Any reports on Mountain Lion and FCP 6 or 7?

[David Knaggs]

I'm on FCP 6 and was wondering if anyone with FCP 6 or 7 has upgraded to the new Mountain Lion OS and can say whether or not it's "broken" anything. Thanks.

[Arnie Schlissel]

If you're planning on sticking with FCP6, then I think you should probably not upgrade past Snow Leopard. If you do decide to upgrade to Lion or Mountain Lion, then make sure you do a complete backup in the event things don't work right.

Remember that FCP6 is from about 4 or 5 years ago, before development on ML began. There may be quite a few incompatibilities.

[David Knaggs]

Hi Arnie.

I've been forced to keep Snow Leopard on the laptop for that very reason. But I'm asking about Mountain Lion on my desktop (and, yes, my desktop is fully backed up). I'm moving to Premiere Pro for a project starting next week. I bought Premiere Pro twelve months ago, but its much-vaunted "ability to import FCP projects" was mostly a false report, in my experience. I've successfully imported simpler 30-minute projects with it, but it completely fails on importing the long and complex corporate training video projects that I mostly do - and there are quite a few of them. (After sending Adobe various reports about it over that 12 months, they only recently got back to me and I sent them one of the XMLs which failed to import. But who knows if they'll do something effective about it or not?) That's why I've had to stay on FCP 6 until now.

But I can't stay on dead software (FCP 6) indefinitely and I'm going to properly learn and use PPro CS6 for this new project. Mind you, I have seen an alarming thread on the Adobe forums about major bugs with PPro CS6, especially with it locking up and becoming unusable when the sequence becomes long and complex.

However, I have to give PPro a genuine chance and a proper evaluation on a complex real-world project. Its ability to work natively with XDCAM EX footage (and no need to turn them all into additional QuickTime movies) plus its ability to Dynamic Link with the two Adobe applications that I love using (After Effects and Photoshop) means that I should give PPro a proper shot.

However, I may end up scurrying back to FCP 6 in the middle of this project if PPro CS6 turns out to be unworkably buggy (as some posts in that aforementioned thread seemed to indicate).

Which is why I wanted to check if Mountain Lion "breaks" anything in FCP 6 or 7. I'm keeping the laptop on Snow Leopard, but I'd rather keep my (more powerful) desktop up-to-date. I just wanted to know whether updating the OS would eliminate the desktop as a tool in my contingency plan if I am forced to revert to FCP 6 mid-project in the case of PPro proving to be terminally buggy. (And while editing back on FCP 6, I'd then evaluate both Avid and FCP X, because I really need to get off this dead software.)

So, has anyone using FCP 6 (or 7) upgraded to Mountain Lion and care to make a report on their experience?

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

I've heard very good things on the compatibility between FCP 7 and Mountain Lion, on a lot of other editing forums. I think that should be pretty safe. No one reported problems. (Don't know about FCP 6 though)

The only thing I read was someone having a problem building a dvd in DVD Studio Pro, that the build went to 100 procent and then crashed. But I only read that one report, don't know if it was anecdotical or a confirmed issue.

[David Knaggs]

Thanks for that, Mathieu.

[Greg Huber]

I upgraded to Mountain Lion and am running fcp 7. I just finished editing a small project (about 30 hrs of work). The only real issue I experienced was with some of the audio tracks popping. This probably has little to do with Mountain Lion, but I've never had that issue before. Even after changing the audio to match my project settings (44.1 kHz to 48) and clearing all cache and render files, I still had the issue. When I removed the video clip the audio was fine... Added the video back and it popped again (appears to be dropping some frames but only when the video and audio are combined). I'd be curious if others had similar issues.

Just make sure you keep everything backed up before you upgrade, and hope for the best :) Best of luck!

[Bob Jackson]

anyone with FCP 7 / Mountain Lion, / Sony EX1 experience?
Haven't really heard if all 3 play well together.

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Mathieu Ghekiere

I've heard very good things on the compatibility between FCP 7 and Mountain Lion, on a lot of other editing forums. I think that should be pretty safe. No one reported problems. (Don't know about FCP 6 though)

The only thing I read was someone having a problem building a dvd in DVD Studio Pro, that the build went to 100 procent and then crashed. But I only read that one report, don't know if it was anecdotical or a confirmed issue.

I had some odd drag and drop issues with DVDSP and 10.8 and two different computers. Wondering if there was an update to the program I opened Software Update which now opens the App Store. There was nothing so I reopened DVDSP while the App Store was still open. Surprisingly I was prompted to enter my serial number for FCS! Since digging that out was not my plan I shut both programs down and as an experiment relaunched DVDSP. It works fine now!

[Geoffrey Cox]

I'm running FCP6 on Lion with no problems. Don't know about Mountain Lion but I'm assuming Lion to Mountain Lion is less of a leap than Snow Leopard to Lion (sounds like that should be Mountain Goat!).

[R Geoff Baker]

I recently re-edited a project sitting on my drive at the client's request -- it was an EX-3 shoot, an FCP 7 project and had been done when my system under Snow Leopard. In the interim, I've moved to Premiere Pro & Mountain Lion -- but the old FCP project opened just fine under Mountain Lion, and the Sony software to reimport the original EX-3 footage worked just fine so I was able to re-edit and export seamlessly.

HTH

Cheers,
GB

[David Knaggs]

The only thing which seems to be knocked out by Mountain Lion, that I've found, is with Compressor 3.0.5.

With the Batch Monitor, when you clicked the "i" button, it used to give you a new window showing you how long left until the compression is finished. Now it does nothing. There's another way to get that info, anyway, so it's not an important loss of function.

Otherwise, I've found that FCP/FCS has worked really well with Mountain Lion so far.

[Daniel Larson]

I'm running FCP 7 and Premiere Pro 6 on Mountain Lion and all is well so far. I switched over this past weekend. I made a clone of my hard drive and then updated that with Mountain Lion. Premiere Pro runs much better and FCP seems unaffected. I'm using footage from EXCAM and XDCAM HD cameras.
Dan

[Jonathan Levin]

One thing that has not been addressed is compatibility with Matrox video boxes like the MXO Mini et al. I'm not positive but as of this date I don't think they have updated the drivers for these things.

I'm waiting for that and a ML version of Canon's XF Utility.

If these are available then let us know.

Jonathan

[Geoffrey Cox]

Again, the Matrox mini works fine with Lion running FCP6 and that was despite the fact that the Lion upgrade for the Matrox did not officially support FCP6 (only FCP7 I think). Can't say for Mountain Lion though.

[Jonathan Levin]

Thanks Geoffrey,

Since I am easily provoked into computer rage, I might wait for the official word/update from Matrox ehen and IF they ever update drivers for ML>FC7>MXO Mini.

JL