Buy a mac with OS X Tiger
 

I`m about to buy a powerbook for my studies in media and have read this forum with great interest. We will be using FCP 4.5, but I have read a lot of problems with FCP 4.5 and the Tiger OS. Should I get the shop to install a previous version or will FCP 4.5 work okay with Tiger if its not upgraded. I need the portability of a laptop as I will be doing a lot of "homework" at work.

Many Thanks

Andy

A lot of people are having problems with FCP 4.5 and Tiger as you note. I have a hard time sorting through all the reports since they aren't consistent. One of the major problems is for people who upgrade existing systems to Tiger however. You may be OK to install for the first time on a new Powerbook. Quicktime 7 is another problem for FCP 4.5, so you may want to downgrade back to QT 6. See the following:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=46030

Also not a bad idea to visit apple's own FCP support forum here:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/we...5YE.0@.ee6bcd7

Finally, if you're getting a 15" Powerbook you should be aware of the issues discussed in the following thread. I'd suggest that you get the Applecare warranty to protect your investment:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=45834

I have not researched any of the problems people are having with tiger and FCP 4.5, however I can tell you from my experience (i'm on a 15" powebook btw) that FCP worked exactly the same before and after I insalled Tiger last May. I also have not had a problem with Quicktime. So I guess the problems people are having crop up on only some computers and like Boyd said are not consistant among all FCP 4.5/Tiger users.

Brian

FCP 4.5 should be fine if you do a clean install of Tiger rather than an upgrade and only capture over firewire. I did a clean install on my PowerBook at home, and I have no problems with capturing or device control. You will almost certainly run into problems if you do an upgrade install of the OS (which I would not recommend anyway), and you might run into problems if you use third-party hardware. If you are doing a clean install and only editing DV25 then it's not going to cause you any problems.

I also have followed these threads and Boyd's links with much interest. I have a 15" PB (first generation Aluminum 1.25 Ghz) - but so far, I have not experienced the lower RAM slot failure. I also upgraded the RAM and thus far all of it continues to be recognized.

Regarding the FCP 4.5 and Tiger - I purchased Tiger at release and at that same time I also found on Ebay a used Final Cut Studio to install. I had not yet had FCP on this system - but after reading the threads I was a little concerned, so I decided that I was going to wait till after I installed Tiger before installing FCP - that way, FCP wouldn't have to deal with the transtion, etc.

It was not until last weekend that I finally found time to install Tiger. I really wasn't having any problems with the way my system was running (under Jaguar) so I just did the simple update (after cloning my system with triple redunancy - just in case).

Now that Tiger is installed and things seem to be working very very well (better, in fact) I intend to install FCP 4.5 in the very near future. I will post if I am finding glitches, errors and incompatibility issues - but from what I have read - much of the problems cropped up when folks were running a FCP that was already installed when they upgraded to Tiger.

So...we'll see.
-Jon

I believe one of the issues (dig around on Apple's forum if you really want specifics) is that doing a Tiger upgrade instead of a clean install leaves some old files that cause problems with FCP, but I *think* that was in the case of an existing FCP installation.

Give it a try and let us know how it works.

That's pretty much what I was able to interpret from the many variations of people's problems on the matter. I will keep you posted.
-Jon