Problem installing FCP7 on Mountain Lion

This isn't the usual question "will FCP7 work in Mountain Lion?" (clearly it does) - this one is "Can I install FCP7 on a Mountain Lion machine?" I have retired my old Powerbook and now have a Mac Book Pro (a few years old) with ML on it. I stuck in my trusty FC Studio install disk, and oh darn, the installer is a Power PC app! And it won't run. "You can't open the application 'Final Cut Studio.mpkg' because PowerPC applications are no longer supported." Now what? Is there a way to install at least FCP7 without the mpkg installer?

Scott

That's weird. I thought 7 worked on Intel - I know 6 doesn't. If you're having issues though, maybe get a copy of Rosetta (Snow leopard install discs have it). Rosetta should allow you to do a PowerPC install.

FCP7 only works on Intel Macs. I think both FCP5 and FCP6 had "Universal Binary" versions. Not FCP7.

I think Rosetta went out the window starting with Lion. Not sure it will work anymore.


www.derekmok.com

Oh, so maybe it's just the installer that's old hat. I'm sure I've heard of people running Rosetta on Lion - oh wait, I just did some research and apparently you can't.

Is there some way you can install from a networked computer?

I have been using FCP Studio on my older Mac Pro (Intel, of course) for years, and didn't bother with it on my PB because it was so slow, but now that I have the MBP I thought it would be good to have it there as well (which Apple allows). I thought FCP7 was Universal Binary, as things were in those days, but it looks like the installer itself is PowerPC, which would have worked on either platform until Apple stopped supporting PowerPC. But FCP Studio itself will work on ML, if I could get it installed.

Jude, I thought about mounting the install DVDs on my Mac Pro and trying to install from there, but the MBP still has to run the installer code on its own processor. I pondered whether I could run the installer from my Mac Pro (which runs on Snow Leopard), but tell it to install on this "other drive", which happens to be my shared MBP drive, but I think of all the tales of woe when you don't install FCP in the standard location, not to mention the mish-mash of different operating systems. Might try it anyway. According to what I've read here, upgrading the OS to ML after FCP is installed is no problem, but I've seen no mention of what I'm trying to do.

Still open to ideas. Pretty sure Apple has no interest in working something out for me.

Yeah, I'm guessing the official answer from Apple would have the letters 'fcp and x' in them. I would try the install in a different location over your network thing. If that doesn't work, I suggest downloading a trial copy of Premiere.

Do you have install disks for earlier versions of the OS? You could make a 10.6 partition on your drive and install there.

Yes, I could try the partition trick, but I think I'm going to move on. I'll be getting the Adobe Cloud soon, which gets me all the Adobe apps, and I think I'll just plan on a migration to Premiere. I know this question has been asked and answered dozens of times since FCPX shook up the world (and I didn't pay attention because it didn't apply to me), but is there a decent migration path from FCP 7 to PP? Can I expect my media files to import without issue into PP? More important, but less likely: is there any way to bring an FCP 7 project into PP? Somehow the FCPX path doesn't appeal to me. All my projects are pre-FCPX, and I'm not going to be doing much new work. My Mac Pro can't upgrade to ML (too old) so I'll have that FCP 7 platform until it dies. Oh, the price of progress.

Side question: I haven't posted in quite a while, but even though I have checked "Email me about replies" I have never gotten an email when any of you have replied to this thread. Has something changed about that?

There's a mystery here. How have many other users installed FCP7 on their Mountain Lion systems while Scott Taylor can't?

My Mountain Lion system ran the FCP7 installer without complaint. Either I have a different installer from Scott's, or it's the same installer which my Mountain Lion treated differently. Continuing the second possibility, I had Snow Leopard already installed on another volume when installing FCP7 on the Mountain Lion volume. That Snow Leopard system has Rosetta which the Mountain Lion system lacks. On a Mac, when a file requires an application missing from the volume into which you are booted, the operating system hunts through other accessible volumes for that application. (These can be old forgotten backups leading to ghostly experiences of files opening which shouldn't be able to open now.) So did my Mountain Lion find Rosetta on the Snow Leopard volume and then run it to install FCP7? Mountain Lion isn't supposed to be able to run Rosetta, but perhaps it can run it sufficiently well for this task.

Note that this is not the "install on this 'other drive'" solution Scott contemplated in his second post. My Mountain Lion installed FCP7 on its own volume, perhaps just using something from another volume.

Other users please chime in whether they too had a Snow Leopard volume accessible while installing FCP7 in their Mountain Lion system. Then we might all have the same PowerPC based installer as Scott, and the mystery is solved. If this is so, then the trick for installing FCP7 on a Mountain Lion system is to have a Snow Leopard system on an accessible volume. "Accessible" could be internal, or FireWire connected external, or possibly other external. I haven't studied this, just stumbled upon it, so I don't know if the Mac makes other requirements on which volumes to hunts in for missing applications. If the Mac requires that the other volumes be boot volumes, then the computer's firmware might reject a Snow Leopard system.

