Install 2X FCP on a single machine?

OK, I figure this is basic, but I don't see it anywhere on the web...

I'm assuming that, if you tried to install 2 copies of FCP on your machines (ex., so as to output with one copy while simultaneously working on another project on the second machine) FCP would just re-install, and you'd still be left with just a single copy of FCP installed, right?

Or, is it poss to output in the BG while working on something else in FCP? I've never seen it...

Thx...

In any case, the second instance of FCP would refuse to launch because it would have detected that the serial number is already in use. This will happen if you have two different computers on a network, trying to run the same S/N FCP at the same time. It is legal to install one copy on your tower and another (of the same S/N) on your laptop, but not to run them simultaneously. So you couldn't do what you asked about even on two different machines, unless you had 2 licenses.

And it would be a real snafu to try to install 2 different copies of the same thing on one computer - access to supporting files would collide all over the place.

But I don't know if there is some other answer to your last question.

Scott

Yes, I figured there were those sorts of collective restrictions. it's just such a drag to wait while you're locked out, when you could be on to some other task... Oh well......

Thx!

FCP 7 allows you to export a sequence via it's "Share" option ... this essentially sends your export ob to Compressor as a background task allowing you to get on with something else. Is that what you wanted to do? Bear in mind that such "background" processing tasks are still "processing" so you have to live with the resultant loss of performance when dealing with whatever else it is you are getting on with.

Best
Andy

It's pretty easy to run several instances of FCP the same time without major collisions. But you should know what you do.

Just paste
/Applications/Final\ Cut\ Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/Final\ Cut\ Pro
into a terminal window and hit return.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

What's the implications for doing that Andreas? I know if you get stuff wrong even a tiny bit in the terminal you can cause damage, but I mean what's the implications of running two FCPs? Is it feasible?

As I said. You must know what you're doing and why. As long as you don't use any unix command, but only typing a file path, you can't mess up anything in Terminal, though you can mess up something with your project(s) working with multiple instances of FCP this way.
Instead of using the Terminal command you just can open the FCP package, and navigate to the Contents/MacOS folder and double click FCP. If you want do it more often, just create an alias of this executable at a place on your machine or drag it to the dock.

Reasons to use this way of working probably would be to let one project render in the background and working with another project in the foreground -- or let multiple projects render at a time.
This will only make sense if you got enough processors/kernels available. You also have to be aware that this way of working with FCP will share ONE prefs file and one video in/out card.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

I'd be worried about project / preference corruption from doing this. I think it's a lot safer to just wait, or render it out on another computer. Or change your workflow so you don't have to render so often.

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...

Ha!

A question that I can answer at last ... YES.

Here it is:

[www.spherico.com]

fcp_dup allows you to open a 2nd copy of FCP while you are rendering and to continue to work. I have found it's best to work on a sequence which refers to different media files than the one which is rendering. But it does actually work - at least on my Octo.

Best

Harry.

Guys, this is a really bad idea. Apart from all the obvious problems you'll run into with real-time performance (or the conspicuous lack thereof) and multiple applications trying to access I/O drivers simultaneously, having multiple processes access CFPreferences through the same application ID at the same time is a recipe for disaster.

Do not do this.

Jeff,

You are the one who never sleeps and you're the one who knows a lot more than most of us here. I love that. But in this case I've to contradict.

There are no obvious problems, at least nothing else than running FCP. It's running two apps at the same time - sharing the same prefs. Where is the problem? That's the same as as running two or more projects with one instance of FCP. You can screw up your audio within projects easily by running two different projects the same time. Opening the same project on several instances of FCP or on several computers is the same calling for trouble - IDs are always different as they use another thread.

