Normally I'm one of those monkey-balls crazy dudes that lives on the bleeding edge of tech and can't wait to try, test and report the latest and greatest stuff. But the past couple of years I've had to shift gears and stick with what's tried and true rather than constantly pushing the envelope. One thing about living on the bleeding edge: Stay there long enough you end up needing a transfusion! haha

I'm now one of those stragglers who's been holding onto my mid '09 MBP running 10.8.5 (with Rock of Gibraltar stability I might add) and the full FCP 7 Suite - with add-ons of course. But time's are a changin' faster and faster it seems with OSX having been updated 3 times since Mountain Lion there's a lot of new-age tech I can't take advantage of because my OS is too old.

FCP is also a long-dead horse with no upgrade path (FCPX will just never do it for me) and since I own PP CS6 and even a license for Creative Cloud I could easily migrate everything over to Adobe if I really wanted to right now… but I'm just not ready.

I'm used to FCP's layout, workflow, workarounds etc. Eventually I won't have a choice but to move everything over to PP, but for now I'm just not letting go.

But, I can't NOT upgrade the OS anymore; it's just too old and long in the tooth, especially for true web compatibility. So, after the holidays I'll be moving over to El Capitan AND, so will my copy of the FCS suite.

There's been lots of people who've made the migration and had no FCP issues while others have reported major problems. So I'll be doing what I used to do years ago here: I'm going to make the move, report how the hardware is handling it and, how the new post-production environment handles it's new home.

Thankfully I've never given up using Carbon Copy Cloner so if things go really wonky I can just restore the last main-drive image and get back to work in minutes.

So when this happens I'll share my findings, workarounds and any niggles that similarly equipped people will need to know if they're in the same boat and holding onto old hardware/OS versions.

Cheers - and Happy Holidays to All!!

My 2010 MBP is on its last legs so while i intend on bringing myself up to speed on Adobe it always seems like there's something more pressing to do. it would be good to know how this went for you. Any words of advice? Thanks.

I hate it when people give the answer to a different question, but here I am anyway. I was in your position last year (FCP 6, actually), I finally gave in and moved to Premiere Pro, and have never been happier. I like it better than FCP.

That said, I did a lot of weird installs before we moved to CC (FCP 6 installer was written for PowerPC) and always found a way. I'm sure you'll do it if you have to!

Mike, I appreciate your input. You're not the first person I've heard say that, so good motivation to take the time to jump in.

I have a 2008 Macbook Pro with El Capitan and FCP 7. Mostly works.

Daniel, can you be a little more specific? Thanks.

Most trouble with the Newer operating OS X systems are around the preference panel which makes clusters for Compressor which was bundled with FCP 7. Previously built clusters do work but may not be as fixable if they stop working. Haven't found anything in FCP 7 which doesn't work but some questions about related programs not burning Blu Laser discs.

I almost forgot I started this thread... So here's the latest:

My old-and-trusty '09 MBP was finally starting to give up the ghost; the internal drive controller on the mainboard was dying a slow death. (It's still up and running but not in top-notch condition.)

So I was forced to purchase a refurb late 2014 Retina 5K 27-inch iMac, the 3.5Ghz w/24GB RAM and the Radeon R9 M290X with 2GB VRAM. Super-nice machine, no complaints.

And as always, I used CCC and migrated everything over to the new system and FCP 7 works flawlessly, and of course much faster/smoother on the new machine.

BUT, still with the same problem: FCP 7 is a long-dead horse with no future. And most likely El Capitan is the last OS that it will run on.

Let me tell you, I HATE Premiere. I know, I know... it's becoming a standard in the editing community. OK so what. I still hate it. Why? The simplicity of doing something like a crossfade between clips the FCP 7 way doesn't happen in PP, it's much less intuitive. And the lack of our dear friend, the 3-wheel color corrector. I really thought I was going to be forced into the PP world or, back to AVID. Well I'm here to tell you, that's just not the case!

If you're a died-in-the-wool FCP 7 user like me and are dreading having to move away from it, guess what: You don't have to!! Well... sorta.

Say "hello" to DaVinci Resolve 12.5: It literally IS FCP 7 re-envisioned, with nearly identical workflows and tools!! And the best part? IT'S FREE!! I haven't totally stopped using FCP 7 yet, but by end of this month D.R. will be the primary tool going forward.

Expect a nice, detailed review very soon.

Another alternative is Lightworks, which also has 3 colour wheels. Former FCP7 users have moved to it, Transitions can be done using a number of methods, the fastest being just using a single key and clicking on add.

It is an editor designed for long form narrative editing.

However, I wouldn't say you should use it precisely the same way as FCP7, that would prove frustrating.

