when do you run updates?

[Steve Covello]

You could approach this issue a couple ways. some places engineer their Macs with to separate partitions on their primary hard drive, or perhaps a second HDD, each with identical OS and apps, etc. Once an update comes about, one of the partitions/drives gets the update while the other remains in its presumably functional state. [I am currently doing exactly this with an installation of FCS2 while the orig HDD still has 5.1.4/10.4.8.]. This way, you could test out the system with at least a fallback position in case the new systems some incompatibilities.

The wildcard in this, which makes whatever Walter does not necessarily gospel [though most of it is :-)], is to consider that your third-party content could affect your native running apps, and no two systems are identical in that respect.

The other approach is to simply wait wait wait and watch the forums and MacFixit.com and macnn.comn to see what other brave souls have encountered, and then make your move when the opportunity arises.

Back to the first option, though, even if you do FCS2 on one volume, and FCP 5.1.x on the other, you could still make your edits back compatible at a basic edit level [not necessarily in terms of effects], by exporting an XML. I cannot say, however, that the media that you digitize in FCS2 would be compatible if you are working in non-legacy formats such as ProRes or AVCHD, which are not supported in 5.1.x. Also, I did the beta test install of FCS2 without installing ANY other third party apps — no Adobe, no MS, no Automatic Duck, etc. — so that if anything fails to work properly, I can discount non-native conflicts as a reason for it.

Generally, I would make it your policy to not upgrade until you absolutely have to since, for example, you could end up having nightmarish problems like what had happened with the QY 7.2 fiasco. If an OS upgrade only fixes useless junk [for me] like some Bluetooth thing or an iWork bug, screw it. I don’t bother. The ProApps updates, however, I generally accept first after reading about it in MacFixit.

steve covello

[David Roth weiss]

Seamus,

My short take on what stevieweevie said is, simply clone your system drive to an inexpensive firewire drive which you should always keep on the shelf nearby as a backup in case all Hell breaks loose. Reclone that clone before doing any update or upgrade and you will never have give the update a second thought and you will always be secure in the knowledge that you could boot to that firewire drive and be back up and running in just minutes.

BTW, a second partition is a nice idea, but if your system drive happens to fail you’re sunk. The bottom line is, no professional editor should ever be without a system drive clone at the ready at all times.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY

[Hamish Boyd]

Thats exactly what I do have. Using superduper, I have a OS clone on a firewire. So that is always the option.

I guess my concern is that often some key problem doesn’t reveal itself immediately. And a buried in a big job you come up against a wall, and then realise its update issues. Going backwards with project files is not always pretty.