Q: Does Final Cut Pro 7 work with Mavericks?

My advice to all interested in this topic.

When Apple (or any major player) "give up" on important software to run your business in any way, get your head out of the sand, and start a long term, under your own control plan for your companies future. I'm stubborn. I loved FCP and had been with it since 3.0 and Live Type. I was going to use it no matter what.

Follow advice here for the transition, keep partitions with different operating systems as you transition TO ADOBE PREMIER. We have 5 workstations every one also with internal Serial ATA drawers with Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Maverick, Yosemite, and now ElCapitan.

The 6 month transistion to Premier was worth it, we also have the new 2014 MacPro, and video production is the joy it was when this company opened. Compressor ever get you down? Kick it to the curb with Adobe Media Encoder. It will blow your mind. Motion? After Effects is faster and crashes almost never. I subscribed to this thread a long time ago hoping someone would save me. Save yourself and move on. Apple has abandoned professional video. Get out while you can. Don't even consider that "X" nonsense. It should be called "iMovie Pro".

bearguy9, I agree with you that FCP7 is terminal so those still using it must plan to move on.  But the schedule for this will be different for every user, and the destination too.

So far, with a little help from Resolve (which can input and output 16-bit TIFFs, as FCP7 can't), I can do all I need using FCP7.  I don't need anything offered by any Mac OSX's past Mountain Lion.  If not for my eSATA card working unreliably under Snow Leopard, I'd run FCP7 only under Snow Leopard, where FCP7 really works well.  Besides avoiding the playback problem described in my last post, FCP7 renders about 15% faster under Snow Leopard than under Mountain Lion.  A beauty of the Mac is the ease of creating boot volumes, so I can shoot into the Mountain Lion volume running Resolve, make some .mov file, and shoot back into the Snow Leopard volume to use the file in FCP7.  This game will work until the FCP7 has some serious incapability.  This might already have happened for people who need to edit H.264, which FCP7 does unreliably.  I don't need to edit H.264.  Every user has different needs.

Likewise bearguy9's embrace of Premiere won't be every FCP7 refugee's choice.  I'm reluctant to move to any Adobe software since I distrust Adobe's color science and abhor the GUIs they inflict on users.  bearguy9 can't ignore that some professional FCP7 refugees now use "iMovie Pro".  I'll look at Avid.  Editing software is an intimate tool and none might ever fit like one's first.

I don't want to lead anyone forwards or backwards.  I posted earlier today with a simple observation about bad FCP7 playback under Mountain Lion and Mavericks.  Somebody has already marked it: "This helped me".  But that doesn't help me.  I need to learn if it's just my systems havng that FCP7 playback problem.

DC

I think the problem with the playback of 1080/50p may be caused by lack of RAM.

Although you  have 16GB RAM or more, I believe that legacy FCP can only utilise about 4GB.

This might explain why 1080/50p material plays badly in FCP but OK in QT Player which can use all the RAM.

FCP X like other modern NLEs has no such limitation.

Incidentally your disparaging comment about "iMovie Pro"  suggests that you have never used the later versions and have been traumatised by the original 2011 version which was hastily introduced and lacked some essential features.

If this is the case, I would recommend that you give FCP X 10.2.2 a try.

You can download a free 30  day trial from here  http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/trial/

@Ian - your suggested cause ignores that the playback of the same clip (before and after rendering) was perfect in FCP7 under OSX Snow Leopard using the very same machine. (FCP7's 4GB RAM limitation was there from the beginning.)  The problem showed up in FCP7 under OSX Mountain Lion and Mavericks.  I clearly stated: "There is no such problem with FCP7 under Snow Leopard." 

@Ian - the disparaging expression "iMoviePro" was that of the poster to whom I replied. I clearly stated: 'bearguy9 can't ignore that some professional FCP7 refugees now use "iMovie Pro"', quoting his expression.

Please let's get back to the topic of this strand: "Does Final Cut Pro 7 work with Mavericks?".

I find that certain clips that play well in the FCP7 canvas under Snow Leopard, do not play well in the FCP7 canvas under Mountain Lion or later OSXs.  I'm looking for confirmations from other FCP7 users.

DC

Sorry, I was conflating responses to both your comments and bearguy9.

