Final Cut pro x and 4, 8 or 16gb of ram

[Agnoslibertine]

So I am about to change my life, go for a mac. (actually writing this post on my girlfriends Mac air 11, that I bought for her)

I love to video edit movies on youtube etc.
my movies are 3-15 minutes long.

I normally use PowerDirector (which works great, except that there are no good color calibrating tools).

I want a mac foremost for video edit, but also blog a lot, and it would be really cool to have a mac air.

But I think that for Final cut pro x, I will probably need the iMac 27 inch.

My questions are as followed:
1.) does final cut pro have support for quad core, does it help to have quad core compared to dual core?

2.) How does the ram change things? where does it help, if you go 4 gb, or 8 gb, or does one really need 16gb?

3.) Does the graphics card make a difference in Final cut pro?'

4.) What about the SSD, does it make much difference in final cut pro?


I would love to have the macbook air 13, but I get a feeling I will need the iMac if I want the full potential of Final Cut pro.
What do you guys think?

ps. I did try a 40 sec clip on my gfs mac air 11.

 

[Off1c3r]

So I am about to change my life, go for a mac. (actually writing this post on my girlfriends Mac air 11, that I bought for her)

I love to video edit movies on youtube etc.
my movies are 3-15 minutes long.

I normally use PowerDirector (which works great, except that there are no good color calibrating tools).

I want a mac foremost for video edit, but also blog a lot, and it would be really cool to have a mac air.

But I think that for Final cut pro x, I will probably need the iMac 27 inch.

My questions are as followed:
1.) does final cut pro have support for quad core, does it help to have quad core compared to dual core?

2.) How does the ram change things? where does it help, if you go 4 gb, or 8 gb, or does one really need 16gb?

3.) Does the graphics card make a difference in Final cut pro?'

4.) What about the SSD, does it make much difference in final cut pro?


I would love to have the macbook air 13, but I get a feeling I will need the iMac if I want the full potential of Final Cut pro.
What do you guys think?

ps. I did try a 40 sec clip on my gfs mac air 11.

I have yet to get my Macbook pro yet, but I am a professional video editor on my windows system. I use Grass Valley (previously Canopus) Edius. Like Edius, I am pretty sure FCP Scales based on your available power. The CPU is the workhorse for encoding, especially HD stuff. The cores will shave down encoding time, especially with the new generation Intels. The Ram is a must depending on how intensive your editing is. If you are working with a lot of streams, graphics, titles and whatever else you can throw at the program, you would want more ram. My system has 8GB and honestly I recommend minimum 6GB to anyone. Graphics does help depending on the situation. For what you are doing, getting the discrete option that comes with the macs is good enough. As for the SSD, having your OS/Software on an SSD, yes will make the system snappier, but any regular 7200 RPM drive is good enough to drive your HD footage. I wouldn't use an SSD for a video dump drive though. Again for what you are doing, you may not have to go as extreme, but I am used to working with multiple filters, titles, and usually 3-4 HD streams at once.

 

[Badrottie]

Final Cut Pro X is nice but not for 5 to 15 min video work I think iMovie would be fine but I dont know much about them hopefully I will learn more soon when I get final cut pro.

 

[AFPoster]

I have 8gb 1600mhz ram and it runs just fine with FCP X, Motion & Compressor running simultaneously.