Minimum Requirements for Apple FCP?

S

Smart Alac

Active member
hi all,

as i've read on these forums, FCP seems the way to go to edit DVCPRO 50/HD.

i've read that many people are editing using older macs & mini macs, even with DVCPRO HD. what are the minimum requirements to be able to edit DVCPRO HD in FCP with reasonable to good performance? i'm looking at buying a mac laptop or 2nd hand tower, maybe a G4?
 
The specs say you can use a 1 GHz G4 to edit HD, though I don't buy that.

Personally I'm looking forward to seeing what they require for the new Intel machines. That might convince me to score a Mini.
 
jeffyjones said:
The specs say you can use a 1 GHz G4 to edit HD, though I don't buy that.

Personally I'm looking forward to seeing what they require for the new Intel machines. That might convince me to score a Mini.
Click to expand...

So is there different requirements for the new Intel machines?

Thats crazy how they say you only need a 1Ghz processor & 1GB of RAM for FCP on Apple machines but you need much higher and faster specs for a PC to run DVCPRO HD?...
 
Smart Alac said:
So is there different requirements for the new Intel machines?

Thats crazy how they say you only need a 1Ghz processor & 1GB of RAM for FCP on Apple machines but you need much higher and faster specs for a PC to run DVCPRO HD?...
Click to expand...


Probably because DVCPro is very efficient with Quicktime.
 
More importantly is the drives to which you are capturing and storing, and reading from. Never put media on the same drive as the OS. Use Firewire 800 on it's own bus, and if you can, use a SATA in a RAID configuration and you should have smooth sailing as well as making sure you have a stable combo of OS, FCP, and QT.
 
We don't know what the Intel Mac requirements are because the universal binaries for FCP haven't been released yet. If Apple is saying that a 1 GHz G4 will edit HD, and the Core Duo CPU's are "x" times faster, then it stands to reason that the new machines should have no problem.
 
I'll be really interested to see the new Intel Power Macs but I can't see how they can be more powerful for editing than the Quad so that's likely to be a bit of an anti-climax for the Apple-Intel scene.
Unless of course they bring out THE killer machine - the Power Mac Intel Quad at 3.5 Ghz !!!
 
Terence Lehane said:
Unless of course they bring out THE killer machine - the Power Mac Intel Quad at 3.5 Ghz !!!
Click to expand...
Too bad the Intel Clovertown (Quad-core) won't be released until Jan 07. They could use two dual-cores though (eg Woodcrest or Conroe). Both those chips will be out this year.
 
You have to understand first that the clock speed of the old G5's versus the new Core Duos have nothing to do with each other. All other hardware factors aside, the amount of numbers the CPU can crunch, and the architecture surrounding it (particularly to memory) have more of an impact.
 
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