Installing FCP from Disc Images

Hi All. I'm taking the advice I've read from many here & elsewhere to create disc images of the FCP (v7_ discs & install from those. However, when I do this and put the images all in the same folder, then initiate the "Final Cut Studio Install" image, when it's done, it asks for the next physical disc ("Audio Content 1". There doesn't seem to be any way to point to the image of the requested disc. Have I missed a step?

Reid C

Hey Reid,

All you do you open all the DMG or IMG files at once so the "RAM-Disks" are loaded on the desktop...

Set the first going and it will see the rest as long as they are mounted.



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wow, that's cool, Ben.
i've been opening the DMG files when it requests the next disk.

you're saying i can open all at the outset, and go to lunch?


nick

That's what he's saying. At least that's how it works with Final Cut Studio 2, which is the last version I did this with. Navigate to the folder with all the disk images, select all, cmd-O, fire up the installer, license yourself, go grab a coffee.

On my Mac Pro, back in the day, it took about 15 minutes to install freaking everything.

oh, so it's a coffee break, not lunch.

very cool,
thanks.


nick
(can i still have lunch?)

Keyboard monkeys only eat after the clients eat! Back in your cage, keyboard monkey! Oook oook!

Thanks so much Ben (and all) for the input. I can confirm that with FCP v7, one can NOT open the DMG files as the discs are requested, by the installer, all DMG files must be unzipped & sitting on the desktop. It was a long lunch for me with the laptop, uncompressing the files (before the install) took the longest. Thanks again!

Reid

Quote

all DMG files must be unzipped & sitting on the desktop

You don't actually mean "unzipped," right? Like as in "zipped," as in the compression thingy dealy? Since disk images are already compressed (by default, I'm pretty sure) there's no point in trying to compress them further.

If you mean the delay when mounting a disk image, when the window says something like "checking" or "verifying" or whatever, you can totally skip that. I've never had a problem skipping that step when mounting read-only disk images.

My mistake. All DMG files must be mounted on the desktop. Good to know re verifying.

ReidCAULFIELD Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It was a long lunch for me
> with the laptop, uncompressing the files (before
> the install) took the longest. Thanks again!

There is a quick terminal command to turn off "verify" of disk images... saves about half the time of the install.

defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify true

The reason for making DMGs in this scenario is to speed things up so you definitely don't want to compress them. Just choose Read-Only.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

Rather than DMGs I create DVD/C-RD Master Images .cdr - these mount immediately (although as Jon said uncompressed read-only DMG should be fine too).

Heres my suggestion:

Put your backups on an external HDD (in my case a DroboPro on the network)

Put folders for all the Apple updates, 3rd party installers, Application Support, Final Cut Pro User Data & Settings (and I guess fonts and other stuff you use - I have these elsewhere).

If you only update via Software update, you can download the separate ProApps update for FCS 3 here: [www.apple.com]

This means its pretty much a one stop shop to reinstall everything without having to download all the extras and if the internet was down for some reason then you wouldn't be stopped from getting the system back up and running.

I also put my serial numbers on there so its a cut-n-paste job and I don't have to get the FCS boxes out of the cupboard.






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There is one thing to be aware of, I guess. I forget what the average data rate is for a DVD, but if you're careless, you can pretty easily set things up so installing from disk images is slower than installing from DVD.

Last place I worked, we had a 100 TB filesystem that was accessible via NFS, and it delivered a consistent 100 MB/s over gigabit. So installs from disk image were much, much faster than DVD, and faster even that off a local SATA drive. (Not faster than installing off my framestore, obviously, but duh, that's where my footage goes. Software doesn't go there.)

I have to imagine that a Firewire 800 drive would be significantly faster than installing from DVD, though, even discounting the avoidance of DVD-shuffling.

Its actually faster to make images of the DVDs then mount them and install; than it is to simply install directly from the DVDs!

Apparently a 16x DVD (avg. ~12x) read speed maxes out at around 21.13MBps

In comparison my DroboPro via iSCSI (Gigabit Ethernet) does about 75~80MBps sustained read.



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]