fcpx and fcp5 side by side?

in another thread i asked about obtaining prores capability by
buying fcpx and installing it on our fcp5 system. that seemed ok
as long as i upgraded the os to snow leopard.

the other question i need to address is: will i have any problems
running fcp5 after i've installed fcpx? can they run side by side
on the same system?

thanks,
BabaG

FCPX requires ProKit 7.0. That is likely to cause issues with FCP 5.

The easiest thing may be for you to take advantage of the limited FCS3 stock Apple is selling over the phone for $999.

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...

since i'm mainly doing this to get prores on the system,
can i do something arcane like install fcpx, then uninstall
prokit, then, if necessary, reinstall fcp5? $999 seems like
a lot of money just to get prores. or, can i install fcpx
without prokit since i won't be using fcpx in the near term?

thanks,
BabaG

Well, you could download FCPX on a separate computer running ProKit 7.0 and OS X 10.6.7 or higher and then transfer the application to your FCP5 machine. It doesn't install the codecs by default so you'd need to run Software Update and hopefully they'll pop up without ProKit 7.0 needing to be installed. But if they don't, that's $300 down the drain.

But in my previous reply I forgot to mention one thing: FCP5 doesn't have realtime support for any of the ProRes codecs, so everything will need to be rendered before playback. That's why I'd recommend FCP7.

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...

i won't be able to make a custom preset for sequences that would be
defined as prores?

Yes. What Jon said. You don't get the blessing of the RT effects engine. Either buy the non supported FCP 7 or upgrade to a supported system such as Avid, PPro or FCP X. I'd say go for Avid which has the DNxHD codecs.



www.strypesinpost.com

thanks. i think we're leaning towards the fcp7 solution. when i tried the
dnxhd codecs i found them not to be applicable to custom frame sizes
which we have to work with fairly regularly. we also have adobe cs5 on
this system.

[edit]
just found this. maybe someone can comment. someone on the adobe
forum suggested that installing motion 5 would install the prores codecs
and, according to the support page for motion 5 tech specs, they seem
to have no requirement for prokit 7. maybe i don't need a fcp upgrade
at all but can do this by getting motion?

thanks again,
BabaG

Premiere CS5 can work natively with your media, so you may not need an intermediate codec if your system is fast enough.

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...

it's really that we have so much of it and it's so mixed that conforming
to a standard is helpful. also saves disk space. in addition, we've been
having people asking for a while for delivery in prores. i've been taking
drives home and exporting on my system there when that happens. all
of this argues in favor of trying to get prores onto the system here. if i
can do it with a $50 motion upgrade rather than a $1000 fcs upgrade,
well, that just seems like the thing to do. the folks here want to keep
working on fcp5 anyway. anybody know if i would, in fact, get prores
by installing the $50 motion 5 upgrade?

thanks,
BabaG

As far as I'm aware, you'd need to pay $300 for FCPX in order to get the ProRes codecs.

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...

The Apple webpage never talks about prokit upgrades as part of their specs. Point is that even if you get the ProRes codecs, you don't get RT support (and a bunch of other niggling problems because FCP 5 is not qualified for ProRes), which to me is a big deal.



www.strypesinpost.com

Strypes is right. I once experimented with ProRes LT on FCP6 and it was unusable.

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...

I've edited one project on FCP5 using ProRes 422 media in a 1920x1080 Apple Intermediate Codec timeline. No bugs when I tried it, but it was a short and extremely simple project (music video, almost no sync sound). Also, neither the ingest nor the finishing was done on this station; ingested the footage (Canon 5DmkII H.264s) with Log and Transfer on an FCP6 station, edited on FCP5, then the project file/timeline was sent across the country to be reconnected on the FCP6 station.


www.derekmok.com

Like Jon, I once tried to open an xml sequence created in ProRes LT in FCP 6 and I got the out of memory message.



www.strypesinpost.com

> I once tried to open an xml sequence created in ProRes LT in FCP 6 and I got the out
> of memory message.

XMLs have a problem with long Sequences. I had this issue right and left when I was using my FCP5 station to work with DVCPro HD 720p sync sequences created in FCP6 and then exported to XMLs -- no ProRes involved. We had to split the XMLs up so that they would open. Are you sure it was because of ProRes? Did you try sending the entire project file?


www.derekmok.com

That wasn't my problem. I had really poor performance when I used ProRes LT in FCP6.

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...

It wasn't a very long sequence. It was a small project file for a 30 second opening title. The project imported fine, but when I tried opening a sequence (ProRes LT) I had the out of memory message. So I went back to the FCP 7 project, changed the codec to ProRes and transcoded the footage to ProRes, since I wanted RT performance anyway. No problems after that. My guess is that ProRes LT defaults to deep precision rendering and that is not allowed when FCP tries to process those clips through legacy QT.



www.strypesinpost.com

but, if i did get prores on the fcp5 system, couldn't i work as i always
have and simply export to prores? that's something more people have
asked for for a while now. and for realtime necessities, couldn't i then
work in premierepro if i needed to work with a prores timeline? we
have cs5 on the system. used mostly for after effects.

lastly, does motion 5 install prokit?

thanks for all the info so far,
BabaG

You can export to ProRes, but I'm not sure if that will preserve the 10 bit depth of your source files. From what I know, sequences with supported codecs wild allow you to render in Hugh precision YUV, while non supported codecs render in 8 bit RGB (at least that's what FCP says). My guess is that it goes through a legacy QT pipeline.

It's an interesting question. Yes, you can render to ProRes in PPro or AE. $50 for ProRes. Now, that's a deal. That aside, the only useful software in the suite is Compressor. I would think that would also come with ProRes, if Motion came with ProRes.



www.strypesinpost.com

i thought about compressor. figured it would likely
require more than motion would. more of a guess, though.
i figured that might imply a prokit 7 prerequisite like
fcpx. motion 5 was also recommended on a premiere blog as
a prores solution. no consideration given to the prokit
issue with an older fcp installation, though. i suppose
the real question is: are there any of these that do not
require prokit 7?

thanks,
BabaG