, we got Blackmagic ultrastudio 4K boxes with thunderbolt for our I/O system. Blackmagic gives you a free program to do your tape ingest and output management, for those of you who still have tape deck sources for editing. I have to say however that we haven’t got that part of the new system working right yet, and the phone support from BMD has been courteous, but so far hasn’t solved what’s up.

[Charlie Austin]

FWIW, FCP 7 runs great on new iMacs running Mavericks 10.9.1. Just make sure you have FCS Studio 3 install disks (and some way to mount them). Earlier FCPS installers won’t work. I’d also pay close attention to every OS upgrade moving forward, as QTKit is now officially dead. One day they’ll take it out completely (Like Rosetta) and 7 will cease to function. That said, currently, FCP 7 works really well with the latest Apple HW/SW.

But… you should switch to X. It works better… 😉

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Elliot Choueka]

Hi Mark,

I’m interested to know what your experience has been of the UltraStudio 4K. We’ve got an AJA IOXT which is causing all sorts of problems and we’re looking at moving over to Blackmagic.

Does anyone else have experience of the UltraStudio 4K?

Thanks.

Elliot

[Mark Suszko]

Well, frankly, we’ve gotten a little tired of AJA glitches in the shop, and my experience using the AJA IO controlling software has been… complicated. So all the refurbished edit bays got Ultrastudio 4k’s.

I’m really kind of waiting to see what kind of support BMD is going to give. I posted what I thought was a simple question today and got nothing back yet.

The question was about getting the Ultrastudio4k to do machine control of a DVCProHD deck for ingest and recording back out to tape. We connect to the imac using thunderbolt, but from the Ultrastudio4k to the deck via SDI. We were looking al over the MediaExpress application to see if we can get machine control thru the SDI cable, but it’s looking more and more like you can only do it using the RS-232-ish remote control port. I really just need a confirmation of that.

[Elliot Choueka]

What’s been your experience of using the Ultrastudio 4Ks?

[Roy Soetikno]

Charlie,

Would you please elaborate on what exactly is needed to install FCS Studio 3 on the new Mac Pro?

Thank you.