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Mr-Stabby

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 1, 2004
330
273
See latest posts for more details


I know immediately that people are going to say "Duhh look at the System Requirements, it says it needs an 'Intel Processor' "

But having just purchased FCS3 for my Intel machine, I discovered according to the 'Get Info' tab, Final Cut 7 and all the other FCS3 apps are 'Universal'.

Screenshot here:

FCP1.jpg


I loaded up FCP using 'Rosetta' and it said that FCP7 requires a G5 processor, and you have a G4. Don't know why it said that, but it seems to suggest FCP7 will work on a G5.

Again screenshot here:

FCP2.jpg



The Info PList file in FCP7 which most people use to hack FCP to work on machines that don't meet requirements by default has the G4 500mhz as a minimum processor.

Unfortunately i don't have any PowerPC machines to hand to test whether a PowerPC will actually load the app.

Does anyone actually know for sure?
 

huntercr

macrumors 65816
Jun 6, 2006
1,039
0
I know immediately that people are going to say "Duhh look at the System Requirements, it says it needs an 'Intel Processor' "

But having just purchased FCS3 for my Intel machine, I discovered according to the 'Get Info' tab, Final Cut 7 and all the other FCS3 apps are 'Universal'.
[...]

Unfortunately i don't have any PowerPC machines to hand to test whether a PowerPC will actually load the app.

Does anyone actually know for sure?

I really hope this is the case! Unfortunately I don't have the money to spend just to find out. Anyone else have it already and have their G5 Quad processor sitting around doing nothing? :)
 

the vj

macrumors 6502a
Nov 23, 2006
654
0
I just sold my quad G5 to a friend who has a music studio, I told him that "Apple will always have suppor for Logic on G5", that "the quad G5 can handle Logic just fine". Then Logic came up with this new version 2 days later "Intel only"... I sold that quad G5 minutes before. :confused:
 

MovieCutter

macrumors 68040
May 3, 2005
3,342
2
Washington, DC
I just sold my quad G5 to a friend who has a music studio, I told him that "Apple will always have suppor for Logic on G5", that "the quad G5 can handle Logic just fine". Then Logic came up with this new version 2 days later "Intel only"... I sold that quad G5 minutes before. :confused:

You told someone Apple will always support a PowerPC product? And he believed that? I don't know who deserves it more, you or him....
 

Chundles

macrumors G5
Jul 4, 2005
12,037
493
I just sold my quad G5 to a friend who has a music studio, I told him that "Apple will always have suppor for Logic on G5", that "the quad G5 can handle Logic just fine". Then Logic came up with this new version 2 days later "Intel only"... I sold that quad G5 minutes before. :confused:

Well that was an unfortunate mistake on your behalf.
 

LethalWolfe

macrumors G3
Jan 11, 2002
9,370
124
Los Angeles
I read over at the COW that someone tried to install it on a G5 and the installer said no go when it didn't detect an intel chip. Someone might be able to hack a file though and get it to install on a G5. Even if installs though there's no guarantee that it will operate properly.


Lethal
 

Mr-Stabby

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 1, 2004
330
273
Yeah i'm 'Ben Pirouet' on CreativeCow.

Like i said over there, i can confirm that Final Cut Studio 3 does indeed work on PowerPC without issue (so far), though not all models which i'll go into detail on later. Though i had to use 'Pacifist' to install it, as the main installers really did not want me to install it. At this point i'm not sure why.


I've checked all the components and so far the only one that doesn't appear to be 'Universal' is AVC-Intra support. Even the new features i've tested so far like the new speed feature in FCP seem to work ok.

I'm going to be doing some extensive testing and posting my results. This is a big deal for me, as we have a few PowerPC machines that i'd rather not get rid of at this point.
 

Sayer

macrumors 6502a
Jan 4, 2002
981
0
Austin, TX
Just FYI: under Rosetta the PowerPC processor is equivalent to a G4. Its emulation, not a real CPU, obviously, and thus limited to a PowerPC G4's functionality.

And if you have problems with it on a real G5, and try to get help from Apple support, they will most likely tell you its not supported on a PowerPC so tough.
 

Mr-Stabby

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 1, 2004
330
273
Right some more details for you's:

I managed to install the software using the 'Pacifist' app to bypass the official Apple installer software and therefore the System Requirement check and the software (so far) works without issue. I'm not even hacking the software itself, The software itself is completely untouched. This is not like what some people do with FCP6 and hack the program itself to make it work with machines that don't have Quartz Extreme or what have you. This version of FCS3 was clearly designed to work on PowerPC machines, at least to some extent. From what i'm observing, it looks as though the Intel only decision was made right at the last minute.

