Final Cut Studio and Mountain Lion 10.6.8 Problems

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Level 1

4 points

Final Cut Studio and Mountain Lion 10.6.8 Problems

I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion 10.6.8. on my Mac Pro (upgraded from Snow Leopard).

I now realise, looking at various forums that trying to run FCP7 on ML is not straightforward, or maybe not even possible!

I have found that after updating to ML, Final Cut Pro 7 (Studio 3) would appear to run pretty much fine, but the main problem is constant 'dropped frames' warnings when running HD ProRes projects. The frequency of these 'dropped frames' freezes (every few seconds!) makes FPC7 unuseable. These HD ProRes projects ran perfectly well under Snow Loepard. In fact FCP7 was totaly stable and reliable despite constant daily hammering.

There is a lot of good ideas and information on the forums, largely talking about FCP being incompatable because ML no longer supports Power PC type installers, but there doesn't seem to be very much overall agreement.

Now that ML has been around awhile, can anyone share any definite information about FCP7 working with ML? Apple themselves maybe?

I suppose it's my own fault for not doing my homework properly before trying ML. I rely on FCP7 for my work. So I'm going to spend today clean-installing my MacPro back to Snow Loepard and re-installing everything. Oh joy!

John G

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Oct 2, 2012 2:57 AM

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Answer 1

LouBobby

Level 1

0 points

Oct 11, 2012 2:26 PM in response to Johnny Gman

Hi,

You refer to 10.6.8 as being Mountain Lion (ML). To my knowlwdgw, ML is 10.8. I'm running FCP 7 on Lion (10.7.5) with no problem at all.

FCP 2 is not compatible with Lion because FCP 2 runs only on Power PC Macs.

Maurice

iMac, OS Lion (10.7.5)

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Answer 2

Oct 11, 2012 3:35 PM in response to Johnny Gman

FCP 7 works fine for me on 10.8.2

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Answer 3

Oct 12, 2012 2:06 PM in response to Johnny Gman

Also getting dropped frames constantly under Mountain Lion. This appears to be fairly common, from what I'm reading. Have given up on Mountain Lion for the moment.

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Answer 4

Johnny Gman Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 16, 2012 5:19 AM in response to LouBobby

In reply to Maurice, yes, Mountain Lion is 10.8. In my post I mistakenly typed 10.6.8 which is Snow leopard.

For now I'm sticking to Snow Leopard. Did a ground-up reinstall and my FCP7 set-up runs perfectly again. Happy, happy!

If I had time (which I don't) it would be interesting to try a complete re-build of a Mac Pro with Mountain Lion, then install FCP7 and FCPX from scratch. I suspect that may work. Some people are saying they have no probs, but when I tried it as a upgrade (rather than a re-install) it was a mess.

Another problem with 10.8. was that my Blackmagic Intensity card would not output pictures from FCPX to my monitor, despite trying the latest drivers from BMD. This was my main reason for upgrading to Mountain Lion in the first place - I wanted to try out FCPX, but monitor output apparently only works with 10.7 onward.

Does anyone else have any experience with FCPX and Intensity cards?

John G

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Answer 5

Feb 9, 2013 9:10 PM in response to Johnny Gman

Im finally running Final Cut Pro 6 on Mountain Lion perfectly fine. I first backed up my Mac, erased my Mac HDD and installed SL. I then installed Final Cut Pro 6, I searched for any updates for FCP6 and SL as well and did all updates available. Then upgraded to ML everything works fine, Im happy. Also, I installed Snow Leopard in an external HD, installed FCP6 just in case didn't work, but it did so far so good. If any body bought a new mac with ML, FCP6 is not going to work unless downgrading to SL install FCP then upgrade. 🙂

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Answer 6

RatVega™

Level 4

2,005 points

Feb 10, 2013 1:41 PM in response to LouBobby

LouBobby wrote:

FCP 2 is not compatible with Lion because FCP 2 runs only on Power PC Macs.

Assuming that you meant FCS2 (Studio 2) then this is incorrect. FCS2 will run on both PowerMacs and Intel Macs. Numerous users have FCS2 on Lion systems.

FCP2 requires a 300MHz or faster Blue & White PowerMac G3 or PowerMac G4 system (available around the turn of the century) but only on MacOS 9.1 or later. It was not certified to run on OS X in any version.

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