HI!

We are a small production company wishing to upgrade to Media Composer 3 and we would like to know if anybody has tried it on such an old mac?  I know it is not "supported" per say, but if does work, it could delay having to buy a new Mac...

Dual Processor 2GHz PowerPC G5 (not a dual core)

4G RAM

We have 10.5 on hand, but have not yet installed it

8X AGP Pro graphics: ATI RADEON 9600 Pro with 64MB DDR SDRAM  (I'm guessing we would have to upgrade this card to a NVidia...)

I have the feeling it might not be worth upgrading this machine, but we wanted to ask the opinion of other pros before deciding...

The less expensive (but longer lasting than a quad) replacement option we looked at, the Dual Quad 2.8Ghz, is not in the "Qualified Apple Mac Notebooks for Avid Media Composer " list.  Anyone knows why? (Or should I post this as another thread? - I'm not all that familiar with forums)

Many thanks to any and all inputs!

Lodoiska

On my 3rd system  I'm running a  G5 Dual 2GHz Power PC , 3.5 GB SD Ram , Mac  OS 10.4.11 ,  Avid 3.1.2

Analog Mojo   (not having any problems.)   I just upgraded to 3.1.2  from 3.0.5  but stayed with

tiger 10.4.11 since it's working for me. 

My Graphics card is  GE FORCE FX 52OO

    Also have had great success running AMC 3.1.2 on 2 older Macs. 

    1. A MBP 1.83ghz intel Core Duo

        10.4.11

        2 GB ram 

        Radeon X1600 (That did not work with AXP using boot camp and XP)

    2. A Dual 2ghz Power PC G5

        10.4.11

        5.5 GB ram

        ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb vram

Our 3'rd suite is running MC 3 on a dual 2.7 G5 as well.  Analog Mojo.  I upgraded the video card to a 256mb ATI model, not sure which one exactly.  Runs well.

Thanks for the replies!  Seems we're gonna try the Avid upgrade with our G5...  From what I gathered, we would just need a better video card than the one we have.

But another question was raised by your answers...  You all seem to be on 10.4.11 on your older machines.  Does it not work good with 10.5.x?   We kinda skipped the 10.4 altogether...  We're with 10.3.9, and we bought 10.5.  Any trouble with the 10.5.x config with older Macs?

Also, I'm kinda surprised that some of you have an ATI card, as the specs for MC 3 says NVidia only.  Marketing scheme?

Thanks again to all!

Lodo

    The reason I stay at 10.4.11 on both machines (MBP 1.83 - G5 2.0 Dual) is because I have loads of Video and Audio software on them. (This also includes the "F" word! (FCP)-I do not use). At the moment "EVERYTHING" works! Also, I know where the OS places things I need to remove. This changed with 10.5. I do not want to spend weeks trouble shooting OS incompatibilities just to have 10.5. Through its forums I think Avid realized the vast amount of 10.4.11 users. And not to alienate anyone they wrote/rewrote AMC to be all inclusive! 

   If I remember correctly "NVidia only" pertained to the PC side of AMC. 

   I had an ATI 9600 Pro Mac Edition (256mb) in the G5 that also worked. It is a back up card since getting the 9800 128mb. This is just to say try AMC 3.1.2 with your existing card and up grade only if you run into problems. 

   Editing is time consuming enough without playing tech every other frame! 

Thanks!

We'll try it and post the results here in case anybody has a similar setup and is wondering!

:)

Lodo

Some of our non-Avid systems have been upgraded to Leopard and everyone loves it - especially the back up capabilities.  We have Media Composer 2.7.2 running on a G5, Dual 2.7, with the AdrenalineHD box and an Intel Dual Core using the Mojo SDI.  We also use it on the road with our MacBook Pros, 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duos, and the Mojo SDI.  We really want to go all Leopard and upgrade to MC 3.1.2.  I'm in the same predicament where Avid won't officially qualify the G5.  That is the only problem with this upgrade.  Let me know how it works, please.

