[Michael Dilieto]

Yes, I did make advances. I did what Apple wanted. Instead of keeping the old FCP 7.0 suite going which I never really learned well and am not a professional editor, I sold all of my equipment, software, and hardware on Ebay.

Then I got a credit card with no interest for a year and bought a $3500.00 iMac fully loaded just about 500 Internal Flash drive instead of 1 TB. Then, I bought a raid system via Thunderbolt connection and downloaded for 400.00 FCP 10.1.3 from the APP store.

Now I am current and up to date with hardware and software and am learning to edit on the newer system (software/hardware).

Next, I realized that if you get AppleCare for 3 years and sell your brand new imac every two years on Ebay, you will get a great price for it because it will still have a year of AppleCare left on it. Then you go back to the greedy machine APPLE and just buy another system and start over with the latest and greatest. You then take the roughly $1500.00 that you will lose over the two years and you simply accept your beating from the APPLE MACHINE and you give in to the fact that if you want the current hardware and software and want to avoid TONS of built in frustration from working with old equipment, that you will commit to paying roughly $700 to $800 a year in depreciation for that right and ability.

Had I upgraded with about $600.00 to this larger video card and a raid card for my older hardware and software so I could still use FCP 7.0 I would have been good with my old Mac Pro 8 core. However, the old FCP didn’t matter to me so and I couldn’t get One to One lessons at the Apple store on it like I can now with 10.1.3 which I have had 15 lessons.

So therefore after posting to this forum, I gave up and financed interest free for 16 months with a Citi card and just gave up / gave in.

However, at this point, maybe the 3 and 4 GB modified video cards are cheaper and will help your old machine to continue using moving forward!

Good luck with whatever you do!

[Michael Dilieto]

Basically, I tried to import some Sony DVcam tapes. I don’t get the error message, but after walking away for an hour, Final Cut brought in 5 different clips of 1 second each. So, it didn’t give the message that the MiniDV tapes gave, but it didn’t work either. Those tapes were recorded using a DSR 200A camera and I initially imported the footage from the camera directly into my older G5 when I had it. So, either Final Cut 7, Mac Pro 4,1 2009 Intel Xeon, DVcam and mini dv tapes, DSR 200A and 300A camera, or DSR 20 VCR deck doesn’t like something.

As a matter of fact, I couldn’t even play without tons of pixilation most of the tapes. Some dvcam and mini dv tapes were able to be viewed through Final Cut 7, but I couldn’t import anything.

I was reading a product brochure for the DSR 20 and saw this statement. Playback Compatibility with
the DV Format
The DVCAM format is an extension
of the consumer DV format with
which it maintains playback
compatibility. This means that the
DSR-20P is capable of playing back
DV recorded tapes* without any
special adaptor, an advantage to
users who wish to play back their DV
recorded tapes as source material.
*Except LP mode

So, I will assume anything that didn’t work did not work for tis reason, LP mode. Problem is I have no cameras or decks left from the SD era, just this deck, tapes, and FCP. So, basically, I am beat!

Thanks for your help and unless you can think of something else, I think it’s just not possible.

[Michael Dilieto]

I conducted more testing. I added an ssd card, Samsung 840 pro Sata 3 card, so its fast and has 256gigs of space and im only using 110gb. I cloned the OEM Mac drive 750gigs.

I tested both drives individually after unmounting the primary drive I wasn’t using so it wouldn’t confuse the computer or slow it down.

My scratch disk is a brand new 7200 rpm drive with around 700gigs free space, basically unused. For the test I changed the scratch disk to the primary drive and to the separate scratch disk drive.

1. I tested the mini dv tape recorded on the JVC Gr-870 and got the same message.

2. I tested a DVcam tape recorded on a Sony DSR 300A.

No matter which scratch disk I use, (primary or secondary free unused drive) worked.

Is it possible that the older Sony DSR 20 deck doesn’t want to communicate with the newer version FCP 7.0?

Thanks again Mark!

[Michael Dilieto]

Thanks for the advice. The DSR 20 is set to “Local”, I went into prefs and “Unchecked” the “abort capture on dropped frames” and then manually pressed play on the dsr 20 followed by clicking “capture now” on the import window, and after 2 seconds it crashed again with the same message.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

[Michael Dilieto]

Thanks for the follow up! As far as the video card, from everything I have read, and from various forums, when PC cards are flashed, the opening boot screen where you see the apple logo, doesn’t appear. You have to wait for the log in screen. Supposedly, that’s it. No other problems with using these cards,including which ports you use. I use a mini display port so Im not sure if the DVI ports would work or not.

Also, the main issue I keep reading about is the open cl and CUDA that the PC cards have. I am still trying to learn how OPEN CL and CUDA features of these cards works with FCP X or not. If you want to check out their cards you can see them at this auction number. 231175818438 and their ID is macvidcards

The reason why I am even sidetracking with all of this is to determine how I can optimize my old computer or if I should re invest in a new one like Apple wants and demands.

So, if I get a video card of some sort, and maybe even grab an SSD for a primary drive which will increase speed, will the old 4,1 Mac Pro work well enough, or should I save these $500.00 in upgrades and put it towards a new computer.

Its a tough decision for me not having used FCP X ever!

[Michael Dilieto]

Thanks for the response. Im still thinking about what to do in terms of the partition. In the meantime, I subscribed to your Youtube channel and could definitely stand to watch your tutorials to start learning FCP X.

Thanks again!