Upgrading to FCP 6

G5 ppc dual 2.0 4 GB. I have 4.5HD now. Just finished my project.(Yeah!) I have the upgrade to 5.0 Studio but have not upgraded as yet,still in 4.5. I would like to upgrade straight to 6. I have 4.5 on my System Dive now. Can I leave 4.5 there and also upgrade to 6 on the same System Drive as well? I will also have to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard as well! Thank you!
Paul

I just upgraded to FCP 6 (really the entire Final Cut Studio 2) on my dual 2 GHz G5 with 3.5 GB of RAM. I also upgraded to Leopard because I had a project that required me to use a filter that required the new Quartz Composer engine.

It's taxing the upper limits of what the G5 can handle, for sure, and it highlights why I need to replace this machine sooner rather than later, but it is working and I have successfully completed two projects and am awaiting approvals on the third. Final Cut Pro works well enough. It just needs to rest more often. In the early days, I was faster than the computer, and I had to train myself to let any computer finish a task before moving on. I'm having to re-learn my patience again.

Motion is dog-slow and I stopped trying to do anything in real time. I just do low-res renders instead. Compressor seems a bit zippier, but that's anecdotal. DVD Studio Pro and Color have not been needed, so I haven't launched them at all. I doubt Color would be an enjoyable experience on the G5 & Leopard, though.

I did not install over my old system or do a clean install on my old drive. I replaced the second drive in the G5 internal bay and installed Leopard on a freshly scrubbed drive. I didn't touch my current working system, other than to do routine housekeeping and backups before starting the upgrade. I did this because I didn't know how well FCS2 and Leopard would play on this CPU and I wanted to be able to go back to something I knew worked if it blew up on me.

I actually have been working about every other day on each system. I have a project that needs to eventually go back to another system that is still running Tiger and 5.1.4....so it's been really nice to be able to switch startup drives and continue working without a hitch.

Hope this helps!

deb

Thanks for the info Deb. Since my 2nd drive is my Media drive I guess I should get an external drive and format it Mac OS Extended (journaled)...put Leopard and FCP 6 on it? Could I also clone or copy other applications from one drive to the new one?Is this the correct method?
Thanks!

Your best bet my be to clone the current boot disk to a Firewire drive and totally erase the boot disk and start over. Moving applications from one drive to another never works well unless they are totally self contained. Nothing in Final Cut Studio is self contained.

You wouldn't want to boot from an external drive and use it daily. You could get a SATA dock from MicroCenter or any computer retailer for about $50. Take out your system drive and when you need to access it, you could use the SATA dock. If you decide to go back to the old system, you'll want to swap the drives again. The one I have is made by Thermaltake and is called BlacX. They apparently have one now that is also a media player.

Most of your Tiger applications won't work or won't work well under Leopard. You'll likely find it easier to just install fresh applications and/or search for Leopard-compatible updates.

Documents and other files that are not system related can be dragged to the new drive. I don't keep many non-edit related files on my G5, so that was a minor issue here.

Don't take any shortcuts, especially with this one. It is reaching the upper limits of what the CPU can handle, so not throwing it any OS curveballs will be the difference between it working and driving you nuts.

deb

Hmmm...right now I don't have anything on my 2nd drive which was for Media. I wiped it clean after the last Project soooo couldn't I format "that" drive like my system drive, put the new operating system (Leopard) and FCP 6 on it and get another eSata external drive for media?

Personal Opinion: I never recommend moving apps from a cloned hard drive back to a clean one (you're asking for a headache). Do fresh clean installs.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

That sounds sensible, Katz. Wipe the current media drive, install Leopard and associated programs on that. This gives you dual boot - one Leopard and one Tiger system. Then get an external for media, or have another drive installed.

You could also just remove the Tiger drive - put it on the shelf in case of emergency and replace that slot with a new media drive.

Thanks to all !

I second Grafixjoe's advice. Fresh installs are much much better.


>It's taxing the upper limits of what the G5 can handle, for sure

ProRes isn't half as enjoyable in a G5, that's for sure. It renders much much slower...


>This gives you dual boot - one Leopard and one Tiger system.

That's a good idea. FCP 4.5 isn't supported anymore by Leopard or the current versions of QT.



www.strypesinpost.com