Is my 2.6 ghz 2gb ram 2009 Macbook too slow for final cut express?

[jessesmith]

The only reason I ask is because my computer gives me the unrendered beeping message if I try and play ANYTHING in the timeline, and when I just play the video I have set up in a sequence in the left most preview window, I get the dropped frame warning.

I'm not trying to play a complicated set of clips layered with effects or anything, I'm just trying to edit a few clips I recorded on my webcam.. So I am baffled why I can't do the most basic action in FCE.

I run logic with garageband with tons of VSTs and real time effects with 10+ tracks on them and my computer doesn't even hiccup.

I am 100% new to video editing so it could be something very simple I am missing, but if someone could help me with this I would soil my pants in joy.

I would even be happy if someone could point me in the right direction to a video editing program that can do what I need.

This is my band playing a song on youtube..
http://www.youtube.com/user/Ihollywoodmusic#p/a/u/1/Or1DPBCpMXU

I need to get that multiple video effect without it taking me 10 hours like iMovie does. At the moment I'm using a black muted video and just doing a PIP, exporting it, loading it back in, doing another instrument, exporting it, importing it, etc. etc. etc. This can be quite a proccess.

Again, I can't express how much I would love for this problem to be solved.
PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME.

Thanks for your time everyone!
-Jesse

 

[Matthew Yohe]

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1165

 

[jessesmith]

problem solved

So it turns out I was making a pretty amateur mistake.
First off I updated to 4.1 which made it run better..? It seems to anyways.
I followed the steps shown on the support page given to me by Matthew Yohe which helped a ton as well.

But the biggest problem was that all my files were just completely wrong for the program. I converted them to DV NTSC 48khz 24fps and all that with mpeg streamclip and now it's running swimmingly,

thanks!

 

[FSMBP]

So it turns out I was making a pretty amateur mistake.
First off I updated to 4.1 which made it run better..? It seems to anyways.
I followed the steps shown on the support page given to me by Matthew Yohe which helped a ton as well.

But the biggest problem was that all my files were just completely wrong for the program. I converted them to DV NTSC 48khz 24fps and all that with mpeg streamclip and now it's running swimmingly,

thanks!

Best thing to do is capture with Final Cut Express. It will encode the footage to a format it won't need to render for playback.

 

[mac88]

I run it just fine on a late 2008 Aluminum 2.0 Macbook. I've never had any problems. Enjoy your software!

 

[bigbossbmb]

FCE doesn't support 24fps timelines... you want your media to be DV NTSC 29.97fps.