Hi folks... well, after all my complaining about FCPX, I decided to grab a copy of FCS3 and buy a new iMac in the interim while I decide what to do for the long term.

There USED to be a web "almanac" of stable combinations of FCP versions indexed to OS and QT combos that were stable. Google hasn't turned it up.

Was hoping for feedback on what combos people are running successfully.

I have the FCP7.0.3 update waiting, I'm CURRENTLY running OSX10.6.7 and have installed both QTX and QT7.6.6

Any advice, ESPECIALLY on a new 27" iMac i5 2.7GHz would be ASTOUNDING!

Hi Shaun,

The latest updates of snow leopard and quicktime 7 should work perfectly with FCP 7 on your new iMac. It's Avid that you have to be careful with OS updates. I think the OS 10.6.8 broke something in Avid but I can't remember for sure.

As always, Tim... a VERY sincere Thank You!

Hi Shaun,

Many have complained that ever since they forced the App Store into the builds starting with 10.6.6 that things have moved more slowly than before. In my test-bed machines I too did notice that things like sleep, shut-down and sometimes startup did happen much more slowly after the .6 update.

What I've found is that the directories past the .5 version have become just a tad unstable mainly because Apple has been pushing in new code to prepare for updating to Lion. If you have a copy of DiskWarrior you can fix it easily, otherwise if you continue with the update path you may need to boot from your original Snow Leopard install DVD and use Disk Utility to use the fix permissions and Repair Disk routines to keep things smooth.

I would not update past the .6 update *unless* you plan on being an early-adopter of Lion's new architecture.

Lion is set to release tomorrow (supposedly) and as I mentioned in another thread my advice to all OS X users is to wait at least a few weeks if not longer to let the code-monkeys wrangle any bugs that may come up.

Thanks Robert. Unfortunately, I bought YESTERDAY and OsX10.6.7 is the installed version so I can't "roll back" to .6

Addendum: and the very REASON I bought yesterday was to avoid Lion altogether as I have a sneaky suspicion it might break FCS...

There USED to be a web "almanac" of stable combinations of FCP versions indexed to OS and QT combos that were stable. Google hasn't turned it up.
That's here (http://www.digitalrebellion.com/blog/posts/recommended_quicktime_and_mac_os_configurations_for_final_cut_pro.html). But it stopped at FCP 6.0.6! :(

Thanks anyway, Martin! I KNEW I had seen it somewhere and thought it was Larry Jordan...

Running FCP 7.0.4, QT 7.6.6 & 10.6.8 - no problems.

Moving to Adobe Premier Pro soon however.

Thanks Rick. EXACTLY what I needed to hear... like I said, this is an interim solution to buy me some time and still allow me to purchase the Thunderbolt enabled Matrox MXO2 series later this month when they drop for legacy I/O...

Rick/Shaun,

Ever since the FCP X debacle started I've been working on adding content to the workshop I'm hosting that will specifically address those who ultimately want to move away from FCP and Apple hoodwinks into a stabilized NLE platform. That being the Production Premium suite from Adobe, since it currently is the *only* other full-fledged NLE suite for Mac.

So in the coming weeks after this first workshop is completed I'll be posting info on the "switching" process and how to avoid - if any - pitfalls to keep the transition as smooth as possible.

If you want to get a head-start now, Adobe has launched several pages both on learning Premiere Pro and the switching process.

And taking advantage of Thunderbolt is absolutely going to be the game-changing add-on for this year for any NLE package.

Robert: If/when I jump ship from FCP/FCS, I'm moving away from Apple hardware completely... I'm a spiteful fellow... avoided getting an iPhone and went Android instead.

Hey Shaun,

While I share the "stop screwing me Apple" sentiment, you'd actually be shooting yourself in the foot by dumping the Mac hardware. As of today, for example, Apple released the first Thunderbolt-equipped 27" inch display, which would enable not only to be used as it's primary function but also as a dock for MBP and be the T.B. hub for other devices - such as the R6 array from Promise.

So far none of the PC manufacturers have jumped on the T.B. bandwagon in this fashion; most certainly they will eventually but with this new tech Apple actually brings next-gen capabilities that PC's just can't touch. Right now, that is.

And don't forget, you still get the best of both worlds with Boot Camp and Vista/Win 7 is fully equipped to handle TB devices with driver installation.

It may well come to pass that Apple will continue to divert itself away from pure pro offerings even in hardware but today you're ahead of the game if you stay on the platform. For what it's worth.

The lack of Apple support for BD-R's is also problematic for me... I PERSONALLY don't need to author BluRay video disks but the sheer fact I have to jump through hoops to burn a BD-R DATA disk is going to get old...

I'm not getting RID of my existing Apple hardware and if I decide I need a Mac pro tower to run FCP7 down the line I will but I'm no longer a WILLING Mac Fan...

I use the right tool for the job and frankly a LOT of the gloss has fallen away in the past month for me...

If the cases weren't so gosh darn sexy...

