file format too new
 

Hi all,
I know this has been asked a lot but I keep getting the error message "File's format is too new for this version of the application." Everyone says to update but its a long story why i cant and also most of the projects i am trying to open were made in earlier versions than i have. Anyone have any ideas on what i can try to get these projects to open?
cheers for any help,
Sandy

One work around for this is to save [export] the FCP project as an MXF project file. But to do this you will need access to the earlier version of FCP to do the export.

thanks for the reply chuck but i initially had the problem with fcp 5.0.4 (the earliest fcp i can get hold of) so tried on a friends fcp 6.0 and got the same thing. the problem is all the films were made by others on various mac book pros with differing versions of final cut. This may explain the difficulty opening some but out of about 25 film we can open 2. Any other things i could try to get them to open?

FCP is not forwards compatible - you need to be on FCP 6.0.4 to be able to load all files on all machines before that, anything less and you will encounter the issues you have.

No work around other than to A) Upgrade, B) find someone else who has upgraded.

Once you have done that, they may be able to export you an xml, or edl, or some other intermediate sequence format that you can import into your version of FCP and get your project up and running - but you will not find a work around to open the project files without having the same version or higher of FCP than the ones they were last saved on.

The XML workaround actually works quite well. But yeah the trick is finding someone with 6.0.4 to actually handle it for yah.

Noah