[Scott Koué]

There are different answers for different people/ situations. To assume that your personal needs and wishes are the same as everyone else’s is just not very helpful to anyone.

The short answer is maybe. I’m in a similar quandary. My main gig is sound post and that is done on another machine. The sound hardware ran over $15K and would cost almost as much to upgrade with no big upside so that machine is sound only on a G5 running very old (by todays standards) software. Works great and I have a backup G5 so that system will probably not change unless some really big $ job comes in that requires it.

My quandary is on the second system. It was a MBP that couldn’t go past 6.8, but I upgraded the whole thing to a newer machine and basically was forced to go to 10.10.

FCP6 works on 10.10 and all of the plugins I had also work fine. Many other parts of FCS2 however didn’t make the switch successfully. IF upgrading to FCX would have worked I would have dropped the $ and doe it BUT FCPX does not export OMF’s and has a number of other issues plus (at least then) would not import FCP6 projects. So that was a dead end. The big switch to app for many had been Premiere and I might have gone there if it hadn’t become CC and gone subscription.

So figuring that FCP6 would be dead in OSX10.11 and refusing to rent software I went on a quest for alternatives.
And that is what I would recommend for you. FCP6 might work for you in 10.11 but it’s a roll of the dice and you might have some odd problems and will have zero support so…

My solutions (I’m still on 10.10 BTW):
FCP:
I have been migrating everything to DaVinci Resolve. It fits my needs but you should definitely check it out to see if it meets yours. My reasons are 1) FCPX doesn’t meet my needs with out a bunch of third party helpers and I have zero trust that Apple will not pull the rug out again. CC is subscription and I won’t go there. DaVinci is a mixed bag. As a NLE it works but is still growing so in many ways it’s not as mature as CC or FCPX, but it has fantastic color correction built in. It is a solid and professional workflow and I have a lot of confidence that it will be supported and not dropped for a more “grandma friendly” downgrade in the future. And it imports just about everything so my old projects with some tweaking have all worked. My most important plugins have versions that work in Resolve.

Photoshop:
Affinity Photo has been a pretty good replacement. I actually have a bunch of pain/ draw applications and between them haven’t had the need to open PS(CS4) in a long time. CS4 works, mostly, in 10.10 but I have heard that it won’t at all in 10.11. Affinity Designer is the vector partner and the projects are cross compatible. Together they really cover a lot of ground.

Motion/ After Effects:

Fusion (also by Black Magic) is extremely powerful. The downside is that it is node based and the learning curve from track based such as AE and Motion is steep at first. The upside is that ALL of the top VFX applications are node based because of how incredibly flexible the system is so once you get your head around it you will be amazed at how much more “logical” things are.

I am still holding off on the OS upgrade till I make sure all my old projects have opened in the newer apps. So far it has been pretty solid. The exceptions of course are projects with plugins that don’t cross over, but that is always the case. So right now if There is an issue I can still open the original and see what I did so I can use the DaVinci equivalent. Really there are not that many projects that I need to be able to reopen and update so I expect in a month or so I will be doing the 10.11 update.

I’m updating because there are other updates and such that need 10.11.

[Scott Koué]

Kind of an old thread but I though I would add that I don’t think they will record longer soon. Other than the heat issues there is some legal stuff with the EU where if they record longer than X they get taxed as a video camera which is quite a bit higher. That is what I have read a few times anyway.

Technology can be improved but governments not so much.

[Scott Koué]

I think you must be referring to an interface. ProTools IS a DAW. Which brings up the question of what version of PT you have and/or where you got it. PT mostly comes with matching hardware. If it’s not the “M-Powered” version you can only use it with Digi’s hardware, and your not going to find much in your budget range. The M-Powered version requires hardware from M-Audio, so look at their boxes.