Regarding the playback problem, you said you did a fresh install.

Do you mean you erased the hard drive and reinstalled the operating system and FCP as recommended for pro apps?

@Ian - yes, a fresh FCP 7.0.3 was installed onto a fresh OSX 10.8.3 and also onto a fresh OSX 10.9.5.

The OSX 10.8.3 was what came with the computer. First I installed QuickTime 7.6.6. Then I installed FCP 7 from the FCS3 installer followed by ProAppsUpdate 2010-02 to bring it to version 7.0.3. The system was subsequently updated to OSX 10.8.5.  After observing the playback problem with FCP 7.0.3 under OSX 10.8.5, I did uninstall the FCP using Digital Rebellion FCS Remover, and did reinstall FCP 7.0.3 and observed the playback problem once again.

The OSX 10.9.5 came from Apple updates upon an OSX 10.8.3 volume -- clone of what came with the computer -- that had had no software installed. (That is as fresh an OSX 10.9.5 volume as I can make on this computer.)  FCP 7.0.3 was installed on the OSX 10.9.5 volume as described above.

Somehow FCP7 under 10.8.5 or 10.9.5 doesn't access the hardware as well as FCP7 under 10.6.8 does. 

DC

It sounds like an OS problem.

To get  more relevant responses I suggest you create a new discussion as not many people will wade through a thread that was marked as "solved" almost 2 years ago.

You should also post it on the Creative Cow website as that probably has more FCP 7 users than this one.

If the 50p projects are causing unendurable playback problems during the edit, you could try editing in a 25p project and when finished, copy it into a new 50p project , allow it to render and then export.

This works with FCP X but I haven't tried it in FCP 7.

One thing that should definitely relieve the stress of editing 1080/50p is to use ProRes Proxy Media.

This is explained in this thread  https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1179959  together with a video tutorial by Shane Ross.

Use of ProRes Proxy does not solve this problem, because it is purely a problem of display.  Sure a ProRes 422 file has over three times the size of a ProRes Proxy file, and that could certainly affect the computer's ability to read the first file in realtime.  But once the file is read, ProRes 422 takes no more effort to decode than ProRes Proxy does.  And once decoded for display, it takes no more effort to display.  I have just verified that my 1920x1080 50p test clip converted to ProRes Proxy exhibits the same playback problem as it did in ProRes 422.  This is a playback problem with FCP7 under Mountain Lion and Mavericks. 

Anyhow, if FCP7 under Mountain Lion or Mavericks required the use of proxies when FCP7 under Snow Leopard didn't, that would confirm my suspicion that FCP7 doesn't work as well with the later operating systems. It doesn't work as well, and the proxy can't help.  I tried relaxing the settings in the Playback Control tab, which also didn't help.

DC

@Ian - the suggestion to edit in 25p obviously doesn't work for the very kinds of editing described in my first post: "very fast editing, even single frames". 

We keep returning to the same simple point: FCP7 plays back what I edit perfectly under OSX 10.6.8.  I can keep using FCP7 in 10.6.8 -- I'm trying out another eSATA card that should be happier in 10.6.8 -- and bounce back and forth between 10.6.8 and 10.8.5 (or 10.9.5) as necessary (when other software needs the later OS). 

This is a strand on whether FCP7 works with Mavericks. My experiences with FCP7 under Mountain Lion and Mavericks vs. under Snow Leopard might help refine the question.  Or, if I'm just unlucky and the only one with such experiences, I want to find that out.

DC

I've been using Final Cut Pro 7 with Mavericks on my Mac Pro mid-2010 computer for a year or so and have had no problems. I also have used DVD Studio Pro with no problems. My problem though is how to connect old firewire video devices to my computer. I did post a question about that in the Mac Pro forum. But the above is my 2 cents worth on Mavericks with FCP 7. Frank Fitzpatrick

@frankELF - maybe you've never confronted a flickery video like the one where I saw the problem.  This video plays fine in FCP7 installed in Snow Leopard.  It also plays fine in Quicktime 7 installed in either Snow Leopard or Mavericks.  But it plays with random horizontal line artefacts in FCP7 installed in Mavericks.  I can upload enough -- 419 MB -- of the clip for checking whether it does this in your Mavericks system, if you can download such a big file.

DC