FCP 4.5 system requirements??

[Jeff Carpenter]

Well, let’s try it this way. Here are the requirements for FCP 5:

https://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/specs.html

Does the computer you’re checking out meet those requirements? If so, you’re good to go. If it does not, tell us in what ways it’s lacking and maybe we can figure out if that’s ok or not.

[Paul Escamilla]

I need the requirements for 4.5 specifically.

A friend of mine is trying to run it on a G4 laptop with a 500-mhz processor and 512 mb of RAM.

He’s having problems with playback and I told him I’d find out the system requirements for it.

I am running it on a dual 1,8 Ghz G5 with 3 gigs of RAM, so I’m having no problemos myself.

[Jeff Carpenter]

But knowing the system requirements won’t help. Clearly his laptop meets them or Final Cut wouldn’t work at all. Since it does, we know it’s possible to run Final Cut.

The issue of dropping frames is a totally different problem. I’d say his system is on the low side, but if he’s working with DV it should be possible to edit. Here’s some thoughts:

* Make sure none of the Final Cut windows are overlapping and that each viewer’s zoom ratio is set to “fit to window.”
* Make sure he’s playing the video off of an external drive that’s at least a 7200 RPM firewire drive that has at least 15% of the space free.
* Go to “System Settings” and “Memory” and set the memory usage to 100%. Make sure all other programs are closed when editing.

There are probably a dozen other reasons he could be having problems, but those are the first 3 that come to my mind. It may end up that he CAN’T edit smoothly on that laptop, but learning the system requirements won’t really help you. They’re just meant to tell you what you need to instal the program itself. They minimum specs are usually not good enough to do a whole lot of work with that program once you instal it.