Adobe Encore (CS6) on macOS High Sierra

 If you are like me and need to produce DVDs and Blu-ray discs from time to time, Adobe Encore is your friend.

Of course it's been discontinued, but Adobe still offers a download from Adobe CC.

• Go to CC Manager, scroll down to Premiere Pro CC.
• Click on the little arrow at the right of the Open button.
• Here lies the installer for Premiere CS6, it will install Encore as well.

Now, on the Adobe site it says that you can uninstall Premiere CS6 and keep Encore CS6. Well NOT IN MY EXPERIENCE. Using the Premiere CS6 Uninstaller deletes Encore as well. Be warned.

So far Encore launches fine on High Sierra, will report after a real job.

NOTE: For simple DVD/Blu-ray (with very limited features), Compressor is also your friend.

Installing macOS High Sierra Onto MacPro 5,1 (cMP5,1) Patience Required!

Retracing all my steps to install a fresh macOS HighSierra on my cMP5,1 2012.

Bought a new SSD, stuck it into the Optical bay and connected it to the second Sata cable.

Emptied internal x4 Drive Bay, 16GB RAM, Radeon 5770 stock, nothing else connected but Apple Keyboard + generic mouse.

I made a USB High Sierra installer and started the computer, zapped the PRAM, it started from the USB and loaded the installer fine.

I went into Disk Util and erased the SSD using APFS. [***Do not do this! Read on!***]

Got the Firmware Update Required window:

Clicked onto Shut Down button... Nothing happened.

Went to the Menu Bar, clicked onto the Apple Logo and Shutdown from there.

Pushed and held Mac power button, LED flashed, got the long Beep, computer restarted, but no Firmware update happened.

Again got the Firmware Update Required window... What the f*^%$?

Again clicked onto Shut Down button, nothing happened.

Again went to the Menu Bar, clicked onto the Apple Logo and shutdown from there.

Again pushed and held Mac power button, LED flashed, got the long Beep, computer restarted, this time it went into Firmware Update (fat update bar instead of thin one.)

After 5 min. the computer restarted by itself, Sierra installer loaded.

Clicked Continue, then got a window "To download and restore macOS, your computer's eligibility will be verified with Apple". What???

Went back to macOS Utilities and turned on WIFI and connected to the internet. Came back to the same point...

I canceled, restarted, clicked again on install, this time it didn't show this window, go figure. Went to the installer, but it DIDN'T LIST MY SSD in the disk selection for install... !! Arrghl!

Hence do not format your SSD to APFS prior to install.

Went to macOS Utilities, Disk Utilities, tried to erase/reformat the drive to no avail (could not unmount it, and I could not see it to force unmount it.

Shutdown, removed the SSD, went to a second computer, erased the SSD, this time formatted GUID/macOS Extended.

Put it back into the computer, started again, into the installer, and bingo!

Selected the SSD and started the installation at last!

15min. later, booting into High Sierra. Success at last!

Disk Util confirms that the SSD has been erased and reformatted to APFS as part of the installation.

How to create a bootable High Sierra Flash USB installer

Download High Sierra from the AppStore. When prompted to install, CANCEL the installation: Quit High Sierra Installer.

In your Application folder you will see a "Install macOS High Sierra.app" that's in my case 5.18GB in size.

Get a Flash USB drive that's 8GB or more. Mount it on your Desktop. Rename it "MyVolume" (or change the name of the volume in the command below to reflect the name of your device.)

Open Terminal, type:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app

It will ask for your password and if you wish to erase your "MyVolume" device.

Let it rip! It will takes several minutes to complete.

Enjoy your new installer!

Apple support page for making USB installers with various OSes:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

Sapphire Radeon 7950 Mac Edition on MaPro 5,1 macOs Sierra

I moved my Sapphire Radeon to my MacPro 5,1 over a year ago and everything has been fine. I have no glitch and things are smooth. I wish I could upgrade to a Sapphire RX580 8GB and get more power with FCPX, Premiere, Resolve, Motion and After Effects - my staple apps.

Apple has announced some support for external GPUs in masOc High Sierra, and the Radeon 580X is one of the few card that seem to be supported. Although as a single GPU in a MacPro we probably wouldn't see the splash screen at startup. The card is hard to come by though. I am still on Sierra, and I might wait until the end of the year to upgrade os + GPU. We'll see.

The card has seen a lot of usage, and has been working flawlessly, so I'm not complaining. I read on the internet that the 7950 glitches happened in a single monitor configuration. Might be why I have been immune on my station since I am using two monitors. My previous post about this problem was back in 2014 in a MacPro 3,1: https://humanuser.blogspot.com/2014/02/radeon-7950-mac-edition-on-macpro-31.html

Native eGPU support in macOS High Sierra!

Yep, you read this correctly. Buy an compatible external Thunderbolt 3 GPU chassis, add any freaking video card(s) of your choice, AMD Radeon or Nvidia Pascal video card and boooooom! You are no longer limited by your Mac built-in GPU. Native support is the big news here. Even though it's not fully implemented yet, it shows promises.

https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/07/hands-on-macos-high-sierra-native-egpu-support-shows-promise-video/