Will FCP Studio run on the black Macbook?

[Michael Horton]

FCP will run fine. As long as you get an external drive. You run into problems with Motion although it will install. Forget Color running on a MacBook. Hell, forget Color on anything less than a 30inch monitor. A black MacBook is a bit of a waste of money for video editors. You are buying a color (black) and not anything else. Plus the 2 gigs of memory limit is limiting. And 13 inches of real estate is a pain, but yes, FCP will run just fine.

Michael Horton
lafcpug
https://www.lafcpug.org

[Jeremy Garchow]

FCS2 says it won’t run on a MacBook. If you try and install FCS2 you might get hose_ed.

If this effects your future plans at all…….

The reason is that the macbooks have an integrated graphics chip that sucks away too many resources than a dedicated graphics chip.

A MacBook Pro is much better suited.

Jeremy

[John West]

Yeh, I was afraid of that. The sales guy at the Apple Store in Santa Monica said it would run fine, but be slow to render. Guess I get to take the thing back now. ‘Least I have my trusty G5.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Sorry man, but it’s best to have the correct gear.

Jeremy

[Michael Horton]

The Macbook is not the best tool for FCS, but despite what you’ve heard here it will install and FCP will run just fine. Many are using it on a MacBook with no problems. Color is not supported and Motion will be problematic, but FCP WILL install and run well. I’ve seen no evidence that FCP in FCS2 will not install on a MacBook so until I do I’m figuring it will. Hell you can’t get all you want out of STP2 on a MacBook or MacBook PRO. You need a Mac Pro and Apogee card, nor can you expect to get all you want out of Color without a Control Surface. And lets be clear here, the fellow asked if FCP can run on a MacBook. It can. And it can on an iMac.

Michael Horton
lafcpug
https://www.lafcpug.org

[Jeremy Garchow]

Hey Michael, how are ya?

This is from this apple page:

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

“Final Cut Studio 2. System Requirements.
Minimum Requirements to Install All Final Cut Studio Applications
A Macintosh computer with a 1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, Intel Core Duo, or Intel Xeon processor
1GB of RAM
An AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card (Final Cut Studio is not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors)”

All I’m saying is if FCS2 is in John West’s future, he might want to Think Different than getting a MacBook. It’d be a shame for Mr West to buy a computer, edit, then decide he needs to do some work in motion and he can’t. Apogee(?) and control surfaces are luxuries. STPro/Color will work without them, motion won’t work with a macBook (and probably more of FCSP as more plugins are ported to fx plug, such as Boris BCC and many others).

Cheers.

Jeremy

[Walter Biscardi]

[John West] ”
Will FCP studio, and most importantly FCP 5.12 run okay on an Intel Macbook using DV? I’m getting semi-sketchy answers from the Apple store. (Mine is the 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.)”

FCP by itself will work on a MacBook, but it will be incredibly slow to render AND you’re only working with a 13″ screen. You’ll be more frustrated than happy if you go with a MacBook.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Jeremy Doyle]

For what it’s worth I installed FCP 5 on agp g4 mac without quartz extreme support and it wouldn’t even start FCP 5. I kept getting an error saying the graphics card wasn’t quartz extreme compatible.

I didn’t even try to install motion for obvious reasons.

With FCP 4.5 it will cut DV footage all day long though.

[John West]

Thanks, guys, for the feedback. The Cow comes through again.

– JW

[Jeremy Garchow]

Oh yeah? What did you end up with? Just out of curiosity…