Thanks,

Nancy

Anyone else have any feedback on using this setup? This is the only posting or anything I can find on the interweb that is telling me it's a good way to go and I wish I had a larger sampling of experiences.  There must be a ton of people who had to shelve their perfectly good G5s in order to go MC3 and now want to put them back to use now that Avid kinda sorta made the dream a reality.  I mean if this setup really works, it can potentially save a lot of people many thousands of dollars, that is significant and deserves some attention here.  I dont do a lot of forum stuff so i dont know how one keeps a thread alive, but I hope someone can keep this convo going or create a FAQ or something.

Thanks

Brad

Hi guys, an Avid newbie here - I've been a sound editor and mixer for 8 + years, but I've bought Avid MC 3.x & a Mojo SDI to learn and to potentially set-up a dry hire suite.

I had assumed from all the compatibility info not to even try installing Avid MC 3.x onto my older dual G5, now I'm thinking twice. This system is predominantly for Pro Tools 7 & Digital Performer 5, however if I could get MC going on it I would put off spending $4-6k AUD on a new tower.

My OS is 10.4.11, 4.5 G of memory and it has HEAPS of audio plug-ins, many of which won't work if it gets upgraded to Leopard.

I see getting a Mac Pro as inevitable; especially since I want to upgrade to Pro Tools LE 8 with the Complete Production Toolkit - I'm going to need the extra processing for surround & huge track counts regardless (don't worry - I know about the Pro Tools / Media Composer issues) but installing MC now will at least get me started.

I would just be tinkering... it's going to cause instability for all the Pro Tools & controller / Fuse-X video card hardware / software though...

Any advice?

Cheers,

Phil J.

We run a lab of 16 G5 Dual Proc 1.8GHz systems all running OS 10.5 and Avid 3.1.1 - all works fine for us. We are mostly using the systems for DV work - have not really tried doing HD in any sort of production environment.

I would be interested to learn more about the experiences anyone out there has had with graphics cards when upgrading, whether only a NVidia (required arcording to Avids documentation) or an ATI Radeon card works with MC v3.0. I have a G5 running OS 10.4.11 and MC v2.8 and an Intel Mac running Leopard (with FCP at the moment) and I would like to switch machines but both have ATI cards installed.

I appreciate any experiences you can share!

Hi everybody,

very interesting thread. Sorry if i mix something up in the following...

i´m trying to find information about the MC3 on G5 (it´s a quad but anyway) issue too. I read somewhere that there is a problem with Mojo SDI on Leopard. Is that right? If yes, can i use my G5, with Mojo SDI and install the new version 3.1.2 on my OSX 10.4.11?

I think in the past there was a "backwards" version from 3.0.5 to 3.0.4 or something tbat was made to work on Power PC with Tiger but i can´t find that anymore. That seemed to be the safest version if you didn´t want or could buy a MacPro or couldn´t install Leopard because of the Mojo SDI problems.

Can somebody help please, i´m loosing track of the whole thing.

thanks sealke

Hello! Well, for us, it still isn't working out... We upgraded to MC 3.3.1, but we still have problems... Something with Quicktime 7.5.5, Avid 3.1.1 and OS 10.5.5 refusing to all happilly walk hand in hand... Even though that's the config we were told to use.

But your configuration is more recent than ours, so our experience might not be the best reference for you! Hopefully yours will be more compliant!

I'll still keep posting our results...

Hi!
Your post grabed my attention...  You seem to be using the same beast as us and it seems to be working for you!  Would you mind sharing all of your system information with us?  We are using a G5 2ghz Dual processor (not core), with OS 10.5.5 and Avid MC 3.1.1.  The problem seems to be with Quick Time 7.5.5 that should be working with 10.5.5, but does not, which in turn causes problem with Avid.

If you can, please let me know exactly what you use, down to the last digit, including the video card, so we can see where we went wrong! We too are doing mostly HDV (although right now we can't do squat!)

If this does not work, I'll try reverting to 10.4.11, since so many users seems to have less problems with it...

Thanks and Happy Easter!

:)

Lodo