I'm still on FCP 7 on 10.8.5 myself. I'm not going to say I was ever IN LOVE with FCP, but I am used to it now which means pretty fast. Have Premiere CS6 and am still clumsy in it, don't really like it but I see that it does certain things better than FCP (works with just about anything natively, will play in timeline without render, etc.). I've heard good things about Resolve, don't know much about lightworks. Know folks that have/like FCP X and of course the price can't be beat but I don't know about the whole weird new workflow (magnetic timeline, only two tracks or whatever).

I'm a freelance editor and have moved back and forth between many NLE's in my time. I swore black and blue I would never take a job in PP from day dot until 12months ago where I had no choice, now PP is what all my clients use period and I'm loving it. Throw anything at this and one can work start away, It's very customisable with shortcuts If you use Avid, just set them up, In fact I have let my Avid subscription go because PP is now the main NLE.

I'm still on FCP 7 on 10.8.5 myself.

It's been many a year since I've been seen around these parts…. But believe it or not, I am also still running MacOSX 10.8.5 and FCP 6! I had to jump through some hoops when I moved to MacOSX 10.7 back in 2011 because while FCP 6 is a universal app, the installer was a power pc app. But after that, it has been surprisingly stable and robust (for the small amount of video I've done since then).

Now just starting a big legacy video project that involves capturing 200 to 300 hours of old tapes of opera performances I shot, going back to 2001. Picked up a used Sony HVR-M15U deck since I no longer have any tape based cameras.

Things are basically working for me, but still some annoying little gotcha's. I have an OWC thunderbolt 2 dock on the way to expand the ports on my MacBook Air. OWC says you need at least MacOSX 10.9, but my guess is that it will still work on 10.8.5. I downloaded El Capitan and made a bootable install flash drive last night but didn't install. Hoping I can stick with 10.8.5 just a bit longer, since I have a lot of old expensive software and am sure the newer versions of MacOSX will wreak havoc with that. :)

Anyway, it's fun to be back here. I will be posting some other questions related to my antique hardware and software soon!

My 2010 MBP is on its last legs so while i intend on bringing myself up to speed on Adobe it always seems like there's something more pressing to do. it would be good to know how this went for you. Any words of advice? Thanks.

Adobe or Avid would have been the way to go in June 2011 when Apple brought out FCPX. In 2016 the path for FCP7 users Resolve 12.5.2 is the best route. Not only are some of the top developers from Apple's FCP7 team now working for Blackmagic Design, but Resolve 12 is now like a FCP12. A very small learning curve from FCP7 for editing. For color grading there's a learning curve. Fusion 8 which is also free from Blackmagic is a better option than Apple Motion or After Effects. Black magic have just acquired Fairlight & Ultimatte, come NAB in April we are likely to see some very substantial developments to the world's best NLE, Resolve 13 & Fusion 9.

All the best,

Dave

So does resolve have like a "for dummies" color corrector instead of the full on suite of functions? Like the way FCP7 had the color corrector/3 way color corrector effects? If you just need to correct a white balance and add a little saturation/contrast etc.?

I've gotten quite used to Apple Motion so would probably want to stick with that. . .after putting in the time who wants to start all over with a new program?

If you want to restrict yourself to just the color wheels to do color correction you can. I agree Motion is a great motion graphics program for the money, the learning curve for Fusion 8 is probably not worth it for most people at the moment as there is very little training available at the present time. If Motion does everything you think you will ever need, its probably not worth the time to learn a much more advanced program. Fusion 8 has a long way to go to be competitive with Nuke, but if the rate that Blackmagic has developed Resolve is anything to go by, it shouldn't be two long before it surpasses Nuke.

Josh: While Resolve has it's core color-correcting functionality built-in, you definitely don't need any external control panels or special knowledge to use it's color-correcting features. It's basic color correcting panel is just as easy - but far more powerful - than the 3-way color corrector in FCP 7. (see screenshot)

The best thing is, nearly 95% percent of of Resolve's functionality is fully available without limitation - for free!! Seriously, you should download the latest version and try it out, you've literally got nothing to lose.

And for those hanging onto the "old stuff", I get it. I'm still using - and will use FCP 7 for quite some time simply because I've mastered it and it's so damned fast and easy for me to use. But in all honesty after less than 1 hour total time on DaVinci Resolve 12.5.2 I'm already convinced it will become the FCP 7 replacement going forward. It's just too damned powerful, quick and intuitive NOT to make it my primary tool going forward.

Lightworks is definitely a curiosity and over the years seems to have been well developed so I plan on giving it a whirl also, but considering how established Black Magic - and DaVinci have become in the industry I'd be hard pressed to believe anything else would be a viable replacement for FCP 7. For now.

I'm sure Resolve is very nice and if forced to move on that's probably the first thing I'll try. Just don't have a reason to right now. Don't edit a whole lot and when I do it's almost exclusively EX1 footage.

I didn't realize Resolve had a simple color wheel. . .thought it was all nodes and other craziness.

