Final Cut 3 for G5?

[brobson]

A neighbor is offering his Final Cut Pro 3 for sale ($100)
Is that a good deal?
Can I use it on my Imac G5?
I have a 233 Blueberry Imac that has good memory but I think it has to be 300mhz. If anyone could help me that'd be great.
We are thinking of a Christmas present for our 14yr old son
B

 

[Chupa Chupa]

A neighbor is offering his Final Cut Pro 3 for sale ($100)
Is that a good deal?
Can I use it on my Imac G5?
I have a 233 Blueberry Imac that has good memory but I think it has to be 300mhz. If anyone could help me that'd be great.
We are thinking of a Christmas present for our 14yr old son
B

FCP3 won't run on OS X. FCP4 was the first version that was OS X compatible. FCP4 and HD really need a dual proc G5 with at least 2GB RAM to run well. It will run on lesser machines but it will be painful to render video. Also, if your son doesn't already know FCP be aware it has a fairly steep learning curve. It's not your typical Apple program that you can learn yourself by just playing around with it.

 

[brobson]

Thanks so much!

FCP3 won't run on OS X. FCP4 was the first version that was OS X compatible. FCP4 and HD really need a dual proc G5 with at least 2GB RAM to run well. It will run on lesser machines but it will be painful to render video. Also, if your son doesn't already know FCP be aware it has a fairly steep learning curve. It's not your typical Apple program that you can learn yourself by just playing around with it.

 

[fartheststar]

FCP3 won't run on OS X. FCP4 was the first version that was OS X compatible. FCP4 and HD really need a dual proc G5 with at least 2GB RAM to run well. It will run on lesser machines but it will be painful to render video. Also, if your son doesn't already know FCP be aware it has a fairly steep learning curve. It's not your typical Apple program that you can learn yourself by just playing around with it.

That's not true. I am running FCP3 on OSX 10.2.8 (not under classic). It also works on 10.3, and I've heard reports about it running under Tiger. I'm running it on a G4 with 1 GIG and it works fine (even with lots of effects, plugins and treated footage)


3 options

1) Buy it from him, Run FCP 3 on a G5. It's NOT worth it unless it's NOT the academic version.

2) Here's another option: Since FCP5 is out:

-If he gives you the original disks
-He gives you all the serial numbers
-He removes it from his computer
-It's NOT an upgrade version
-It's NOT an academic version
(this is "transferring the license")

You can buy it from him and then "upgrade" to FCP 5 (full version) for much less than buying FCP 5 new.

3) Or, if your son is in school, you can bypass him altogether and buy the academic version (can't be upgraded to "full version")

Learning:

FCP comes with a tutorial, and there's lots of books and online places (www.dvcreators.net) to help with practical exercises and footage to help you out.

Good luck.

 

[XnavxeMiyyep]

FCP3 won't run on OS X. FCP4 was the first version that was OS X compatible. FCP4 and HD really need a dual proc G5 with at least 2GB RAM to run well. It will run on lesser machines but it will be painful to render video. Also, if your son doesn't already know FCP be aware it has a fairly steep learning curve. It's not your typical Apple program that you can learn yourself by just playing around with it.

You can learn the basics of Final Cut Pro by playing around with it.

 

[fartheststar]

You can learn the basics of Final Cut Pro by playing around with it.

Absolutely. I did! My suggestions for sites show you some neat tricks and to learn stuff when you need to.... but if you have a DV Camera and some footage, that's a good place to start!

 

[brobson]

Any DV Camera work?

ALso I teach 7th grade Art.
Could I use this for animation? Or would it also be a steep learning curve?

 

[fartheststar]

What is a DV camera?

Oh, that's a Digital Video Camera.
EDIT: Yes, any DV camera would work great!

The most common cameras that people buy these days are DV cameras due to their cheap tape stock (under $10 each) and affordability. It can also be referred to as Mini DV. Without spending $10k or above on a real heavy duty editing suite, that's one of the formats that your computer will edit with best, due to the fact that it takes "less space" on a hard drive to store footage.

*If you're buying this program for your son, he'll need something to "edit" with in order to use it. DV is easy, you can shoot something, hook up the camera by firewire to your Mac, and then put it on the hard drive and edit. Analog footage becomes tricky (you need to buy a converter) - ie if you wanted him to practice on some old "VHS" footage.

Couple of other things:

Good exercise for a new editor: One of the first things I edited was a "fake trailer" for a movie I liked. You watch the movie, you figure out what's important to "tell the story of the movie" in either 2 minutes or 30 seconds.... and you cut the shots together to see if you can make a good and interesting trailer.

Hard Drives: Do you have one or two? Final Cut prefers to have the "footage" on a different drive than your main partition. If you can't afford this, that's ok, but be reminded video takes up a lot of space.

Academic vs. Full version: In my other posts I talk about an "Academic" vs a "Full Version". There's no difference in "quality" for the product (for this piece of software) but you can't "upgrade" an academic version. Usually the academic version sells for much less.... and you need to be a student or teacher to get it. You can't use it for "professional" purposes.