currently FCP Studio 2, and MCA 3.5.4.  I'm building a dual system, 1 because my PC was an XW8200, and I have a nice 3ghz quad intel Mac Pro sitting doing nothing...it is our 4th FCP system.  I started out building a second harddrive, installed MCA...everything works great...but I would like to run After Effects on the AVID side as well, but it is installed on the FCP drive, and doesn't run when i launch it from the AVID side.

what do you guys think?  anyone running this way?

i just did a freelance monitor calibration job at a facility that is running 2 hard drive setup, so that gave me the idea, but the CS4 issue is making rethink how that is done...

Could be something as simple as an incompatible version of Quicktime.  Avid has always been a bit more conservative qualifying supported versions of QT.  I'd recommend continuing to either partition the internal HD or adding a second internal harddrive.  Check the specs on the read me notes for Avid, FCP and AE.

HTH

i've been through the readmes...3.5.4 requires QT 7.6...the FCP is running 7.6.2.  I don't mind having 2 drives, but how do I get CS4 to run when booted from either drive?  can it be installed on a 3rd nonboot drive?

I've been running FCS 3 and MC 3.5.4 on the same drive for a couple of weeks now without issue. I know it's not specced by Avid but QT 7.6.2 with 10.5.7 is working OK for me. DYOD though . . .

Joe:

You'd want Avid (and it's qualified version of OS/QT) on one drive, FCP (and it's own version of the OS/QT) on the other.  You'd reboot to the other drive when you'd want to switch programs.

They should, however, be able to share a third drive for media.

...and now for my completely irregular, non-supported experience. I have Avid, FCP, and the entire CS4 production premium suite on my system, on the same boot drive, along with a Kona 3 AND MojoSDI.  No problems at all.  Complete functionality from every app.  I admit to a delicate upgrade dance, however.  As I use Avid to keep the lights on, I won't upgrade FCP and the Adobe Suite until Avid catches up with approved versions of Quicktime and so forth.

In the olden days this was a disctinct disadvantage. But here's the ribbon-award ceremony.  Under ABVB and even Meridien days, Avid was easily several quarters behind any Mac OS or QT upgrade.  Not any more! That is a very impressive accomplishment. It's much easier to enjoy fairly current software with each tool in my suite.

All that having been typed, if you MUST have the absolute latest and greatest of each of those (and I'd like to meet you) then you'd be well-served to follow Kevin's knowledgeble advise.

so i did end up sticking withteh different boot drives per AVID/QT and FCP/QT.  my biggest concern was with CS4 as I couldn't run it on the AVID side since it was installed on the FCP side...but what I found was that I could install CS4 on the AVID side, and not use up another activation, since the computer is already an active system registered with Adobe....that was what I was most worried about...didn't want to use 2 activations up on 1 computer.

thanks for the help guys...and aside from needing to purchase a new Keyspan for deck control on the AVID, it all works swimmingly...now to test unity!

Hi I'm (kinda) new to all of this so bear with me. I'm trying to install Media Composer 3.5.4 on to a MacBook Pro that has Final Cut already installed. And it's not going well.

It installs but...

The problem is right at the beginning of program launch, on double-click the application bounces on the doc, then I get about a second of spinning ball then bump! (rejection noise) and nothing. Double clicking to launch the application again gets only an acknowledgment that I have clicked (one bounce in the dock or icon woosh from finder) then nothing.

This is (was) a clean install with no previous versions of Avid on the machine. I have tried uninstalling an re-installing a number of times including installing the original 3.5 that came on disk when media composer was purchased.

Console says nothing at all, as if nothing happened.

Final Cut is version 6.0.5

System specs are as follows:

MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

OS X Server 10.5.7

800MHz Bus

NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

Hard Drive has 8.32 GB available

(This is the slightly older model fo the MBPs, noted by only one graphics card) 

The first time I installed, I installed all of the additional installers before restarting. Also the Mac seems to have lots of users and the applications folder is headed "shared folder" in finder, as are all the other folders including Macintosh HD.

Any ideas? Does this sound like the sort of launch crash familiar with an incompatible version of QuickTime or something similar?

Thank in advance,

Stefan