Why is this happening?

[Mike Krumlauf]

Have not opened FCP 7 in years, decided to dust the old program off and puts around with it only to find the footage was not showing up properly and black playback screens are showing up purple. I uninstalled and reinstalled and still nothing.... what is causing this?

 

[Run&Gun]

What OS version are you on? FCP is no longer supported by Apple and it's possible no longer compatible(able to run properly) with the most recent OSX/MacOS versions.

 

[Mike Krumlauf]

I use an older 2008 MAC PRO tower which can only go up to El Captain

 

[Run&Gun]

I have a 2012 RMBP running El Capitan and I just tried to boot up FCP for the heck of it. It says that it can't find the scratch disk and won't let me proceed. It only lets you try to reset the scratch disk(can't/won't), try again or quit the program.

No real loss for me. I haven't opened it in years and since I don't edit, I really don't even touch FCPX, I just have it "because". But I could see this being a problem if someone really needed to open an old FCP project.

 

[Josh Bass]

I dunno guys. I have Sierra and it still works on there.

 

[NorBro]

'High Sierra' is the only one that will not open legacy software anymore.

Trash your FCP preferences and it should work.

If it doesn't, some kind of software/hardware/plugin is not playing nicely causing the corruption.

 

[Mike Krumlauf]

NorBro is the winner! Trashing my pref fixed it. Thanks a bunch man!