At the beginning of this year, now that Avid have released an approved version of Pro Tools for use with Apple’s Yosemite, I decided to take the plunge and do the deed. I have been running PT 11.1.2 HD on my cheese grater Mac Pro Tower with my HDX1 system for a long time now. I chose to avoid going to Mavericks because of all the issues, mainly to do with Mac OS rather than Pro Tools that I had heard about, as well as Russ’ experiences with him having to revert to Mountain Lion to get a reliable computer.  Because I use my studio Mac Pro for everything, not just Pro Tools, I need a stable reliable system for a broad range of activities.

Clean Install Or ‘Over The Top’?

I decided that I would go for an ‘over the top’ install to save time reinstalling everything and setting up all my settings and preferences for a myriad of applications.

Preparation

The first thing I did was to upgrade all my existing applications. I had held back on a number of upgrades because they related to Mavericks or Yosemite. I used the Apple Update and ran everything except for the OS related stuff because I knew that would be a waste of time.

I then went through my applications folder and had a prune, of apps that I hadn’t used for ages or I knew would be an issue with Yosemite like Final Cut Pro 7. I ran de-installers where possible so that they would hopefully take out all the stuff relating to an application rather than just the app itself.

Make A Clone

Next I made a dedicated clone of my boot drive before I did anything else. This would be very important if everything went pear shaped. As part of my backup strategy I have SuperDuper creating an up to date clone of my boot drive every day, but of course that would only last a day. I needed another clone of my boot drive that wouldn’t be updated the next day.  From my last major update I had a drive that I did the same thing with then, It was when I went from Lion to Mountain Lion, and so I erased that drive and used Super Duper to create a clone of my current boot drive onto that drive and renamed it Mountain Lion Safety Backup.

Let’s Do It

Now with a fall back position if it all went wrong, I started with installing Yosemite from the App Store. I downloaded the installer, which is free of course, and immediately made a safety copy and filed it on my drive of installers. I ran the installer and after 30 minutes or so my Mac Pro rebooted and I was on Yosemite.

The first thing I noticed was that I had two menu bars, one for each screen and I couldn’t have windows spread across the two screens. Also I noticed that my desktop pictures wouldn’t stick.  I googled the issue and found that I needed turn off ‘Displays Have Separate Spaces’. That fixed all these issues.

Blank Icons

Another problem I had was with blank icons on my Desktop mainly for Microsoft Office application documents. Once again I turned to Google for help and found that people had been able to resolve the issue using a little application called Yosemite Cache Cleaner (YCC). 

As you can see, I set it to deep clean and let it do it’s stuff, restarted the machine and that was another problem solved.  Whilst I had YCC open I took the opportunity it explore it further and used it to clean up my preferences and other unwanted files.  It offered me a range of files that I hadn’t used for several years and so I was able to clean out a load of unnecessary stuff from previous installations.

Installing Pro Tools 11.3 

Again I chose not to deinstall PT but to go ‘over the top’. The installation of Pro Tools went fine and I did a variety of basic tests with it and all appeared fine at first. However what I did find is that the Video Engine wouldn’t quit properly.

Back to Google and that took me to an Avid Knowledge Base article that said….

After installing Pro Tools 11.3 over an existing version, the Video Engine does not work or Pro Tools hangs on the Loading Video Engine during launch. This could occur if the Video Engine components are not updated correctly.

The installer was improved and reposted as Pro_Tools_11_3_0_Mac_83829.dmg (in customer accounts on 12/23) to prevent this problem. If using the original Pro_Tools_11_3_0_Mac_83671.dmg installer, please delete the Pro Tools 11.3 app and run the installer again.

So back off to Avid’s site to download the latest installer and that was that problem fixed.

Mouse Not Working Properly

Last Monday I recorded the podcast without incident but when I came to edit it on Tuesday morning I was having problems with mouse accuracy, mainly when dragging clips around, I would move them, let go and they would jump to a slightly different location. I use a LogicTech M510 cordless mouse and so I wondered if the Logitech drivers had an update for Yosemite.  Back to Google to find they did not, but in a forum people were recommending SteerMouse a $20 shareware app. I downloaded it and tried it out and once I had removed the last components left over from the Logitech drivers which SteerMouse kindly told me about, I was able to configure all the buttons on my Logitech M510 mouse and immediately I noticed a huge difference in mouse accuracy. It was so much more responsive. I realised that it had been as if there were two apps fighting for control of my mouse. How that fight was over I am in complete control of my mouse and all my issues in Pro Tools were gone, but I noticed things were much easier in all my other apps too.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, the small number of issues I went through were all OS and related to other apps rather than Pro Tools issues except for needing the latest version of the 11.3 installer. I cannot guarantee that you will have exactly the same issues, but I would strongly advise you to make a safety back up clone of your drive before you start. that way if it does all go horribly wrong you will have a reliable drive to go back to.