FCPS 2 work on Lion?

The FCS 2 installer requires Rosetta, which will no longer be supported in Lion.

Possible workaround:

You need a Mac that is running an Intel CPU and Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6.

This machine must be capable of running and installing FCS 2, because the installer will look at its graphics capabilities, installed RAM etc.

You need the Mac running Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

Switch both machines off.

Connect the two with a FireWire cable.

Start the 10.5 / 10.6 machine as normal.

Start the 10.7 machine with the T key held down to enter FireWire Target Disk Mode

Insert the FCS installer disc into the 10.5 / 10.6 machine and run it.

Specify the install destination to be the 10.7 Mac.

Run all software updates before opening one of the FCS 2 apps.

Note that this is as yet untested by myself -based on the information I currently have, it should work in theory.

Message was edited by: Nick Holmes: added more info about the FWTDM host machine.

That's a very cleaver workaround. But I would caution that Apple is not supporting FCS 2 in Lion, meaning if it doesn't work, or if it does put a later Lion update breaks it Apple won't care or help.

Good observation daguerra.

Those of us who choose to stay with the real Final Cut will all be left in the dust at some point, so there will be plenty of tinkering tips posted to keep everything going. Guess we are going to find out what Windows users have been putting up with for all these years.

Or just take advantage of the discounts Adobe and Avid are offering Final Cut Ex-Pats.

I can envisage moving to Avid at some point. I watched someone try to use Premiere and laughed at its ability to crash repeatedly (I admit, this was years ago). I had the chance to get on Avid in the early 90s, but opted for our shiny new Quantel Editbox instead.

Well, FCS won't be the first editing system that I had taken away from me by progress.

That's part of the game if you have done this long enough. Supposedly Permire has gotten a lot better, but dispite having it on a couple workstation at my office I haven't been able to convince myself to open it and see for myself. My office is seriously considering Media Composer, but we are waiting to see what the first few updates for FCPX look like. FCP 7 still works just fine right now, so we are in no rush.

Very clever solution! I will be trying this out soon with my PowerMac and my new Pro. I will post the results here afterward. (I am buying a Snow Leopard disk as well incase this doesn't work).

Nick,

I tried the workaround with high hopes but got shot down. The installer says "FCS can't be installed on this disk. This software must be installed on the running system."

The 10.6 machine I'm using does have FCS installed already. I wondered if that was part of the problem but I hesistate to take it off.

Any suggestions?

Michael

old computer:

macbook 2.1 (2007)

2.16 Intel Core 2 Duo

2 GB RAM

OS 10.6.7

new computer:

iMac 3.4GHz Quad-Core IntelCore i7

8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM

AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5

10.7 Lion

I believe that you can install FCS 2 on 10.6, then upgrade to Lion. I have not confirmed this, and will probably not update to Lion anytime soon.

Its just the installer that requires Rosetta. And since 10.7 is upgrade-only, you should be ok.

I recently got a new machine with 10.6 and a Lion upgrade code.

FCS 3 was installed while the computer was still at 10.6.8. Then I installed Lion on top from the App Store.

A couple of days later, it occured to me that I forgot to add LiveType, which is on my FCS2 disc set.

Lion kills Rosetta so it won't see the FCS 2 installer as we already know.

On a whim, I popped the 10.6 disc in and installed Rosetta from the Optional Installs folder and then started the FCS2 disc. I now have my working FCS2 copy of LiveType running in Lion.

Nick,

Are you saying that even though Lion removes Rosetta, the program can work properly in Lion once reinstalled? I thought Rosetta was based on older architecture and was incompatible.

If that's possible I wonder if the entire suite could be installed this way.

Rosetta is/was "bridge software", I believe pretty much all of FCS2 is binary.

I'm thinking that Pacifist may help here... as a way to get around Apple's parochial installers.

Joeamedia wrote:

Nick,

Are you saying that even though Lion removes Rosetta, the program can work properly in Lion once reinstalled? I thought Rosetta was based on older architecture and was incompatible.

If that's possible I wonder if the entire suite could be installed this way.

As above, I just installed Rosetta from the 10.6 disc. Check this screenshot, it,s a collage of The FCS2 installer (you wouldn't normally even see this window in Lion), my About this Mac and Finder windows showing LiveType installed...

As you see, all components have active checkboxes, so it should work for the whole suite.

SO all i need ot do is installl it off my time machine?

You can try it, but I doubt it will work. Its likely Rosetta requires libraries that only the installer would place correctly.