FCP is not yet a multi- threaded application, so there is a lot of wasted power. Several of the most actual effects are GPU based. If the GPU is not available, they will fall back to CPU rendering. So it's no difference wether you work with Motion and FCP the same time or to use two (or more) instances of FCP. The actual Compressor/FCP connection does the same thing - it does render a sequence or whatever in the background. So two apps do access the same thing, this might be the same recipe for trouble.
It's way more problematic to change a file name on disk or change the timecode if the file is used within several projects.
Using the same hardware for IO from several applications is not possible anyway - nobody at a base professional level would say (for example): I'll try to do a play out with FCP and use the same hardware to get my preview with the same hardware within After Effects. And even if (s)he does, the system/OS/app will block that with an error.
On a decent machine though you even can do some basic editing while doing the play out or capture - I would DEFINITIVELY NOT recommend that, but that even worked on an old G3 with OS 9 (with a good, speedy configuration).

So again as said above, one has to know what (s)he does - no risk no fun?

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

Quote

There are no obvious problems, at least nothing else than running FCP. It's running two apps at the same time - sharing the same prefs. Where is the problem?

To give you the answer you deserve, I'd have to dive into the details of how CFPreferences (the low-level foundation of NSUserDefaults that Final Cut Pro uses; CF for Core Foundation) works. The short version is that CFPreferences is expressly non-atomic, and has no notification model. One instance of Final Cut Pro makes a CFPreferences call that modifies the defaults database; the other instance is not notified of the change. Meanwhile, the other instance is writing its own change to the defaults database, but because CFPreferences is non-atomic, both changes are executed at the same time, leaving the database in an inconsistent state. And we all know what happens then: You get application crashes, because CFPreferences starts returning data that the application can't parse and never expected to get.

This happens all the time when you're using Final Cut, or indeed any Mac OS X application. It's not just whenever you make an explicit change to the user preferences dialog box. Even stuff like window locations on screen are managed through CFPreferences.

Quote

FCP is not yet a multi- threaded application, so there is a lot of wasted power.

I just launched Final Cut on my laptop. After having done absolutely nothing, with just the automatic "Untitled Project 1" open, Final Cut has 10 threads running. It's untrue to say that Final Cut is not multi-threaded. In fact, if you look into it you'll see that it's incredibly difficult to write a non-trivial application on Mac OS X that doesn't spawn multiple threads. The operating system frameworks are, themselves, heavily threaded.

But that's not the point here at all. The point is that Final Cut, like all applications, interfaces with various important parts of the operating system using an ID scheme. The ID for Final Cut Pro is, unsurprisingly, "com.apple.FinalCutPro." Whenever Final Cut calls CFPreferences, to use the same example I cited before, it passes off that ID. The ID system is expressly designed to prevent multiple applications from addressing the same part of the CFPreferences database simultaneously. When you get clever and fire off a second instance of the same application, you're doing something that the whole operating system has been designed from the ground up, and for excellent reasons, to prevent.

Quote

no risk no fun

Are we talking about a science project here, or an actual production system? The distinction is vitally important.

I'm going to say it again, and I hope you'll forgive me for being a bit insistent. Do not do this. I'm so not kidding. This is one of those things that Mac OS X goes out of its way to safeguard you from doing accidentally, because doing it will cause problems.

Final Cut Pro doesn't use CFPreferences much. If you look in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist, you'll see it doesn't save much data there.

The bulk of the preference data is stored in an .fcset file which uses a proprietary binary format. There is absolutely no documentation whatsoever on this file format so we have no idea how it will behave in such a situation. It's very easy to corrupt these files - simply change one byte and the file will be corrupt. FCP 6 will crash at startup and FCP 7 will restore prefs to their defaults - either situation is annoying.

Of course, you could lock the preference file but I still wouldn't advise doing this.

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...

Don't want to start a big discussion here - especially because my English is not good enough.

I agree(d) that you can screw up things, that's why I said earlier that people should be aware that a second instance does share the same prefs (I should have said prefs set) with the first instance - and the same hardware obviously.
But you can screw up anything with a project as well working with the same project on different machines, you can screw up a complete project as well having another one in the foreground (with one instance of FCP) and change the FCP settings - this is a beloved method to get your audio out of sync, you can screw up any file modifying it on different machines - and so on. In any case you have to know what you do and what be the consequences might be.
So it's far more dangerous to change the timecode of a video clip in an environment where several projects use this clip. With the FCP settings you always can go back to default, no chance with a modified clip - except you keep backups, what you always should do if you're serious.