Although when considering Resolve 12.5, ensure your computer is powerful enough, it's pretty demanding.

It's only demanding if you push it to it's high-end capabilities, by NOT using pre-conformed footage or turning on background renders (which by default Resolve wants to auto-render your timeline in 5 seconds of inactivity). So if you set it up properly and bring in easy-to-handle footage, such as ProRes 422 then it's no more demanding than FCP 7 was (is).

I just purchased a late-2014 iMac w/24GB of RAM and it sails through edits much smoother than FCP ever did - and oh my god, *especially* with the built-in titling tool!! Holy cow, even Boris in FCP7 wasn't this simple to use - or as powerful!!

And to be clear, you DON'T need the external control surface/s to use the color-correction capabilities. That too requires a high-end system and fast external drives.

My whole point on this thread is and will be (as I create the assets for the actual review) aimed squarely at the FCP 7 user-base that just can't pull the trigger on anything else BECAUSE we don't want to lose our workflows, functionality or ease of editing.

So if you're a PP, Avid or Lightworks fan already then D.R. 12 may not interest you. But if you're a dyed-in-the-wool FCP guy and want to move forward with something that looks, feels and plays like a new version of FCP would have, then this is definitely up your alley.

Although, you should also bear in mind that using workflows for FCP7 may not be getting the best out of a different NLE, which may have more streamlined methods of doing these operations.

Yes, I gather just using the editing function of Resolve 12.5, is less demanding than the full colour suite.

It's a matter of opinion, which is why there are different tools out there. DVR isn't *exactly* FCP 7, nor should it be. It's what we all hoped Apple would have created for us, instead Black Magic did it.

The best way to describe DVR and it's capabilities are that it's a familiar workspace the FCP 7 editors can get their head around *quickly* rather than reinventing the wheel with totally different layouts and workflows (which is what PP has always felt like to me) while offering up a faster, more logical workspace with easy access to all the primary functions and a quick methodology to "go deep" should the user choose to.

If DVR wasn't so damned logical in it's approach to NLE work I wouldn't be sharing it.

Resolve 12.5 seems to have elements of a number of other NLEs, starting more or less from scratch has the benefit of seeing what works and doesn't work in other NLEs and making use of them.

I just purchased a late-2014 iMac w/24GB of RAM and it sails through edits much smoother than FCP ever did

Thanks for the info on Resolve Robert. I now have El Capitan on an external drive with Resolve and the FCP free trial. Wasn't sure whether my 16gb 2012 2.5ghz i5 mini (with 1.5gb Intel HD 4000 graphics) would be able to run Resolve, but it seems to work fine with some 480i clips that I imported. Same for FCP. Haven't tried anything beyond a brief play yet.

I am nowhere near ready to make the switch to either of these programs, but it will be good to start thinking about the future. Since my last post, I gave up on using my MacBook Air as a primary editing machine, I could not get the OWC Thunderbolt dock to work reliably. So I re-purposed the mini, which has been a media server for the past couple years. It's a bit slower than my MacBook Air and it doesn't have a SSD, but it has all the ports I need, like firewire for my tape deck.

Was pleasantly surprised that I could boot the Mini directly from a clone of my MacBook Air, and Final Cut Pro 6 runs very nicely on it under MacOSX 10.8.5. I am going to stick with this for awhile; it's stable and I have a large quantity of legacy DV tapes to ingest. At this point, I don't see much advantage to upgrading since I'll be working with SD footage for awhile and need firewire for capture/external video monitoring.

After a lot of messing around, I now have Final Cut Pro 6 running nicely under MacOSX 10.8.5 on my Mac Mini and using a BlackMagic Ultrastudio Mini Monitor for external video. Even though Blackmagic says you need at least MacOSX 10.9 for the Mini Monitor, it has been working fine on 10.8.5 and I can choose it as an external audio and video device in FCP.

I also have the Final Cut Pro X free trial running under El Capitan and it also works with the Mini Monitor. As a test, I used 7toX (http://intelligentassistance.com/7tox.html) to translate my current project from FCP 6 to FCPX and it did a pretty good job. I might be able to get used to FCPX with a little practice.

But I'm not sure if my Mini is really up to the task. Everything seems to work fine, but I noticed that the image on the external monitor was a bit ragged, and discovered this was because FCPX was defaulting to only showing one field. Showing both fields makes it look fine, but playback is not completely smooth, it is dropping frames, and this is only a 480i SD project.

My Mini is the 2012 base model, dual i5 2.5ghz (Geekbench score 6773) with 16gb RAM. FCP6 has no problem playing back both fields at full quality on this machine. Maybe there are some other settings to tweak to get smooth playback in FCPX? Will keep playing around with this, but mainly I'm just happy to have everything working well in FCP6 on the Mini now.