Leopard ...

[samsc]

Well ... Catalyst works...

On the surface - there are no visual glitches ( apple fixed bugs i reported several months ago )

Since then i haven't seen any specific Leopard problems-

But as usual beneath the surface there are an awful lot of changes in the OS that might affect what we do-

So I have to urge great caution.

But as anyone buying a new mac knows - from Oct 26th - they wont have any choice in the matter.

Performance? I dont know - a little slower than 10.4.x - though not much.

Developers only got access to the release builds yesterday. The same day are everyone else - which is crazy...
So there isnt much time to have tested anything...

[Andris]

The new enhancements do look interesting, especially Core Animation.
It seems that Leopard has media server technology built right into the API... And a pretty formidable one to boot.

Which leads me to ask: Does Catalyst handle Quartz Composer compositions within a QT file?

[NevBull]

Catalyst has been able to run Quartz Composer movies for some time now - have a look through the posts on the forum.

with regards to Core Animation - see the thread http://chaldee1.gotadsl.co.uk/~richardb/upload/showthread.php?t=1162&highlight=core+animation

Nev
Digital Services Manager
PI Digital

[samsc]

quartz composer and 'core animation' sounds fine in theory- but in practise they are performance hogs whichever way you look at them.

fine on 1 layer not much use on more than that.

catalyst has to be optimised for playback on many layers.

[emilianomorgia]

Well ... Catalyst works...

On the surface - there are no visual glitches ( apple fixed bugs i reported several months ago )


Leopard it's very buggy it self , I had it for few days now , probably catalyst application it's ok , but there are too many things going underwood and many are buggy .

To be honest I'm a Big Apple Fan , but I'll not use ( YET 30-10.08 ) the New Os in real Show .

I don't want to panic anyone , but I think the leo it's on "quarantine"

[samsc]

once you buy a new mac now you wont have a choice...

[Mr_P]

can always disk image it back to tiger...

ive had some BAD issues running an update on a test system - with just the OS - not even tested catalyst yet. Id reccomend a clean new install if anyone is going to update an old system...

beware
S

[emilianomorgia]

Id reccoment a clean new install is ayones going to pdate an old system...




Yeah Clean install it's better the update from tiger . I confirm , and I can tell you that if you start from clean install things are not that bad .

[samsc]

I dont think i ever tried upgrading tiger when testing leopard- the developer builds didnt allow this-

But - the system migration assistant seemed to do most of the right things... in preserving settings and such.

Catalyst does work in leopard - and i havent seen any bugs yet.
I have no idea about performance of drivers, etc.

[samsc]

can always disk image it back to tiger...

S

it is unlikely that any new macs will downgrade to tiger.
typically apple prevents this.

new macbook pros - have an exclusive version of the operating system for now- that only works on them...

[SourceChild]

i
new macbook pros - have an exclusive version of the operating system for now

This scares me. Apple has always tried really hard to release "working" items. The fact that there is a different version for the Macbook Pro indicates to me that there are hardware and driver conflicts with Leo.

I will be interested in seeing feedback from Cat users to see if Leo is causing capture card, video card, or scsi hangups.

It would be nice if Apple just released a scaled down version (sort of like XPe) which gets rid of the crap we don't need.

My suggestion for anyone listening is to create a hard disk with just Catalyst installed on top of Tiger. Then if you decide to use Leo you can have it on a separate partition that doesn't compromise your shows.

I do this anyway since I use my Cat machines as render clusters in post anyway.

[Mr_P]

Have been running catalyst on a 2.6G 8Core Mac Pro, supplied pre-installed with Leopard. All functionality seems to be fine.

However the most up to date version of quicktime didn't seem to include apple intermediate codec. Tried the web installer - but eventually had to find the 'apple intermediate.control' file and copy it from my laptop to the mac pro... - then it worked.

Also disabled: time machine, dashboard, mouse zooming, expose, and desktop views, put all drives in to privacy too.