When i loaded FCP7 on an older 1.9ghz iMac G5 machine to test it, it said FCP required a 2ghz G5 processor, and this box was new, it didn't look like the box you got on FCP6 when you were missing a required hardware feature. So FCP7 clearly is designed to work on a G5 processor. FCP6 needed a 1.25ghz G4 Processor. So it's not as if it's an old requirement stamp that has been left in the programming.

As you'll see from these pictures below, new features that i've tried seem to work too. Admittedly i haven't tried every single feature, but so far i've had nothing but success. Even Motion 4 which is very processor and GPU heavy actually works faster than Motion 3 did. I checked all the components and apps that installed with the software and they are all 'Universal', with the exception of AVC-Intra support which is an 'Intel' only build.

Some screenshots here:

http://www.bpirozzolo.com/powerpcmotion.jpg - The new features of Motion like Reflections, shadows, framing camera support and depth of field all work perfectly, and on our G5 PowerMacs with the 256mb Nvidia GPUs work smoothly and efficiently.

http://www.bpirozzolo.com/powerpcfcp.jpg - FCP7 as you can see loads fine, new features like the new speed tools work without problems. I outputted the FCP timeline display via a Formac box to a studio monitor, all with no issues.

http://www.bpirozzolo.com/powerPCSTP.jpg - New features in Soundtrack Pro work very well too.

So what doesn't work? I'm not stupid as to think that i KNOW that everything is going to work, but from the testing i did today everything seems to work very well.

If you're like me and have 30 Power Mac G5 DP2.5ghz machines at work which would be ridiculously expensive to replace AND some Intels which you're going to buy FCS3 for anyway, you might as well at least TRY and get it to work on the machines. If it produces problems at a later date then fine, replace them. Having a dual economy of FCP6 and FCP7 would be useless for us, so if there's a possibility of FCP7 working on PowerPC, then i'm taking it! Better that than a £50k+ hardware spend thank you!
 

Dr.Pants

macrumors 65816
Jan 8, 2009
1,181
2
Thanks, Mr-Stabby. You may have saved people some money!

Indeed! Thank you Mr-Stabby!

And of course the Intel-only decision was made at the last minute - force everybody to buy a new machine. Too bad that the release uses Universal :rolleyes:
 

Mr-Stabby

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 1, 2004
330
273
Indeed! Thank you Mr-Stabby!

And of course the Intel-only decision was made at the last minute - force everybody to buy a new machine. Too bad that the release uses Universal :rolleyes:

Just need to reiterate though, that you do need to use 'Pacifist' to get it to install. Therefore in a way you are hacking the software to get it to work despite it's apparently universal binary.

Therefore don't assume everything will work on your machine once you've managed to get it installed, i've been lucky so far and everything works, but other people may not be so lucky.
 

huntercr

macrumors 65816
Jun 6, 2006
1,039
0
Indeed! Thank you Mr-Stabby!

And of course the Intel-only decision was made at the last minute - force everybody to buy a new machine. Too bad that the release uses Universal :rolleyes:

I'm a G5 owner so I'm disappointed and of course pleased there's a workaround now, but I think this was done for the right reasons...Snow Leopard is coming out in 90 days. I'm sure there's a mandate to have all new software be targeted for systems that can run Snow Leopard.

iPhone development is intel only now too ( though you can hack it as well )

It's inevitable that something like this would happen eventually.
 

cwright

macrumors 6502a
Jan 5, 2004
573
0
Missouri
HD playback issues in FCP7?

I was eager to upgrade so I went ahead and installed Final Cut Studio 3 on my Dual 2Ghz PowerPC G5 using the Pacifist workaround, while in the middle of a project started on Final Cut Pro 6. Now I'm having some problems with the video playback on the project. I have a backup of my project so I can go back to FCP6 if needed, but I'm hoping there's a quick fix.

All my video was shot in 720p60 with the Panasonic HVX200. When I updated the project file to FCP7, all of a sudden all of my video in the timeline showed that it needed a render. So I rendered some of it, and when it plays it's very blurry and distorted. You can place the playhead anywhere and the freeze frame is clear, but as soon as you play, it becomes distorted again.

I tried exporting a couple seconds of footage to a Quicktime file. It played just fine in Quicktime, but when opening the clip in FCP7, it's distorted again. So the footage is fine... appears to be a Final Cut playback problem.

Is this just a glitch with it running on a PowerPC machine? Anyone else having similar problems?

Also - just to make sure I didn't have an issue with my timeline... I opened a new project and timeline and dropped an HD clip into the timeline and let FCP change the timeline settings to best suit the clip. Sure enough, it still shows that it needs to render, and it still becomes blurry when playing.

Any ideas?
 