Addendum: missed the TB hub display announcement. Thanks... that actually solves a problem for me... and a substantial one at that!

Robert: If/when I jump ship from FCP/FCS, I'm moving away from Apple hardware completely... I'm a spiteful fellow... avoided getting an iPhone and went Android instead.

Remember once you are on the Adobe platform you can switch OS at a later date. This is certainly how it appears to me having just started the switch as they sent me both PC and Mac serial numbers.

My gut instinct is that Apple are no longer interested in selling to Pro users so a few years down the line when I do need to upgrade I'll be able to hop OS with ease. We've already seen the plain Macbook dropped today and an OS that has alot in common with the iOS platform has been launched. 3 years down the line Apple probably think the market will be college kids sitting in Starbucks editing cameraphone footage on a iPad.

BTW so far everything is going swimmingly with CS5.5. Delighted to load in FCP projects to Premiere and only have my filters missing. Even the Motion projects go into it fine. Get it while it is half price and you can ease yourself over as I plan to.

And taking advantage of Thunderbolt is absolutely going to be the game-changing add-on for this year for any NLE package.
Hi Robert.

I'm very likely going to pick up Production Premium at the end of the month, plus a Thunderbolt iMac, with the idea of phasing out FCS and running Prod Premium alongside FCP X going forward. I know that they pushed FCP X out the door as a "half-done", but I still hold out some hope that Apple will eventually complete it. But you can't rely on that, so I'm looking at turning Prod Premium into my professional workhorse.

Which brings us to Thunderbolt. I'll be very interested in any testing you might do in leveraging Thunderbolt to run an external NVIDIA graphics card (in a Thunderbolt enclosure) to a new iMac or MBP to take advantage of the CUDA acceleration.

I think that's going to be a real boom area (attempting to leverage CUDA externally using Thunderbolt) for the Mac users adopting Prod Premium.

So in the coming weeks after this first workshop is completed I'll be posting info on the "switching" process and how to avoid - if any - pitfalls to keep the transition as smooth as possible.
Perhaps we should lobby Chris to set up a new sub-forum under the Adobe Creative Suite forum called "Creative Suite for FCP editors"?

The good news is that there's still no compelling - or forcible - reason to be thinking about going into a PC-only environment. We've got at least another 2-3 years before Apple proves it's direction for pros using Apple hardware.

And with TB on-board the speeds we will all enjoy will literally trounce even what an ATTO fiber card could produce - for a fraction of the cost to boot.

But I strongly suggest that NO pro editor switchover to Lion just yet; all this "gestures" technology is already causing headaches with non-Apple software (it will be some time before the multiple versions of gestures becomes standardized - if ever) which means that FCP and PP could have some user-interface issues with the new architecture.

To be clear: Lion is making your OS an iOS-type environment, it does NOT increase productivity, speed or graphics-intensive apps like video work any better. Which means you don't NEED it, it's gimmicky at best.

10.6.5 through .8 works just fine across the board with all the most-used and critical apps we all need to do WORK, so don't rock the boat.

With regard to creating a new category for FCP users migrating to the PP environment; let me see how things pan out with those doing just that in my workshop. If it looks like there'll be more questions than answers then yes, a new category might be very helpful, but so far almost everyone who's made the switch - or is in the middle of it - is not have any major headaches. Partly because Adobe has gone out of their way to provide a HUGE amount of "how to" videos on their webpages for PP which have so far proven to be priceless and timely.

In all honesty, I've never seen any manufacturer in our industry provide so much data and useful information for their user-base about their products before. Apple has never done this, and even Avid nor Sony have provided this level of indirect support. Adobe is absolutely going out of their way to make sure their customers are being taken care of.

If only Apple had learned that lesson years ago we'd not be talking about a migration away, would we?

Shaun,

Apple has acknowledged issues with Seagate hard drives in some of the iMac 27" models sold this month. You should check your serial number on this site. Apple - Support - iMac 1TB Seagate Hard Drive Replacement Program (http://www.apple.com/support/imac-harddrive/)

Thanks for that, Tim... will check right away... I DO have some LED panel flicker but it is FLEETING and maybe once a day...

OK! All good! THAT is a load off...

Perhaps we should lobby Chris to set up a new sub-forum under the Adobe Creative Suite forum called "Creative Suite for FCP editors"?We could probably get away with one ongoing thread under this title, and making it a sticky.

FCP 7 with the latest QT updates and 10.6.8 are now completely stable - with these caveats:

- Manually install the latest Flash Player plug-in for Safari; for whatever reason Safari 5.1 has some weirdness with that plug-in and will cause your system to hang on shut-down if you don't manually put in the latest version.

- Java Runtime also has some strangeness with the .8 update; no clear reason for it and Apple has not yet addressed it - not even in the 1.1 update for 10.6.8. Install the latest updates AND, go into your JAVA preferences (Apps - Utilities - Java Prefs) and make sure you have both the 32 and 64-bit versions installed. If not, manually install the latest JRE and that will fix the glitch.