This Mac was awaiting its proper ATIX1900XT card and was still running on a NVIDIA7300 - the graphics bargraph in catalyst was high and I would expect this to drop significantly with a replacement card.

So good news for leopard so far - but I don't think theres a great need to rush out and upgrade your tiger system - and no need to downgrade your new leopard system.

S

[SourceChild]

Looks like Simon has the right idea. What he did is exactly what anyone else with Leopard should do.

[ping141]

Careful with Leopard and x1900, they don´t go along well. My system started freezing from out of nowhere. Took some time to figure out why, as I´d put in some more RAM etc. But hopefully the machine is cured with clean fans and a clean 10.4... :)

[samsc]

Have been running catalyst on a 2.6G 8Core Mac Pro, supplied pre-installed with Leopard. All functionality seems to be fine.

However the most up to date version of quicktime didn't seem to include apple intermediate codec. Tried the web installer - but eventually had to find the 'apple intermediate.control' file and copy it from my laptop to the mac pro... - then it worked.

Also disabled: time machine, dashboard, mouse zooming, expose, and desktop views, put all drives in to privacy too.

This Mac was awaiting its proper ATIX1900XT card and was still running on a NVIDIA7300 - the graphics bargraph in catalyst was high and I would expect this to drop significantly with a replacement card.

So good news for leopard so far - but I don't think theres a great need to rush out and upgrade your tiger system - and no need to downgrade your new leopard system.

S

10.5.1
functionality - yes fine-
but leopard has terrible performance on the machines i tested.
dual g5 , intel mac pro 2007.

not recommended at all.
do not upgrade, only use if you have a new machine which doesnt have an option.

its 50%-100% slower in number of layers than tiger - on exact same hardware-
not dependant on codec or rendering, all movies are much slower.

[samsc]

Careful with Leopard and x1900, they don´t go along well. My system started freezing from out of nowhere. Took some time to figure out why, as I´d put in some more RAM etc. But hopefully the machine is cured with clean fans and a clean 10.4... :)

leopard has terrible performance- 10.5.1 is a dog.

only use if you have to. otherwise steer clear for now.

there really is nothing at all worth upgrading for.

[samsc]

Careful with Leopard and x1900, they don´t go along well. My system started freezing from out of nowhere. Took some time to figure out why, as I´d put in some more RAM etc. But hopefully the machine is cured with clean fans and a clean 10.4... :)

some x1900 have heat issues- they have been half documented-
i had a demo machine from apple at LDI trade show which had screen corruption.
I managed to switch to tiger- and problem remained. so its not OS related.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1310049&tstart=120

x1900 is a good video card- the 7300 is really lame.

[ping141]

not recommended at all.
do not upgrade, only use if you have a new machine which doesnt have an option.


We got a Mac Pro 2.66 with Leo the week before the newest ones were released, but it worked fine to install a clean Tiger from an older Mac Pro installer I had.

[ping141]

some x1900 have heat issues- they have been half documented-
i had a demo machine from apple at LDI trade show which had screen corruption.
I managed to switch to tiger- and problem remained. so its no OS related.

One theory I came across was that Leo generally uses the GPU more than Tiger, so that it will become hotter. I can only speak for myself, but my x1900 worked like a charm for a year with Tiger, and crashed repeatedly with Leopard. Every morning the machine would have frozen from just being idle. And Quartz Composer gave me hourly freezes when running a bit hard.

[samsc]

One theory I came across was that Leo generally uses the GPU more than Tiger, so that it will become hotter. I can only speak for myself, but my x1900 worked like a charm for a year with Tiger, and crashed repeatedly with Leopard. Every morning the machine would have frozen from just being idle. And Quartz Composer gave me hourly freezes when running a bit hard.

its not nice to go from rather stable 10.4.11 to the instability and poor performance of 10.5.1-

drives me crazy - every couple of years - the entire system gets broken - and we have to start from scratch-
its nonsense.

---

i get the feeling there are significant numbers of bugs not resolved in 10.5

for me though the main problem is terrible performance -