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FCP X not starting up - possibly updated itself past our specs

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Philly

macrumors member
Original poster
May 21, 2007
82
5
UK
Hi,

I'm trying to solve an issue for a family member here, and I'm wondering if it's a case of the hardware being too old.

My dad bought FCPX last summer. He hasn't used it this year since around March/April. Just trying to boot it up now and it's not happening. It tries to and then doesn't.

He's on a mid-2012 MBP running Mojave. When I check the FCP specs page it states macOS 11.5.1 or later. Can anyone confirm if there has been an update for FCP since March this year, one which would have made Mojave redundant?

Thanks for any help.


quick edit - Just looked on the FCPX wiki page, at the release notes. On Nov 12 2020 it notes that Catalina 10.15.6 or later is needed. That doesn't match with the official FCP specs page, but even so it suggests my dads MBP is outdated.
 
Last edited:
Anyone got any ideas...? ...opinions...? ...similar experience?

I know it seems like the hardware is now too old, but I don't want to just assume that and stop trying to solve it. The software was working earlier this year. I guess the compatibility cut off points are going to be vague at best, but I want to try and rule out any other possible issues.

We can't afford an upgrade right now so my plan is to try rolling back to a slightly older version.
 
The hardware is not outdated, it is the OS, but the update should not have happened, if the OS is not on par. That would be very bad programming.

Go into the Applications folder, select the Final Cut Pro icon/app and press CMD+I or right click on it and select GET INFO. What is listed under "Version"?
 
Gwendolini said:
The hardware is not outdated, it is the OS, but the update should not have happened, if the OS is not on par. That would be very bad programming.

Go into the Applications folder, select the Final Cut Pro icon/app and press CMD+I or right click on it and select GET INFO. What is listed under "Version"?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.

Sorry, you're correct about the hardwar/software. I just meant that a mid-2012 MBP apparently won't run the OS needed for FCP. At least, not acording to the official specs. Just looking at the last Library he created, it was in June this year.

The version he has is 10.4.10 so it hasn't updated in a while...
 
update - I've just called round to have a look and may have fixed it without knowing how.

I had tried running first aid, re-booting and trashing preferences but that didn't help.

If I opened up the app store and went to the FCP page, the 'buy it now' button displayed 'open'. I thought that if I deleted it, I might get the option to re-download, so I dragged the app over to an external drive, and then dragged the app to the trash.

The app store now gave me the option to 'update'. It wouldn't let me do it though as it said FCP could not be installed on that OS. We can't update the OS any further so I dragged the app back over from the external drive. I tried opening it and it worked. It did flash up an incompatible file, but it allowed me to go past it.

I tried opening the app from a number of different library files and didn't have an issue. If you have any idea what the problem may have been, I'd love to know. I'm assuming that when you install he app and open it for the first time, files are written. Perhaps something was missing...?

Thanks
 
Quirks of computers. Sometimes something gets corrupted and cant be fixed with the regular first aid. it’s a good idea to keep backups just in case.
 
Sadly this problem did not go away. Deleting the app and dragging it from another drive kind of solved the issue, but we had to do that every time we wanted to open the app. It's now not working at all. The app opens for a brief flash then closes. I'm going to try apple support tomorrow.
 
If you remove the app. The App Store allows you to download the most recent compatible version for your OS
 
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