Upgrading operating system mid project??

It's unavoidable, what issues could I expect or will it be fine?

If you want to update to Mavericks and at the same time you want to upgrade FCPX from 10.0.9 to 10.1.1 mid project you are playing with fire.

Best working solution is:

1. Make sure you have at least 8 GB RAM installed.

2. Backup your entire system on an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or a similar utility.

3. Wipe your system drive clean and install Mavericks and your applications on the clean drive. This will prevent a lot of UI issues some people have been experiencing lately.

4. Carefully read and follow the instructions on how to update your current project(s) from 10.0.9 to 10.1:

support.apple.com/kb/HT5958

5. If you have any questions, ask them here.

- Ronny

I'm talking about upgrading to Mavericks but staying with 10.0.8, the reason I need to upgrade to Mavericks is to take advantage of my macbook pro mid 2010's option to upgrade to 16gb of RAM, at the mo, fcpx wont give me playback on my latest project.

Upgrading the OS does not in any way allow the hardware to handle more RAM. RAM limits are set in the hardware, and have nothing to do with what versions of the OS you are running.

For slightly obscure reasons, my Retina MacBook Pro has only the standard 8Gb RAM rather than the 16Gb I wanted. It's not upgradeable post-purchase, sadly, so I'm stuck with it as it is.

Running FCPX 10.0.x on OS X 10.8 was workable, but it was never long before it hit swap heavily. OS X 10.9 is dramatically better, and only partly because a bunch of memory leaks in Safari appear to have been fixed. Mavericks' compressed memory system fights hard to keep the system from hitting swap, and most of the time it works superbly.

I'd still regard 8Gb RAM as the minimum for FCPX, but it's a much more workable minimum than it used to be.

All of which said: upgrading OS X and/or FCPX while mid-project would be... inadvisable. I'm not clear what issue Seany is trying to solve, to be honest. Seany - what's changed for you? Has the system always been too slow for you, or has it got worse?

What sort of footage are you editing, what sort of drive is it on, how much free space on media and system drives, what spec MacBook Pro?

We have been discussing this in another thread. In fact the OP does not really need to upgrade anything.

He was working with a large project off his internal drive and the project got sluggish, which is absolutely normal. He's going to get a fast external drive and put his Events and Projects onto that drive. I think that will solve most of his issues. When the project is finished he can upgrade to Mavs and 10.1.1.

- Ronny