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Final Cut requirements question!
Heya Guys,
I will be buying my first Mac soon and have decided to go for a brand new iMac. However i’m not exactly up to speed with most Computer Jargon, so hopefully you guys can help me?
My iMac Spec will be:
20 inch Screen
2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
1TB Serial ATA Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 with 512MB memory
I will only be using my Mac for Video Production. So i’m intending to be using Final Cut Studio 2.
I have a couple of questions though,
*With the Specs above, do i have enough power and memory to load the entire studio, or will i have problems?
*Will i need an AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card or is the NVIDIA GeForce enough?
*If i do need an AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card, are they easy to get hold of and install?
These may be stupid questions, but as i said i’m not exactly in the know when it comes to these things!
Thanks alot, Hope you can help.
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5 Replies
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1. Yes.
2. The graphics card is enough.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop” -
[Phil Carr] “I will only be using my Mac for Video Production. So i’m intending to be using Final Cut Studio 2.”
The major limitation with the new iMac for production is with digitizing. It only comes with one firewire port (firewire 800). If you anticipate using external storage and digitize via firewire, the iMac may cause you some headaches. Using a firewire hub will help, but you are extending the bus speed over multiple firewire inputs and you MAY find you drop frames when digitizing.
You MAY also run into some headaches when working with Motion projects and when you have to do alot of rendering. I say headaches because he system will run Final Cut Studio 2, but it may be slow at times and you will get the beach ball frequently.
All in all, it is a good machine for Final Cut production work as long as you recognize the places where you may run into headaches and issues.
Alan
Alan Smith
Media317Check out my blog – https://media317.com
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Thank you so much, really big help!
Is there any way i can stop the troubles you spoke about? Also, i shall be Posting many of my Videos onto the net on sites such as youtube and facebook. Is it hard to out-put a video from Final cut studio, or will i run into trouble because of my systems Specs?
Hope you don’t mind me asking.
Thanks,
Phil
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[Phil Carr] “Is there any way i can stop the troubles you spoke about?”
The only way to properly address them is to get a Mac Pro or a Macbook Pro. However, a fix for the system you are looking at is to partition the internal hard drive into two separate drives. Using one partition as a system drive and the other as a capture scratch drive. You can then use the firewire to digitize to the capture scratch and use then connect an external HDD for backup via USB (Never work with video from a USB drive!). It would work.
[Phil Carr] “Is it hard to out-put a video from Final cut studio, or will i run into trouble because of my systems Specs?”
Exporting for youtube and web video is simple via FCP. Your system will not have a problem with the export. Use the Export>Use Quicktime Conversion.
Alan Smith
Alan Smith
Media317Check out my blog – https://media317.com
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One thing I would suggest is to wait a couple weeks. Unless you NEED your system ASAP, there seems to be a good chance that a new Final Cut will be coming out soon (possibly at NAB in April).
The world of HD has changed a lot since FCS 2 came out, so hopefully Apple will put in a lot of needed upgrades & features in FCS 3 that will make life a lot easier in the video editing world.
The iMac you mention should be pretty good, if you really want a top of the line system go for the Mac Pro, but that will easily double or triple the cost. I would say just max out the RAM and be ready to wait for renders on larger projects.
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