The 2012 Mac Pros, which shipped with Mountain Lion, have firmware making Snow Leopard installation difficult. I don't know if Snow Leopard installation is possible on Mac Book Pros which shipped with Mountain Lion. But Scott Taylor says his Mac Book Pro is a few years old. So he might try installing Snow Leopard on a 10 GB volume on his hard drive, and then trying to install FCP7 on his Mountain Lion system.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

That's an interesting take, Dennis. I do have a FW drive bootable in SL, so I could attach it to my MPB and try again. My impression of all the questions about "will FCP7 run on ML" pertained to systems that already had FCP7 on them, then they were upgraded to ML and FCP continued to work fine. There is no clear indication on any of those "success stories" that it also worked to try to do a fresh install of FCP on a ML machine.

"My Mountain Lion system ran the FCP7 installer without complaint." That's very interesting, I wonder if our installer packages are different, and if so, why and how. I bought mine as an upgrade (started with FCP3) and had skipped FCP 6. My installer is PPC (according to the error message), can you confirm what your system says about your installer and what code base it is?

My MBP is pre Lion/Mountain Lion, so it doesn't have any preventive firmware, and could run SL (again). Is there any way to repartition my drive without erasing and starting over? I'm pretty invested in my setup and would hate to have to start over.

I certainly would like to know others' experiences with this.

I installed on Lion 10.7.x without a problem - haven't used mountain lion yet

Lion presents the same problem of not supporting PowerPC apps, right? Can you determine the code base of your FCP7 installer package? There must be more than one version of the installer included with FCP distribution.

If we ever sort this out, we'll be the holders of some very useless information.

Scott, it's not really interesting if your installer is different from the rest of our installers, and it now sounds as if it is. I was misled by your "trusty FC Studio install disk".

You can add a small volume to an existing hard disk without disturbing existing volumes if the last volume on the disk is not too full. Use Disk Utility. Partition. Select the bottom volume in the Volume Scheme and select "+". Then select the new bottom volume and write the desired number of GB in "Size". Press "Enter" and click "Apply". (You can also adjust the sizes graphically, approximately.) When Disk Utility doesn't let you select "+" it's because there's content toward the end of the volume you're trying to split. This is possible if the volume was once pretty full even if it isn't now. In this case use a defragmentation tool like iDefrag on that volume before repartitioning.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

>>is there a decent migration path from FCP 7 to PP? Can I expect my media files to import without issue into PP? More important, but less likely: is there any way to bring an FCP 7 project into PP? <<

Yes, your FCP 7 projects will open in PP. Some of the more complicated effects will not translate, but the cut generally will. Also, when you get to PP, make sure to set the keyboard setup to the FCP7 preset if you're in a hurry to keep working. If you have time to learn the PP set that's probably a better idea, but for switchers not on 'sharpening the saw' downtime, this is a godsend.

There's a tutorial here (although there's lots to choose from, this is just the first one I hit) [nofilmschool.com]

Also, I've translated projects a lot more complex than the one they show in this tutorial. But yeah, crop, for example, is an effect in PP, so it doesn't translate well from FCP as a motion parameter.

Your media files will probably import even easier into PP. There's very few codecs I've found that don't open and work fine without transcode, which saves me hundreds of person hours a month.

>Yes, your FCP 7 projects will open in PP.

Just a slight correction. Premiere will not open an FCP7 project file, but will import XMLs exported from FCP7. Most software cannot open an FCP7 project file because it's proprietary.



www.strypesinpost.com

Oh, sorry if that wasn't clear. The tutorial I linked is the whole XML thing, but I do see that someone skim reading that could go off telling other people that you can open FCP 7 files natively in PP.

never was able to do the Fcp 7.0.3 update on Mountain Lion

impossible to launch Motion 4

>impossible to launch Motion 4





www.strypesinpost.com

Francois: ProApplicationsUpdate2010-02 updates FCP 7 to FCP 7.0.3 nicely under Mountain Lion. How are you updating?

FCP 7.0.3 seems stable under Mountain Lion but I run it under Snow Leopard instead. I trust the latter better and it is a bit faster. For example an FCP 7.0.3 color render that takes 2:34 in my OSX 10.8.3 system takes 2:13 in my OSX 10.6.8 system. I'm running a 2012 Mac Pro that shipped with Mountain Lion.

When does a newer operating system run your programs better and faster than your old operating system did on the same computer? It is claimed (not by Apple) that Mountain Lion, in consequence of its Facebook integration, is ever-busy in the background converting and preparing files for web transfer. Does this explain the 2:34 vs. 2:13 times?

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

His problem isn't that it won't run on Mountain Lion. His problem is that the *installer* for Studio 3 won't work on Mountain Lion.

If you have a computer with FCP studio installed, and then upgrade to Mountain Lion, everything is fine. If you buy a new computer that runs Mountain Lion, you can't use the FCP Studio Installer to install your copy of FCP Studio because the *installer program* is power PC only, and that is no longer supported under Mountain Lion.

So the basic upshoot is, if you can't install over a network, do not upgrade your computer to a new Mac and expect to be able to run FCP7. You have to stay with what you've got now to keep it running - or buy second hand, I guess.

Jude: I responded to Francois, who apparently had installed FCP7 but couldn't update to 7.0.3.