Production Premium is also rock-solid on this combo.

10.7 is totally another story and is not yet ready for professional, prime-time use for any NLE package. Give it a few months for the bugs to clear.

We could probably get away with one ongoing thread under this title, and making it a sticky.

I reckon that's a great idea. There should be quite a few FCP editors picking up Production Premium (I just picked up mine last week) while this "50% off" deal is happening and a sticky would be a workable resource to help with the transition.

It would also be a good place to share all of the tutorials and tips which might be "old hat" to existing Adobe CS users, but might be a complete revelation to an FCS user. Like this one:

No Stupid Questions with Colin Smith - Advanced Noise Reduction in Audition CS5.5 | Adobe TV (http://tv.adobe.com/watch/no-stupid-questions-with-colin-smith/advanced-noise-reduction-in-audition-cs55/)

I'm still shaking my head and going, "Wow!" over that one. To me, that single feature justifies the price of the entire suite right there. So a sticky would be useful, not only for the "gotchas" but to point out features to the newcomers from FCS which could be otherwise overlooked.

FCP 7 with the latest QT updates and 10.6.8 are now completely stable - with these caveats:

Robert, given those caveats and the fact that I CURRENTLY have FCP7 running solidly (it would appear SO FAR...) on OSX10.6.7 would you ADVISE the update to OSX10.6.8? Is there an advantage that I don't see? Of course, I've only been up and running for a little over a week so I haven't found any "gotchas" yet with this setup. The projects that I am working on right now are fairly simple/standard for me. BUT if updating makes sense, I'd like to do it before I have a RIDICULOUS amount of stuff to back-up.

10.6.8 = No advantage over the ".7' release.

Stay on that setup until Lion get's thoroughly worked over - maybe a 7.1 release.

I WON'T do a Lion update on the edit system. Nothing for ME there. I'll do incremental upgrades to sort out issues on an edit system but NEVER have I ever done a family upgrade. Well... except OS8.6 - OS9 when I needed to in order to keep running the ORIGINAL FCP running on my original B&W G3 450MHz...

My new custom-order iMac finally arrived last night (after a 2 week wait!) and I migrated everything over. It is running on Lion, of course. I've been checking each app, one by one, this afternoon and am shocked by how many things Lion seems to have "broken".

It has firmed my resolve to NOT upgrade my Macbook Pro (which contains all the same apps) and leave it running on Snow Leopard.

Here is what I've found with Lion:

1/ Cinema Tools - GONE - I just can't get it to open. It quits immediately every time I try to open it.

2/ LiveType - faulty - the Media Browser preview window gives nothing but colourful static when I try to preview LiveFonts, Textures, Objects and Effects. It does preview "Fonts" okay though. When I apply a LiveFont to the track, though, it does show up and seem to work okay. Why is why I classify it as faulty rather than broken.

Of course, there's an outside chance that my graphics card could be faulty (even though everything is brand new).

I also checked the LiveFonts in Motion 3 and they give the same "static" in the Library preview window for about a second and then settle down and display properly.

3/ DVHSCap - GONE - Lion doesn't recognise it at all. Lion doesn't seem to support any PowerPC applications any more as it moves closer towards an iOS-type of scene. I still have an old JVC GY-HD100 series camera (even though I shoot with an EX1R these days) and the most workable way of ingesting the JVC footage was to capture with DVHSCap (.m2t file) and then put a QuickTime wrapper on it using ClipWrap.

ClipWrap opens okay with Lion. I tried to open HDVxDV, which is the alternate way (in the absence of DVHSCap) to capture the .m2t file, but HDVxDV is also GONE under Lion. It quits immediately every time I try to open it.

XDCAM Transfer seems to work okay under Lion. I converted a test BPAV and the resultant QuickTime movie seems fine.

Magic Bullet QuickLooks wouldn't install at all under Lion. Fortunately their website had a newer version which works under Lion, which I downloaded and then it installed fine.

Sonicfire Pro 5 (a great source of music for corporate video) did manage to open, but was so faulty I couldn't get a product with it under Lion. I'm currently trying to find out if there's a Lion update for this software.

I also couldn't open my scriptwriting software, Final Draft, under Lion. Fortunately, they had a specific Lion update on their website and now it works fine.

I guess the "moral" is that software which is constantly supported and updated will be fine under Lion. Older legacy software (especially that which is used for older legacy equipment) has mostly been abandoned and broken.

As I said earlier, I'll be keeping my MBP on Snow Leopard - specifically so I can keep using my legacy software. But for any who doubted the wisdom of Robert's words, I thought I'd give some real-life examples of apps which Lion has either broken or made faulty.

As for me, I installed Adobe Production Premium CS5.5 on the new iMac today. Going forward, I envision that I'll be using only Prod Premium and FCP X going forward (and will drop FCS 2 as soon as practicable).

Why? I only want to deal with software which is supported and will keep functioning properly despite ever-changing and evolving operating systems.