[Neil Patience]

yes there is – in the Media Creation settings you can check filter out launch drive and filter out system drive.
That will stop them from accidentally using the “C” drive

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

Bill thanks for posting that really is a very clever piece of work. Its clear the bulk of the job is meticulous arrangement and mixing of the music, something at which he is obviously highly talented. The picture edit is almost secondary in that once you have that fantastic audio bed to work with you can clearly have fun making the pictures fit.
Pro editor or not as you say his approach is totally professional and focussed, his talent is there for all to see.
Thanks for sharing that one.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

Ah so are you just trying to drag the app into the applications folder ? I am pretty sure that wont work. You need the install disks

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

If you have the original install disks you should not need to downgrade.
Have you tried the ProApps update to get you to 7.03 ? https://support.apple.com/kb/DL949?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
I am running a 2012 MBP with Lion and FCP7 and that works perfectly but there are many running Mountain Lion without issue

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

Raphael has pointed you totally in the right direction for the FCP editing workflow. ProRes is the way to go for your DSLR footage.

For the standard DVD you can use DVD Studio Pro but that does not support BluRay.
I went through this process a while ago, needing to make a BluRay for a short film I made shot on 5DMKII. I tried Toast but kept getting errors with encoding or burning fails. I did manage to produce 1 disk but I must have wasted 4 or 5 doing so.
In the end I went for Adobe Encore which was a lot more stable than Toast and while not perfect allowed me to make BluRays with much more reliability.
It is not so different from DVD studio that its a huge learning curve.
Luckily my wife was a student at the time so we used the educational discount to buy it which was a great deal. You could consider the Adobe Cloud option too to spread the cost.
I got a small portable Samsung BluRay burner model SE506 – its not the fastest drive but really has been very reliable.
While it would not be the perfect set-up for serious BluRay authoring it does allow me to make disks with proper menus pretty easily and reliably. I generally only do one offs or perhaps 2 or 3 copies at most, but at that level it has worked out very well.
The disks play reliably and look great.
Hope that helps.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

I would post this in the FCPX Techniques forum here https://forums.creativecow.net/fcpxtechnique
There are some very knowledgable and helpful people there who can probably help you.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

Thanks Nick of course it is, I am so used to using it with material without audio I totally forgot that point.

DOH!

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

Since they have given you a separate file for the Alpha channel that suggests there is no embedded Alpha in the pictures.
So just click ignore when importing. That should work for both as they are both in effect “video”.
One final thing – if these came from Photoshop chances are they are RGB levels so select that rather than 601/709.
Then use 2 layers as Richard suggests. Apply the Matte key to the Alpha. You may need to invert that but it will be obvious if you do.

Hopefully that’ll work

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

Actually the Cinema tools option suggested by Nick is a good one and may be worth a try. There will be no artefacts on the pictures, that will be nice and smooth. However you would need to speed up the audio by about 4% (I think) in order for it to sync. My maths is so rubbish.
To do this export a self contained Quicktime of your final master. Use Cinema Tools to conform it from 24 to 25 – that will take moments no rendering.
Then start a PAL project and import your conformed Quicktime. Thats the really easy bit.
Then use Soundtrack Pro to speed up the audio by 4%

Hopefully there is nothing in the audio that really notices, its quite a small change.

I would be tempted to give that a shot you may find it better quality than using the plug in. The speed change is inevitable of course.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

I also went the same route as Shane after I saw how much he liked his. I got the Non Retina 15” with a i7 2.7 gig chip a high res anti glare display. It has the same GPU as the Retina, supports 16 gigs Ram but equally useful is the fact that it has Thunderbolt, USB3 and Firewire 800 connections as well as ethernet and a card reader. So you can easily use your legacy devices without messing with Thunderbolt adapters but the overall power of the machine is the same. Plus it retains the optical drive so you can use that or use the space to add a 2nd hard drive. The whole thing just seemed so much more flexible than the Retina model. Of course you sacrifice the ultra hi res display but that seemed worth it to me.
I just need to add an SSD. But Symphony 6.5 and FCP7 run very well without issue. I am not a big FCPX fan but have tried it and it certainly runs very smoothly too.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv