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Apple salesman says Macbook can’t run FCP Studio- he’s wrong, right?
I’m sorry to post about this, but a good friend of mine who’s an excellent DP but last edited on a 2 reel machine asked for my help buying a new computer. Apparently, he called Apple and spoke to a salesman who told him the Macbook’s graphics card prevented it from running FCP. Now, my friend is German, so english is a 2nd language, so I’m thinking the salesman said FCP Studio won’t run on a Macbook, as this makes much more sense. I told him the only problem I would think of would be in Motion, and I understand it runs on Macbooks, just not very well as Motion uses tons of GPU speed. I also told him that not too long ago I had FCP 5.0 running on my 1st generation Mini. Still, he was very concerned as he doesn’t have a lot of money to throw around and asked me to confirm this as at “…one of those forums you [i.e. I] always talk about.” So, could someone please confirm to me that FCP Studio will run on a Macbook? Again, I’m sorry to bother y’all with this. I wish he had spoken to a diffenet salesperson.
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6 Replies
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YES IT WILL
you are correct, many people, myself included, work daily with FCP studio and its latest version 5.1.4 on macbooks and in my case a macbook pro. The pro model is better suited, due to the express card slot and better performance, but a properly configured macbook will work just fine for DV or Offline HD editing.
He will need at least 1 gig of ram and a faster hard drive – so maybe they were looking at the entry model and not something more powerful.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows -
I’m with you… FCS doesn’t have to be blazing fast, but it would be nice if it would run on the low end of the line. If FCP 2/3/4 hadn’t run on m iBook in college I might not be an editor today. Having that with me all the time was huge.
From Apple’s FCS tech specs page – “Graphics: AGP Quartz Extreme or PCI Express graphics card (Final Cut Studio is not supported on systems using the Intel Extreme Graphics 950 GMA)” The Intel 950 chipset includes the macbook and the mini.
Tell your friend to get a macbook pro or, since you said cost was a big issue, maybe an iMac would do. Some or all of that line has firewire 800 now, so that’s a plus.
Zak
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I would strongly recommend *against* the MacBook. You may get FCP to run (some even make it run Motion) but the onboard graphics (the infamous Intel GMA 950) just cannot handle floating-point precision graphics (and never will). It is also lacking in many other respects, e.g. the lack of dedicated video memory. The very nerdy among you can have a look at the OpenGL capabilities here:
https://homepage.mac.com/arekkusu/bugs/GLInfo.html
In practical terms, that means you machine cannot rendering anything *that uses the GPU* on the “Render all YUV material in high-precision YUV” setting (Sequence -> Video Processing tab). In Motion, you are stuck with 8 bit rendering as well. Right now, you may think this is OK, but increasingly all apps in the Final Cut Studio suite rely on the GPU, so your investment would have very little chance to last long.
On the other hand, MacBook Pros have the very capable ATI Mobility X1600 graphics card, with at least 128MB VRAM (which is not too bad even for HD-frame processing). We use a MBP to demo our own plug-ins on the road – the model with 256MB VRAM is a feisty little machine and easily outperforms all but the very best desktop G5s. (no contest with Mac Pros, obviously)
Hope this helps your choice,
Gabe
Noise Industries, LLC
https://www.noiseindustries.com -
It will work but he’ll probably get frustrated pretty quickly with the performance. A buddy of mine was here a few days ago with her MacBook and I could never cut with that. Too slow to do everything.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Sounds like this salesman’s a purist or a perfectionist rather than mis-informed.
I’ll share a precious experience I once had with a mac salesman that has become one of those classic memories. I went to see Mike Evangelist demo FCP1 in Vancouver when it was 1st. released. I’d read Steve Mullen’s review of the beta version a month earlier in Video Systems Mag and was anxious to see FCP perform as I was ready to by my first comuterized edit system at the time and was hoping for a mac based system. I came home from the show with the software and now I went to get the hardware locally. After haggling with a mac salesman for a short while he asked “why are you buying a computer anyway?” “To edit Video I replied” YOU CAN’T EDIT VIDEO ON A MAC! He retorted, “Boy oh boy you’re looking at the wrong computer buddy”… “Steve Jobs would love to hear this guy” I thought. Dumbfounded I went over to the mainland and bought my G3 there where at least the Mac dealer made an attempt to answer my questions and satify my needs.
Another time I needed to set up a dubbing system out of town on the road so I went to the local circuit city to see what deal I could get on some jvc decks. The saleman promptly tried to divert me to some hitashi decks explaining that Hitashi had just bought out JVC. Wow I thought, why haven’t I heard of this or read about it. After a few minutes I realized this salesman would tell me anything to make a sale. (I went to an independant store and paid more for my decks)
So we have the swindlers, the mis-informed and sometimes some genuinely knowledgable sales people out there but the bottom line is do your homework yourself before you buy. There are some good points on this thread.
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Just wanted to say thank to everyone for all the responses and the help. I guess there’s a little more to it than I thought. Just last night my friend said one big reason for the MacBook was to download p2 cards from an HVX200. Then I had to tell him that unless something happened that I hadn’t heard about, that still was amajor drwaback. Oh well. I’m actually looking into a BookBook Pro, and it looks like that’s a better choice. But maybe I’ll wait until FCP 6. Thanks again!
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