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PowerFullMac

macrumors 601
Original poster
Oct 16, 2006
4,000
1
Hi, I am getting a 2.2GHz MacBook with 1GB of RAM (which I am upgrading to 4GB) and I was wondering if I would be able to run Final Cut Pro on it, and will the RAM upgrade help?

Thanks in advance for the help!
 

Jeremy1026

macrumors 68020
Nov 3, 2007
2,215
1,029
Hi, I am getting a 2.2GHz MacBook with 1GB of RAM (which I am upgrading to 4GB) and I was wondering if I would be able to run Final Cut Pro on it, and will the RAM upgrade help?

Thanks in advance for the help!

No, FCP needs a dedicated video card. FCE will run, and with 4gb of RAM, run at a decent pace, on it though.
 

Bob Jovi

macrumors regular
Jul 26, 2006
145
0
London
FCP will be fine, as long as you don't plan doing anything complex in Motion or Colour. Final Cut, DVD Studio and Soundtrack will all run nicely.
 

DaveWonders

macrumors regular
Sep 12, 2006
102
0
FCP should be okay. More RAM is ALWAYS better. Motion will be awful, but just for simple editing you're good to go.
 

Jeremy1026

macrumors 68020
Nov 3, 2007
2,215
1,029
System Requirements:
An AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card (Final Cut Studio is not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors)

MacBook Graphics:
Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory.
 

Jeremy1026

macrumors 68020
Nov 3, 2007
2,215
1,029
The question was about Final Cut Pro, not Final Cut Studio. The issue with studio is Motion and Color.

Odd...

MacWorld said:
FCP 6 always felt solid and stable: in several days of testing on five machines, I never experienced a crash or lockup. Performance was consistently zippy on dual-G5 and faster Macs, and installation went smoothly. My biggest issue was the time it took to install the full nine-DVD, 55GB suite, and making room on a boot drive on my older G5s in order to do so. The system requirements are moderately steep—you’ll need a somewhat recent machine to run it: at least a 1.25GHz Power Mac G4 with AGP or PCIe graphics for standard-definition video. HD video requires even more CPU, GPU, and RAM.
 

PowerFullMac

macrumors 601
Original poster
Oct 16, 2006
4,000
1
What is the difference between Final Cut Pro and Final Cut (whatever runs fine with intergrated graphics cards).
 

Cave Man

macrumors 604
Odd...

The system requirements are moderately steep—you’ll need a somewhat recent machine to run it: at least a 1.25GHz Power Mac G4 with AGP or PCIe graphics for standard-definition video. HD video requires even more CPU, GPU, and RAM.

I imagine that a single processor G4 would require a dedicated gpu to offload some of the encoding, provided said gpu had the proper hardware acceleration (e.g., MPEG-2, H.264). But the Core 2 Duos are substantially faster at those activities. For example, my 1.66 gHz Core Duo Mini does real-time transcoding to H.264. That would suggest the current Minis could do it faster.

And none of the Core Duo Minis will have issues with moderate bitrate H.264 decoding, that's certain.
 

Jeremy1026

macrumors 68020
Nov 3, 2007
2,215
1,029
How many of you are actually running Final Cut Pro on your MacBooks? Because when I went to install FCP on my MacBook, shockingly I was told it that needed a dedicated graphics card, hmm.
 

Jeremy1026

macrumors 68020
Nov 3, 2007
2,215
1,029
Sorry to go off subject dude.
Anyone know how Finalcut Pro is for chromakeying?

It is very efficient, you can select a range of colors to key out, it is very simple, 3-4 clicks if I remember correctly. Remember FCP is used by a number of Hollywood studios for their editing, so if you take the time to learn what the program can do, you can do just about anything with it.
 

PowerFullMac

macrumors 601
Original poster
Oct 16, 2006
4,000
1
Yes it will do quite a bit, I take it your not a serious editor so it will be great for you.

Nope, I just like having fun with that stuff, and iMovie is greatly limited.

Anyway, looks like thats what I will be downloading... Err... I mean buying from the Apple Store :D

Thanks for the help!
 

maxlew

macrumors newbie
Apr 7, 2007
22
3
Australia
Despite what everyone thinks Every Program in final cut studio will run on a macbook. Motion and color will however make you want to kill yourself because they are so slow.

Final Cut Pro (the one for editing video) Runs fine on my macbook with 2gb of ram so im assuming a newer model with twice as much ram will be fine. It also ran fine when i had 1gb of ram aswell.
 

VideoShooter

macrumors regular
Dec 11, 2004
166
0
I've run FCP on My 1.67GHz G4 PB with 1 GB as well as my 2.2 Ghz Macbook with 4GB and my 4GB MBP.

I've used them all with DV and HDV footage.

The PB was a bear with the HDV footage. Macbook and macbook pro are great with FCP.

The toughest part about FCP and the MacBook is the screen size. It's a total pain in the butt.
 

PowerFullMac

macrumors 601
Original poster
Oct 16, 2006
4,000
1
Just so you know I am not getting a brand new 2.4GHz MacBook, I am getting a refurb 2.2GHz... Although from the previous post I can see that it will be fine on that, so do you think if I get Pro it will be fine for mucking around with videos, obviously not including colour and motion.
 

daveisonfire

macrumors newbie
Mar 22, 2008
3
0
So i just read this entire thread.. can someone confirm that you can install FCP on a macbook???? what about FCS? From what I understand Colour and Motion will be braindead slow.. but the others (DVD Studio for one) will they run okay?

I guess I can just run FCE, with dvd studio??
 

Techguy172

macrumors 68000
Feb 2, 2007
1,782
0
Ontario Canada
So i just read this entire thread.. can someone confirm that you can install FCP on a macbook???? what about FCS? From what I understand Colour and Motion will be braindead slow.. but the others (DVD Studio for one) will they run okay?

I guess I can just run FCE, with dvd studio??

Yes you can install FCP on a MacBook no problem It's just motion and Color that will not work on a MacBook. I am not sure about DVD Studio I would think it would be ok however I may be wrong.
 

XjeffX

macrumors member
Jun 4, 2004
74
0
Yes you can install FCP on a MacBook no problem It's just motion and Color that will not work on a MacBook. I am not sure about DVD Studio I would think it would be ok however I may be wrong.

Usable on a macbook:

Final Cut Pro - yes
DVD Studio Pro - yes
Soundtrack Pro - yes
Compressor - yes
Color - no
Motion - no

I use FCP6 for my HDV editing on my macbook. I just lower the playback quality to 50% or 25%. With this tiny screen you can't tell the difference so it helps with dropped frames. FCE does about 99% of everything most people need, but although I'm not a powerful editor, I always tend to find some reason I need FCP over FCE. Go figure.
 
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