Does my system need beefing up?

[Thomas Morter-laing]

What software versions? What operating system? What speed of quad core? What computer (eg iMac etc)?

😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Freelance Editor
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
http://www.depictproductions.co.uk

Sony Z5, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27″ intel i7 2.93GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD5750 [1GB GDDR5], 2TB Int. SATA with 2TB External HDD; (FW800), with Elgato Turbo H264HD.

[Shannon Bedford]

Final Cut Pro 6.0.6
Mac OSX 10.5.8
Processor: 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-core Intel Xeon
Memory: 6GM 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM

did I miss anything?

S Bedford, Western Australia

[Shannon Bedford]

Hi Thomas, no one has given me any help with my query “Does my system need beefing up?”. Maybe everyone is taking Christmas holidays. Are you able to help me with this?
I have added the info you asked for.
Thanks heaps

S Bedford, Western Australia

[Thomas Morter-laing]

A few things that might help:
Get on up to snow leopard, it’s a 64bit os which will use your computer more efficiently and help.
Upgrade to FCP7, it’s not 64bit yet but it removed a lot of glitches and out of memory issues.
The difficulty you may have is that the FCS can theoretically only use 4Gb Ram, and the type of Ram you have is a little slower than newer machines. At the moment though, cramming your mac with Ram will help a little, but you won’t notice vast improvements to things like rendering and whathaveyou; that’s more about your processor, which seems fine (again with snow leopard for added performance).

We’re all hopeful for FCP 64 bit around feb which will help too!!

😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Freelance Editor
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
http://www.depictproductions.co.uk

Sony Z5, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27″ intel i7 2.93GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD5750 [1GB GDDR5], 2TB Int. SATA with 2TB External HDD; (FW800), with Elgato Turbo H264HD.

[Shannon Bedford]

Thanks Thomas, I’m new to mac so I’ve had a bit of a look on-line but still a couple of questions I hope you can help with.

If I move from OS X 10.5.8 to Snow Leopard, is it a simple upgrade or do I purchase the full price snow leopard software?
If so, is changing the operating system pretty straightforward or would I need to do some backing up of settings etc?

You mentioned the possibility of 64 bit around Feb. If I upgrade to FCP 7 now, will the 64 bit change be a simple free update? Or should I wait until Feb to upgrade to 7?

cheers

[Thomas Morter-laing]

The snow leopard upgrade you need is just the standard one (it’s 25 pounds here). You only need the “full” box set when upgrading from tiger (10.4), although the snow leopard disc is actually the same anyway, it’s actually to do with licence agreements (that’s something they don’t tell you lol). You don’t have to back up, it’s very straight forward it will just install and keep your mac as you left it, just with new snowy goodness. However it’s always worth backing up JUST in case something goes wrong. You should backup everything anyway, we had a hard drive specialist in the other day who said “the only thing you know for certain with a hard drive is that it will fail at some point”.
Upgrading to FCP is a tricky one; I can’t remember if you can do upgrades past a version (eg FCP 6 to 8) for the price of an upgrade disc or if you have to get the full version. If you need the full version youre better off getting the 7 upgrade disc so when 8 comes out you don’t spend as much- it would still probably work out cheaper that way believe it or not. To answer your question, FCP8 in feb is only rumpled and hearsay, and no one knows anything certain at all except people high in apple, but Id put money on it being another expensive upgrade- no way will it be a “free upgrade”, especially if it’s rewritten in 64bit.

😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Freelance Editor
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
http://www.depictproductions.co.uk

Sony Z5, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27″ intel i7 2.93GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD5750 [1GB GDDR5], 2TB Int. SATA with 2TB External HDD; (FW800), with Elgato Turbo H264HD.

[Shannon Bedford]

Thanks Thomas you’ve been a fantastic help so I will follow your advice to the letter.

I particularly like what you said about Snow Leopard bringing “new snowy goodness”, something you seem to have so much of in the UK at the moment, but something that would be quite a novelty over here -the forecast is for 38 degrees Celcius Christmas day.

Sending warm vibes your way.. merry Christmas!

S Bedford, Western Australia