New Mac Pro and FCP7 reality check

[Nina Hasin]

Perfect question. I want to know this, too.

ninah

[Mark Suszko]

If I understand the recent chatter: You can’t install FC3 (Final Cut PRO 7) into the Mavericks O.S., you have to first install it into an earlier OS like Mountain Lion, and then upgrade the OS into Mavericks.

An update on my Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K: It works now for machine control; there was a menu setting in the deck’s menus that needed flipping. Still trying to solve an issue with entering clip names during ingest, but haven’t had an opportunity to try the suggested fixes for that yet.

[Eric Weiner]

I’ll answer that question! But first an update, I’ve since purchased high end iMacs, and two high end Mac Pros.. They are mostly still shipping but we did get one iMac in this week. The iMacs will be for FCP7, and the Mac Pros are for our Graphics and 3D animation guy.

So here is how I install FCP Studio 3 on to the new iMacs.

There is not DVD drive on the iMacs, and I didn’t get an external DVD drive. Instead, and I did this a long time ago, I’ve created disk images of all of the FCP install DVDs onto an external tech drive.

Since our place has about 7 edit bays, I am in a situation to have to clean wipe and re-install the needed software onto them on a fairly regular basics. So one day I grabbed a external 240GB portable drive with firewire 800 (starting to be a problem now) and split it into 6 different partitions. the first 5 had about 15 GBs and the last one had the remaining amount of space. Then I installed the latest mac systems on the first, tiger, leopard, snow leopard, and leave a space open for lion since that was coming out soon when I did this. That’s been extremely helpful to me since I can attach it to almost any computer in the place and boot from it. These partitions aren’t important to installing FCP, I just wanted to mention them because I thought it’s a cool idea.

What is important to how to install FCP, or any other large DVD based application is what I did with the last partition and bit of space on the drive, I uploaded every major and small application or application installer I needed when I set up a computer from a fresh install. I also used to install Adobe Creative Suites before we moved to the cloud.

Here’s how you do that. You need to have a mac that still has a CD/DVD drive. You mount each FCP studio 3 disk one at a time onto this computer, and open Disk Utility. (Disk Utility is in the utility folder in your application folder.) From there you select the DVD in the disk utility window and click the disk, the one that has the name of the disk, then click “new image” across the top. A save window pops up, and you want to select DVD/CD master for Image Format, and none for encryption. You then want to save this .img file to your dive. (or to you desktop and move over to a drive later) Do this for every disk, each disk will take a while, this whole process can take just a bit longer than installing FCP 3 from DVD.

But here is the pay off. Once you have all of the disk images on the hard-drive, you simply connect your hard-drive to your computer, open all of the .img files at once (they will mount disk images to you computer) and install FCP by clicking on the first disk. Besides the fact there is no dvd switching, the entire process speeds up from a 3 hour process where you have to constantly switch DVDS, to about 15-30 minute process where you don’t have to do anything after you set up your install. For extra convenience, put a .txt file on there with your FCP serials so you don’t have to go look though up separately.

On a different note, there is one problem with FCP Studio 3 and 10.9. The qmaster control panel doesn’t work any more, meaning I can’t seem to set up quick clusters in compressor any more. We didn’t use the share over the network render options of Compressor, but we DID use quick cluster so that when making a H264 link it would split the file into several pieces and work on them all at once. This really speed up the speed of compression, about 4-5 times faster then if you just used “computer only” That option is gone from FCP Studio 3 and it’s a pretty big blow for us really, we make links of 30 minute shows several times a day and it saved us a good 30 minutes a person at the end of the day in compression. I looked into a way to get it going again a month or so ago, I’ll do another search to see if a solution has come up yet, but as far as I know it just doesn’t work any more. I’ve spent about 4-5 hours looking for a work around using the Q-master application myself but Q-master doesn’t seem to come up with the same options in 10.9 as what I see should be there from the manual. I’m going to need to look into other applications that speed up H264 transfers, and just take the speed hit when I transfer other footage to Pro Res for edit.

