What's this worth? FCS2 new in shrink-wrap

[Derek Heeps]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

Howdy from Texas,

In the "stuff that needs to leave the house" department, I have a brand new, unopened, still in the shrink-wrap Final Cut Studio 2. Can y'all please tell me what it's worth -- if anything -- so that I can list it for sale properly.

It's not compatible with today's MacOS, I know that. Which OS does it need? It starts at OS X 10.4.9 but goes up to what? And isn't there a processor limitation?

I've also got four FCP books to go with it. This box is gonna be heavy. Thanks in advance,

I paid £50 for my boxed set of FCS 3 , which includes FCP 7 a few years ago . I run it on my 2008 Mac Pro 5,1 8 core 2.8 GHz machine under El Capitan

[Derek Heeps]

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

Hey Chris,

I still have my copy of this.... it was a long time ago but I'm pretty sure you gave it to me! :) This is the one that includes Final Cut Pro 6. There was one update to "legacy" FCP - version 7 (part of Final Cut Studio 3 I believe). I thought about upgrading at the time but there were very few new features and it was expensive, so I passed and have used FCP 6 for many years until finally getting FCPX last year.

As for compatibility, the "gotcha" is that the installer for this version is not a universal app, so it requires Rosetta and Apple dropped support for that with MacOSX 10.7 (Lion). Now it's only the installer that needs Rosetta however, and there are some work-arounds - I think you'll find old threads on that topic right here. I've also read that the installer actually *is* a universal app, but there's something about the way Apple packaged it that it doesn't appear to be universal. Not sure how relevant that is.

Anyway, if you have already installed Final Cut Studio on an old machine, it will be properly moved to a new one by the Mac Migration Assistant. I have it running under Sierra (MacOS 10.12) on my MacBook Air in fact but don't really use it there. I'm not sure if it works with High Sierra.

So if someone bought it today, the easiest way to install would be to do it on an old computer with MacOSX 10.6 or earlier, then "migrate" it to their new system. If that's not an option, then use the search feature here to find old threads on installing without Rosetta. IIRC, you need to copy the installation disks to your computer and manually copy the contents of the package files in the correct places.

I'm not sure about the other programs in Final Cut Studio 2. Have heard that DVD Studio Pro still works but haven't tried. I have used the old version of Motion and it still worked. Compressor also works. Color might be a problem with newer graphics chips. I have my quad mini set to dual boot into either Sierra or Mountain Lion (10.8.5). Everything works fine in FCP 6 in that version and I still have a lot of old projects that I need to access there. My experience is that it's much more crash-prone than FCPX and just doesn't run as smoothly. Also a few odd glitches like missing scroll bars (or something like that). I had Soundtrack running for awhile on MacOSX 10.8.5. All the legacy versions of FCP are 32bit and can only access 4gb of RAM.

Now as for "what is this worth"... most people wouldn't find it useful. But for someone with an older computer that doesn't support FCPX, it could be very useful. One might also assume that such a person has a very limited budget for software however. ;)

I still use FCP 7 because I just don’t like FCPX , I like the traditional timeline layout