[Bobby Hall]

Okay. I just read somewhere that El Capitan boots faster and makes programs start up a bit faster, but I don’t really know how much faster it is.

[Bobby Hall]

I see, David. Thanks. I just bought a retina MacBook Pro with 512 GB of flash storage, but I don’t ever use my boot drive for storing media files. I always use an external HD.

Also, do you know if it makes a difference if I run FCP 7 on Yosemite compared to El Capitan? My new rMBP came with Yosemite and it’s asking me if I want to get El Capitan, but before I install FCP 7 on it, I wanted to know if FCP 7 runs better on one of them over the other one. Thanks!

[Bobby Hall]

“FYI, while an SSD drive would have enough throughout, SSDs are not really great as media drives, as moving huge amounts if data in and off an SSD drive will fairly quickly ruin the drive’s performance.”

David, are you saying if you move large amounts of data on and off a SSD, it will permanently ruin its performance???

[Bobby Hall]

Michael,
I have a 2009 MacBrook Pro with OS 10.6.8 running FCP 7, and I recently bought a 15 inch retina MacBook Pro and also want to run FCP 7 on it. It came with Yosemite but asks me if I want to upgrade to El Capitan, and I didn’t know if it makes any difference in how FCP 7 runs.

My new MacBook Pro is 2.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core 7 with 6 MB L3 cache, 16 GB of 1600 MHz DD3RL SDRAM, Intel Iris Pro Graphics, and AMD Radeon R9 M370X graphics processor with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory.

[Bobby Hall]

I just bought a rMBP and I’d like to install FCP 7 on it. It came with Yosemite and I was wondering if it makes any difference if I upgrade to El Capitan. Is there any difference in how FCP 7 runs in El Capitan compared to Yosemite?

[Bobby Hall]

David,

I don’t think that MPEG Streamclip is the problem because when I import the h.264 files that my camera shoots into FCP (without converting them to prores) just to see what their properties are, the browser lists their field order as Upper too.

I use MPEG Streamclip because I had a project I was working on where I had to rip a lot of footage from DVDs and I just got used to the program! What do you suggest I use? Compressor?

[Bobby Hall]

Thanks Dave. Yeah in the brower the clips are listed as “Upper (Odd)”. Do you know why FCP 7 does this if the clips are really progressive?

[Bobby Hall]

I use MPEG Streamclip to convert my h.264 files to prores, and I uncheck “interlaced scaling”. When I import the files, it lists the field dominance as Upper. I also imported an h.264 file to see what its field dominance would be, and it said it was Upper also. If DSLRs shoot progressive, why would it list the field dominance as Upper instead of None?

[Bobby Hall]

Yes, my camera only shoots progressive. My files were shot in 29.97 fps, even though in my camera settings it says 30 fps.

So I think when I import my footage into FCP 7, it thinks it’s interlaced for some reason. I have no idea why. When I watch the raw files I can pretty much tell it’s not interlaced. But when I drag the files onto the timeline and I have it match the settings of my files, the field dominance is set to Upper. When I export a video with that setting, it’s interlaced, and when I change it to None, then the video plays fine.

[Bobby Hall]

Thanks Nick.

I just changed the field dominance from Upper to None and when I exported the video, the transition played perfectly! So that’s all I needed to do. I can’t believe the headaches this has caused me, but I’m glad it’s cleared up now! So thanks Nick and David for your help!

What I don’t understand is how come when I import my clips into FCP it lists the field dominance as Upper in the browser? I shoot my videos with a Canon T3i, which shoots progressive, so why does FCP automatically think it’s interlaced?

I don’t know why, but at least I know I just need to change the field dominance.

Here’s a still of what the transition looks like interlaced:

And here’s a still of it progressive:

If anyone wants to see the video, it’s a 30 second commercial my girlfriend and I made for the Doritos Super Bowl contest. The grand prize is a $1,000,000! I’d appreciate it if you guys could give it a 5 star rating. Here’s the link:

https://crashthesuperbowl.doritos.com/video/2941