Re: VM Apps

Hi Group,

You have rarely seen me on the forum lately as I’m not doing a lot of editing these days. I surely do miss the camaraderie of this board.

I figure you are the people who can tell me what I need to know.

I just got a new (Apple refurb) iMac that’s running OS 10.13.2. My old laptop is running 10.6.8.

On the old laptop drive I have FCP 5.1.4. For what I am doing that version is okay. I don’t want to spend money on FCP X, not to mention dealing with the learning curve.

On the iMac I partitioned the 1 Tb boot drive (2-500 Gb volumes) and cloned my laptop drive (containing FCP 5.1.4 which won’t run on OS 10.13.2) to the second partition.

Here’s the problem: I can’t boot the iMac from the cloned 10.6.8 drive.

I posted this on an Apple forum and got this suggestion: I use Parallels to create VM machines of earlier versions of OS X. Parallels also has a utility that will clone your computer into a VM. You can then create a VM of your notebook that you can run within Parallels on your iMac. Your not limited to using Parallels, there are a number of other VM apps out there to choose from, like VMware.

Anyone know anything about these VM apps? Will they work for my need?

Thanks,

Ben Bryant NYC

Thanks, Greg. It's gonna take me a while to absorb this and all its details.

BTW: How hard will it be for me, who started with FCP 1.0, to learn X? And if I go that route, will I be able to import old FCP 5 projects?

Thanks again,

Ben Bryant NYC

Hi Guys,
I really appreciate all this input and it's gonna take a while for me to digest it all. I'll be back.
Thanx,

Ben Bryant NYC

Hi Troops, I'm back with some other questions.

Not being able to afford X right now I'm curious about these free apps I read about in "Videomaker'.

Avid Media Composer First offers all of the power of the full version of Media Composer for free

Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 14 is another robust video editor with professional tools for free.

Lightworks, which is also available as both free and paid versions.

Which of these, if any, would be easiest for an old legacy FCP pro to learn?
Thanks,

Ben Bryant NYC

Hi Ben
If you really are going to leave FCP, then I would suggest Resolve 14. The free version provides some very good features and is becoming a very decent NLE and is IMHO the closest to legacy FCP of the free NLEs. There is a fairly big learning curve.
The pro version is now the same price as FCPX and given the choice, I would definitely go FCPX. Not only is it much easier, more stable, it also has a much larger and better support community.
The other NLE to consider is Premiere Pro which can be had on a monthly subscription but just a little over a year and you could buy FCPX outright. All updates of FCPX for over 5 years have been free.
I don't have any experience with the other 2 apps. Have used both PP and Resolve and today, I would choose Resolve over PP not only for the cost, but think BM is really putting some real effort into the app. I used to use it for color correcting for FCPX projects and have used it for a couple of shorts just to play with it.
Now with the new color correction in FCPX 10.4, I doubt if I will re-install Resolve on current system. Still you can't argue with the price. Well you can, because you may need the pro version.

Just my 2 cents

Hope this Helps, Greg

Thanks, Greg

Ben Bryant NYC

Hi Phil
Are you sure that Send to X will convert FCP5 to FCPX? I know that it will work for FCP6&7 but FCP5 uses an older version of XML and I think it does not translate. Not sure about this, so if you know for sure it does would appreciate a confirmation. Haven't asked Greg at IA myself, but vaguely remember some discussion where IA said it doesn't and they said to convert to FCP6 or 7 to use Send to X. Think the earlier version of XML had some real limitations and various parts of projects wouldn't come over. There were some holes in converting 5-7 inside FCP even.
Maybe just me not remembering???

Happy Editing, Greg