Coming back to the 'dupe FCP'. I said that this is intended to use another instance to render previews for editing (not to render a movie - that could be done with Compressor), while doing simple editing, editing metadata or organizing another project. That again does imply that you're machine is in good shape and able to handle things like that and you know what you are doing.

As Jeff asked about science or production system, for me it's both. I do a lot of testing for customers on system setups to figure out what user errors can happen, what software errors can happen etc.
On the other hand I still do a lot of production, especially for subtitling. And there this 'running two FCPs' is a live saver. There is no need to change any setting within FCP in those sessions, the only thing which might be changed during the session is that the default path for open/save files will be changed - but that happens in memory and will be written to file when either FCP quits.
You (or FCP) can screw up the preferences setup anytime, regardless how many instances you are running, that's why tools like those one Jon creates are essential and recommended.

And Jeff, you're right. This 'dupe FCP' will slow down the performance when working, but any 'send to Compressor' or whatever else will slow down the performance as well. It's about not being blocked while working in some circumstances - it's better to work slower rather than not to work. There are exceptions like: I need a coffee break.

Coming back to the original question, which as often is forgotten in a thread.
Answer a) You can't install FCP two times.
Answer b) You can launch a second instance of FCP, but it might be risky.
Answer c) You can't play out and work on another FCP project - and you never should try that.

Recommendation regardless of any question:
Keep a copy of any working FCP setting you need - this includes buttons, keyboard etc. save your favorite filter settings to XML and so on.
And another old one from the times I worked for Pixar: Buy more memory, it's cheaper than a therapy.

Regards
Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

I don't understand half of what has been said above ... threads? Huh?

I do know that I have edited two features each of which were accessing about 20 hours of material and which were about 90 mins long each. While rendering one sequence, I would fire up fcp-dupe and continue to edit another part of the same movie while being careful not to be working on any material (i.e. capture files) which were simultaneously being accessed by the "rendering" sequence.

I did not experience any crashes - at least no more than usual. But I was careful to keep my use of fcp-dupe limited to plain cuts and "saves".

I am using an OctoMac with 4 megs Ram, so, in my sublime ignorance I kind of thought that FCP would have enough space inside the Mac's brain to run two FCPs. Much as would be the case if I were rendering and simultaneously doing my email or browsing through the fine and erudite messages on this board.

Best

Harry.

I'll definitely be trying this out to see if I can have it running as a background renderer, not that I usually need one.



www.strypesinpost.com

Years ago before I came to FCP I got my feet wet using Sony's Vegas app for a PC running Windows 2000 Pro on a Dual 2.0GHz Xeon system. Back then - 2003-2005 or so - one of Vegas' claims to fame was the ability to open up multiple instances of the app so that one could work on multiple projects at the same time, and I used to do it.

Running projects off the same drive or multiple drives, I'd have an instance rendering out, another open for audio editorial on a project, a 3rd for picture editorial and a 4th for color correction. Now, obviously I can't as a human being multitask like that, but for the ADD-afflicted among us it was certainly possible. Although I never understood how the multiple instance of apps managed I/O and disk traffic, it certainly worked and worked very well. This was Windows 2000, remember.

Apple went a different way, separate apps for each of these tasks - FCP for video, STP for audio, Compressor for file prep, but Vegas didn't have the luxury of multiple apps. Everything except for DVD authoring was done in one app. One could argue that FCP doesn't need such facility because of the separation of apps.

I never crashed, never lost data. So was Windows 2000 really that much better than any version of Mac OS has ever been? Was it really that much more robust? Or, was it Vegas that was robust? I can certainly say that over the course of years, Vegas for me never required a reinstall, much less a multi-hour reinstall of multiple apps because of who-knows-what.

In other words, it seems to me that FCP is simply a delicate application, perhaps too delicate for the work for which it was intended?

What work are you thinking it was intended for?