Final Cut Pro 3 Migration

June 5, 2004 1:02 PM

Help with Final Cut Pro 3 application migration from a tower drive (Jag) to a G4 Powerbook (Panther). [more]

I sold my G4 800 (*sniff*) and bought a 1.33 GHz PowerBook. I have a legit install of FCP 3, but no installer disk. Besides the application folder and the prefs, what other crazy little files will I have to migrate to keep it running. For what it’s worth, I have the G4 800 drive in an external enclosure, and I can boot from it across FireWire 400. Clone disk? I would rather run the book from a clean 10.3.4 install, but maybe that’s just asking too much.

posted by squirrel to computers & internet (7 comments total)

In OS X you should always check the Library folder in your Home folder -- many of Apple's apps have a folder in there, too (iMovie, Mail, Safari, etc). Also in that Library folder there's an Application Support folder which might have a Final Cut Pro folder.

So, to summarize, check for:
~/Library/Final Cut Pro
~/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro

I don't use FCP so I'm not 100% sure if these will exist, but I always check for them whenever I'm backing something up.
posted by bcwinters at 1:20 PM on June 5, 2004

Do you suppose there may be important stuff in /Library? I'm betting that FCP puts things outside of ~/ yet I don't know for sure.
posted by squirrel at 2:10 PM on June 5, 2004

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the tower's drive to your PowerBook. Then boot the book off the Panther installer and do an archive and install installation --- make sure to check the options to preserve users and settings. Then run the 10.3.4 Combo installer to bring yourself up-to-date.

This should bring you up to 10.3.4 just fine.

(On preview - squirrel you're probably right. FCP might install some kernel extensions)
posted by nathan_teske at 2:15 PM on June 5, 2004

You're screwed unfortunately. FCP uses the MAC address of the machine to establish ownership. Copying the files will not work.

I know this if you check out my non mentioned, link to my site.
posted by filmgeek at 4:03 PM on June 5, 2004

Thanks, all. Cool page, filmgeek. Does anyone know the location of the file with the machine-specific ID line in it?
posted by squirrel at 10:28 PM on June 5, 2004

I'd assume it's part of the library specific preference for the machine, rather than the user.

/library/preferences/com.apple.RegFinalCutPro.plist would be my #1 guess.
posted by filmgeek at 12:07 AM on June 6, 2004

Chances are you can fool it by setting the hardware address of your network card to the same one as the old machine. Check out the 'hw' parameter to ifconfig. (OSX has ifconfig, right?)

The 'hardware' address of a network card is stored in its ROM, however this gets loaded into the card's logic by the driver, which usually reads it from ROM and then sends it back to the card. You can just as easily give it a different address though, and the OS and card will just take that as the address. Reading the MAC out from the ROM explicity is possible of course, but a more complicated, and most apps just don't bother.

This will ofcourse give problems if you use the original machine's network card on the same LAN because they'll both use the same address. If this is necessary, you'll have to change that card's address manually too.
posted by fvw at 12:52 AM on June 6, 2004