It’s not something that completely breaks FCP Studio 3, but it’s a sign that they are absolutely not concerned about making sure FCP7 work with the new systems, I’m guessing that the next operating system will no longer work with FCP7. I’m trying to get my boss to see that FCP7 days are numbered, not sure what we will move to. Premier, Avid, and FCP X are all options at this point. I’m leaning towards Premier since most of what we do comes out of AE anyway.

[Eric Weiner]

I just fresh installed FCP7 straight onto a fresh install of Mavericks yesterday using the method I just laid without a problem. I didn’t realize this was an issue people were having trouble with.

Of course it’s easy for me since I set up my tech drive install disk years ago, having to go get a hard-drive, and a mac with a DVD drive, and 3+ hours to move all of the DVDs to the drive is kind of a pain in the ass to install FCP7 once.

If you have an external DVD/CD drive attached to your iMac you can’t install FCP7 the old fashioned way?

I should mention that the iMac I set up yesterday does not yet have my Black Magic Intensity Extreme or UltraStudio Express devices installed yet (Just ordered those they should be in next week) so there may still be a problem in Mavericks with that I just don’t know about yet. (A problem other than the compressor issue which is a pain in the butt for sure…)

[Mark Suszko]

What you’re saying is interesting, Eric, because what I’d read was that there wasn’t a way to install 7 directly into Mavericks, due to some missing support from Intel. Your method seems to contradict what I’d read. But to make it clear, are you really installing FCP7 directly in to a fresh install of Mavericks, or are you migrating a disk image of a Mavericks’ system that already had FCP7 pre-installed from an OS Mountain Lion environment?

[Eric Weiner]

I did the first one, installing FCP7 directly in to a fresh install of Mavericks on a brand new 27 inch iMac. (The iMac came with Mavericks 10.9.2 installed, and I just went forward with that.)

Actually now that I think about it, I’ve done it twice. I did it last Friday at work, but I also installed FCP07 onto a fresh version of 10.9.0 last December on my brand new 27 inch iMac I bought for home as well. (Using the same Tech drive to do so.)

I have another personal main computer at work where I upgraded the system from Mountain Lion to Mavericks (did that in early 2013) as well, and that worked fine.

(Again, I have experienced the problem with compressor under Mavericks in all cases though.)

So I gather my experience so far does contradict what you have read before.

Oh, and so far I can only say this worsk for the new iMacs. I’ve ordered two mac pros but they don’t ship until mid-april so there is a chance that FCP won’t install on them for some reason I guess.

[Lisa Cannon]

Hi Eric,

Thank you for the workflow to install FCP 7 on Mavericks, as I’m running both, having upgraded from Lion. What happened with your new Mac Pros? Did the disk image install work? I’m currently editing a feature and nearing a rough cut, which will soon move into more intensive CPU needs and speeds for color correcting and such – I’ll be wearing many hats as we move into later stages of post, and I need a new machine. …that runs FCP 7, at least through the end of this year.

Fingers crossed (and fervently researching at 3 a.m. to know if the install worked on Mac Pro.) I’m considering the 8-core because of color and such (and simply investing in our future projects), as I know it wouldn’t make an incredible difference for FCP 7.

[Nilesh Mulye]

Go ahead with mac desktop pro. It’s fast. 4k editing & rendering speed is like working on 720×576 Dv format.
As well as color works fast for 4K resolution. COLOR IS NOT DEAD . I don’t understand why Apple is not developing FCP 7 more like FCPx. But go for it. You will be happy.

[Declan Smith]

When you say “COLOR IS NOT DEAD” is that based on some new information ? or just a comment that it still works functionally ???

I have just got my 2009 MacPro 4.1 back from an upgrade of processors,memory, graphics card and SSDs. It’s extremely fast, in fact within about 2% of the equivalent brand new MacPro but for a heck of a lot less money!!. Render times are at least half what they were.

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

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Nilesh Mulye]

Dear Mr. Declan Smith,

Sorry for late reply. I’m not a net savvy person.
I’m an editor from 1994. I started my carrier as -ve cutter. So i’m very much familiar with every application of Post Production. From August 2014, I’m color grading 4K advertisement, av’s, Films. I like one thing about Apple color is that it works with available card & gives best result than any color grader. There are some pro & cons in every apps. But Apple color is Best.

Thanks
Nilesh Mulye