Mr-Stabby

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 1, 2004
330
273
Is the 'RT Extreme' setting set to 'low' by any chance? That just sounds like it's playing it back in low quality. Perhaps the 'RT Extreme' profiling set it to low by default.
 

cwright

macrumors 6502a
Jan 5, 2004
573
0
Missouri
Is the 'RT Extreme' setting set to 'low' by any chance? That just sounds like it's playing it back in low quality. Perhaps the 'RT Extreme' profiling set it to low by default.

Yea that's the problem, but I can't fix it! 'Dynamic' and 'Low' are my only options under the 'RT Extreme' menu. 'High' and 'Medium' are grayed out. I can't imagine that my computer is not fast enough to play it back full quality with FCP7 when it worked perfectly fine under FCP6. :mad:

If anyone happens to know of a workaround for this particular issue, I'd like to know!
 

huntercr

macrumors 65816
Jun 6, 2006
1,039
0
Yea that's the problem, but I can't fix it! 'Dynamic' and 'Low' are my only options under the 'RT Extreme' menu. 'High' and 'Medium' are grayed out. I can't imagine that my computer is not fast enough to play it back full quality with FCP7 when it worked perfectly fine under FCP6. :mad:

If anyone happens to know of a workaround for this particular issue, I'd like to know!

What video card do you have?

Also I just learned about this...

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/fcp_internal_tools_chappell.html

It might be valuable to look and see what each of these thinks is going on with your system's performance
 

huntercr

macrumors 65816
Jun 6, 2006
1,039
0
I upgraded the stock video card to an X800XT w/256mb RAM a couple years ago, but I never had playback issues with the original card either.

I just learned about the FCP Internal tools... this is a treasure trove of a tool. Maybe you might want to run some of these tests ( especially the RT extreme "Auto Profile" ) and see what the data gives you.

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage..._chappell.html
 

fr4nkx

macrumors newbie
Aug 5, 2009
2
0
hi, I've installed fcs 3 on a dual g5 (leopard) through pacifist but I cannot launch any application 'cause the system say "the application doesn't work with this architecture" (something like that, is a translation..)...

I launch pacifist, I load the package installer, pacifist extracts the files then lists all the content, right click on the content and "install".... pacifist verify the files and perform installation - I suppose -

I'm am missing something ?? I ought to do anything else ?!? Is just a combo of bad luck and dumbness (yes, I've bought the upgrade without checking the requirements...)


thank you

Frankx
 

fr4nkx

macrumors newbie
Aug 5, 2009
2
0
hi, I've installed fcs 3 on a dual g5 (leopard) through pacifist but I cannot launch any application 'cause the system say "the application doesn't work with this architecture" (something like that, is a translation..)...

I launch pacifist, I load the package installer, pacifist extracts the files then lists all the content, right click on the content and "install".... pacifist verify the files and perform installation - I suppose -

I'm am missing something ?? I ought to do anything else ?!? Is just a combo of bad luck and dumbness (yes, I've bought the upgrade without checking the requirements...)


thank you

Frankx


Solved. The problem was with the *upgrade* installation dvd. I borrowed a non upgrade dvd and all went fine.

Thanks

Frankx
 

masht

macrumors newbie
Aug 7, 2009
3
0
I've managed to get FCS3 to install on my G5 Quad using pacifist, but when i try to launch the app is says my machine doesn't have the correct architecture. I also have a 7800GTX 256MB installed which is causing horrific problems with booting in Leopard, but Leopard's fine booting with the stock card, but it has huge scan corruption issues 90% of the time. Just thought the 7800 may be causing issues with FCP7 and its failure to launch. Any help will be greatly appreciated as I can't really afford to buy a new mac at the moment.
 

huntercr

macrumors 65816
Jun 6, 2006
1,039
0
I've managed to get FCS3 to install on my G5 Quad using pacifist, but when i try to launch the app is says my machine doesn't have the correct architecture. I also have a 7800GTX 256MB installed which is causing horrific problems with booting in Leopard, but Leopard's fine booting with the stock card, but it has huge scan corruption issues 90% of the time. Just thought the 7800 may be causing issues with FCP7 and its failure to launch. Any help will be greatly appreciated as I can't really afford to buy a new mac at the moment.

Is your 7800 blessed with a real Apple firmware, or did you apply one of the community patches?

What is your stock card's model? Have you tried putting it back in?
 

masht

macrumors newbie
Aug 7, 2009
3
0
The 7800gtx is a PC card that has a rom chip transplanted from a donor mac card, or so i was told by the guy who i bought it from in the states - though i read that a few months later he started ripping people off and not sending cards out after receiving payment, so it may not be true i suppose. The original card was the stock card available at the Quad 3 years ago when I bought it, and when i try to boot with the stock card, nine times out of ten i get vertical lines all along the screen, and only 25% is visible. It has booted without problems using either card on a couple of occasions, but most of the time it freaks out in one way or another. This is driving me mad - I can't believe that a 3 year old machine may need to be replaced!

Thanks
Matt
 
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