Essentially, his emergency drive combined with yours means you can rock up to a vanilla MacPro and start working, or be able to rescue anyone that has a hosed install.

Have you tried cloning a bootable install with FCS loaded on it? Clonetool Hatchery is very good for this, and I once had to edit on location on a MacPro that did not have FCS installed. The specs of the machine were a close match to the MacPro in the office, so I made a bootable clone of the office install, brought the clone to the location, booted to the external drive, and started working instantly. It was a gamble, and I had the install discs just in case, but instead of spending half the day installing FCS, I could spend it setting up the network and connecting the decks instead.

Good call too Zak, on using xml to ensure your fx project translates across versions.

Just an addition note I have about older versions of FCP while we're on the topic.

I keep with me on my portable harddisk, at all time these copies of FCP application files.

1. v5.0
2. v5.0.2
3. v5.1
4. v5.1.2
5. v5.1.4
6. v6.0
7. v6.0.1
8. v6.0.3
9. v6.0.5

There are many reasons for doing so.

At one point last year, I encountered an error for FCP v6.0.2, the link for the error message is below.

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/lau_dus…

This error occurred in the same machine it was created in and even the autosave vault files gave the same error. The project file could not be opened in 4 other machines, whether the media was physically mounted or not.

I had to roll back through a day and a half of auto saves before I found one that was valid and could be opened. My autosaves are 5 minutes apart and there weren't big changes or media imported in between the last working project autosave file and the first autosave file that started getting corrupted, so the possibility of corrupt media causing the error is remote.

I surmised that it was version 6.0.2 error as this had not occurred in the previous few weeks I had worked on the project and had only begun after a company mandated application upgrade to v6.0.2. This problem was fixed in V6.0.3, but re-occurred in v6.0.4, hence the exclusion of those 2 versions on my harddisk.

Fortunately, I had the v6.0.1 version of FCP in my portable hard disk.

I have these versions of FCP v5, 5.1, 5.1.2, 5.1.4, 6.0.1, 6.0.2 on my harddisk, so that I can 'downgrade' the version of FCP I use anywhere if ever necessary, as it was in this circumstance. I left a copy of the v6.0.1 application for the editor taking over me to use by dragging the project file into the app file to open the project using v6.0.1 instead of v6.0.2.

So even though the machine was upgraded to v6.0.2, we were able to continue working on the less buggy v6.0.1 until v6.0.3 was released.

Essentially, what I needed was to use v6.0.1 instead so that I wouldn't keep losing my work due to corrupted project files and autosaves due to the v6.0.2 bug. This error lost me 1.5 days of work and in conjunction with the LACIE hard disk we had which died, we ended up in the rather hairy situation of segment 1 of the show being on air while segment 2 was being dumped out. (Yes, in Singapore, delivery deadlines run that close typically, especially for in-house shows)

Great article bollocking Lacie by the way, I've had 6 harddisks die on me in my entire career and 5 of them were lacies in the past 2 years, never due to the physical harddisk, always because of the power supply or raid controllers.

Back on topic, in addition, you might have people working on earlier versions of FCP that send you their project and you would definitely want to avoid “upgrading” their project file and preventing them from opening the file with your changes when you send the project back to them. XML export is getting better but some motion effects and transitions are still lost in the translation.

It's very useful to maintain the project compatability with external agencies/clients who are using that lower version as you don't upgrade mid project and you don't want to force others to by upgrading their project file.

<rant>
Apple does not recommend this approach but honestly, it's a workaround that we have to live with because project files keep breaking across point upgrades, which I find unacceptable as far as cross version compatibility goes.

It's fine to upgrade your version when in between projects, but when you have to start ensuring that all other people you exchange project files with are on the same version, it gets a bit weary; it almost feels like the stars need to align before you can upgrade.

</rant>

Cheers
Dustin
Director / Editor

Mobile:
+65 93859940
E-mail:
dustin@luminoir.com
Web:
http://www.luminoir.com

Thanks for the tip, it's definitely a good idea to have all your bases
covered in that way.

Jeff