Your claim of the impossibility of using the FCP Studio Installer on a new computer that runs Mountain Lion is contradicted by experience and led to the complicated previous discussion.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

So you're saying you can run the FCP installer program on a new computer running Mountain Lion? Or that you have to partition your hard drive, install an older OS, then install on there?

Maybe there's a third party app you could use, Scott? We used to use Pacifier to install just parts of the studio disk years ago. No idea if it's Power PC or not.

Jude: FCP7 requires an Intel Mac, so it is unlikely that the usual FCS3 installer is a PPC application. Scott Taylor's fourth post revealed that his installer was not the usual FCS3 installer.

Quote
Scott Taylor
I bought mine as an upgrade (started with FCP3) and had skipped FCP 6.

I installed FCP7 on a Mountain Lion system using the usual FCS3 installer, and the system didn't complain as Scott's did. I think this has been the experience of many. The suggestion I read and followed is to install FCP7 on a fresh Mountain Lion system, opposite to your suggestion:

Quote
Jude Cotter
If you have a computer with FCP studio installed, and then upgrade to Mountain Lion, everything is fine.

Maybe your suggestion works too. The question "FCP7 on Mountain Lion?" has produced a flock of conflicting incomplete anecdotes. With FCP nearing end of life, systematic studies are unlikely.

I answered Scott as if systematically.

Quote
dcouzin
Either I have a different installer from Scott's, or it's the same installer which my Mountain Lion treated differently. Continuing the second possibility, ...

Then I added to the flock of anecdotes.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Yup, then it is nothing but conflicting. The people I've spoken to had problems installing on fresh systems. Only the upgrade path worked. When you bought studio whether it was your first purchase or an upgrade AFAIK it was the exact same product, except it required your previous passwords if it was an upgrade, and was cheaper.

I really wish Apple was willing to talk to its users on these issues and not leave us all guessing and jumping through hoops.

What I called the "usual FCS3 installer", the retail one, might be the unusual one in this community where upgrades were generally purchased. Scott Taylor has multiple options, including two described in his second post.

Francois' problem is unsolved.

The question whether FCP7 runs with full reliability and efficiency under Mountain Lion is still open.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Can I just verify that this is the FCP7 (FCS 2009) installer and not FCP6 (FCS 2) installer? Because from memory, the installer for FCP6 was PowerPC and required Rosetta to install. The installer for FCP7 should not.


>The question whether FCP7 runs with full reliability and efficiency under Mountain Lion is still open.

FCP7 seems to work fine. I'm not sure about full reliability as that would take me years to test that, but I do not notice anything amiss. But I do use Premiere more nowadays.



www.strypesinpost.com

I used the FinalCutStudio.mpkg from 2009. What exactly did Scott and Jude use?

Now FCP7 seems to work fine under my Mountain Lion, after a rough start involving disk permissions. But its rendering 15% slower than under Snow Leopard is of concern. That speed test was carefully done -- FCP preferences were made identical in the two systems by "Preference Manager" -- but it used just one rendering scenario.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

I found a solution! And I have some more information about whether FCP 7 was Universal or strictly Intel.

First, I have an embarrassing thing to admit. When I first grabbed my install disks to try to put FCP7 on my MBP with ML, I didn't realize I had grabbed my FCP5 disks instead (I skipped from 5 to 7). Oops. That was the first UB version, but obviously uses a PPC installer. When I discovered my mistake (the version numbers are very tiny) I dug out the real FCS 3 installer and guess what, it worked fine. Well, not exactly, I got through the first disk but when it wanted Motion disk 1, it failed to recognize it at all and won't go further. The same disk mounts on my Mac Pro just fine, so I have other things to work out but the main (false) problem is behind me. Sorry to get everyone stirred up, but it got quite a discussion going that has had its own value.

On the subject of code base - all of my FCP Studio (3) apps show up in System Profiler as Universal apps, not Intel. I can't determine the code base of the Studio 3 installer so I couldn't tell you whether it actually could be installed on a PPC machine. And it doesn't matter any more anyway.

Thanks for everyone's contributions to this. I'll go crawl back under my rock now.

Thanks for getting back to us Scott. There are a lot of people complaining about this - so it's possibly not just your error, but for sure a lot of them might be the same thing.

• I used to install FinalCut Studio 2009 apps on PPC machines with a "hacked " installer.

Fcp 7.0.0 (which I always considered as a "Fcp 6.5.0" ) is perfectly compatible with PPC machines. Apple just introduced a filter in the installer apparently at the last minute before release. You can bypass it with a trick, I can dig for it, but as Scott says... who cares anymore ?


• Yes Stripes ! it is possible to launch Motion 4 on Mountain Lion but on the machine I tested it always crashed at first " project creation" , which is a bit annoying ...

if it is stable for you, is your machine a updated (Bad boy...) or a fresh installed Mountain Lion ? (as Jude pointed)


• Dcouzin... it seems the same goes for updating to 7.0.3. And about that Facebook background waste of ressources I say " WHAT ? ! " Could we know more about those "sources" ?


Bottom line ... I keep a separate boot with Snow Leopard for Fcp legacy use.