Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Final Cut Pro on the MacBook?

PowerFullMac

PowerFullMac

macrumors 601
Original poster
Oct 16, 2006
4,000
2
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!
 
PowerFullMac said:
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!
Click to expand...

No, FCP needs a dedicated video card. FCE will run, and with 4gb of RAM, run at a decent pace, on it though.
 
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.
 
FCP should be okay. More RAM is ALWAYS better. Motion will be awful, but just for simple editing you're good to go.
 
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.
 
Cave Man said:
The question was about Final Cut Pro, not Final Cut Studio. The issue with studio is Motion and Color.
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...
 
What is the difference between Final Cut Pro and Final Cut (whatever runs fine with intergrated graphics cards).
 
Jeremy1026 said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
AnonymousOne said:
Sorry to go off subject dude.
Anyone know how Finalcut Pro is for chromakeying?
Click to expand...

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.
 
Techguy172 said:
Yes it will do quite a bit, I take it your not a serious editor so it will be great for you.
Click to expand...

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!
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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??
 
daveisonfire said:
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??
Click to expand...

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.
 
Techguy172 said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back