Still no word from proDAD so I currently don't know whether they are actually interested in getting Mercalli up and running on my W7 PC and on my iMac. Stuck in no-man's land really with something I want to buy but which currently doesn't work whilst at the same time not knowing whether I'm going to get any help in getting it to work. I've followed all the information I've been given by proDAD to the letter but since then heard nothing and have not been offered any further advice or suggestions. I do have the option of posting off a video file but in the end that isn't going to get this working on my machine which is what matters to me.

What I find so depressing is if I take the failure of the software to run on my iMac as the best example all that I am trying to do is to get the software to do exactly what it is supposed to do and I would have thought that proDAD would have been interested in the fact that is wasn't working.

I'm using a brand new iMac with a 2.8 GHz Intel Core i5 processor (quad core) which on the memory front has 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3, the iMac is running the latest Mac OS X 10.6.5. Installed on this machine is the latest version of Final Cut Express, 4.0.1.

I then download from proDAD the mac plugin trial package of Mercalli and installed it, this package is designed to work with this software and it installs fine and shows up as an available filter. However, when I actually try to use the filter I get the error illustrated below, the dreaded red screen. All I am trying to do is to run the software in the environment that it is supposed to have been designed to run in!

So, the only conclusion is that on a modern mac the Mercalli plugin for Final Cut Express DOES NOT WORK, at least I have no evidence that it does.

I have to confess that if I were working for proDAD what I would be doing is providing me with the latest official version of the software and letting me try it to see if it works. If it works I buy it and if it doesn't I can't use it anyway. This does not appear to be an option at the present time but it's hard to see any other way forward. I am confident that this is nothing to do with the clips themselves as they are standard MOV files which open fine in other packages such as Lock and Load from CoreMelt that I mentioned previously.