Final Cut 5 on an old G4?

Hi,

I recently graduated from film school, and so no longer have their resources at my disposal.

I dusted off the family G4 from back in 2001, and installed OS X and Final Cut 5 on it. When I tried to run FCP it closed and I got two messages:

- I only have 256mb of RAM when the minimum is 512mb
- I need a better videocard (I can't remember the specific quality of card it asked for right now)

(My Mac is a 450Mhz PowerPC G4 with 256mb of SDRAM. I'm running OS X 10.3.1)

I was perfectly happy to update my hardware as neccessary, but I spoke with a salesman at a local store and he said that even if I took the computer up to a gig of Ram, and put in a new video card, he didn't think the program would run.

So, my questions are:

1. Is he right? Is there any way I can get FCP5 to run at a reasonable rate with my current set-up?

2. If he is, would a solution be to try either FCPexpress or an earlier version of FCP?

I just need something usable for basic weekend type projects-- nothing too fancy.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Jeff Cunningham



Post Edited (06-02-06 12:10)

Get a new computer. It's an utter waste of money to upgrade a five-year-old computer, and with 512MB of RAM your FCP5 will run very poorly. And I'm not sure the salesman is wrong, either -- it may not run, period. It's a poor investment.

What does the FCP 5 box say is the minimum requirements for running FCP 5? That should tell you.

Unfortunately, buying a new computer isn't an option for me right now.

I'm able to spend three or four hundred dollars getting some RAM and a video card, but not much more than that.

If I have to, I'm willing to run an older version of FCP but how far back?

As I said-- my purposes are more or less casual. I'm willing to work the way they did two or three years ago!

Jeff

>What does the FCP 5 box say is the minimum requirements for running FCP 5? That should tell you.

"867 MHz PowerPC G4"

Ah. Guess there's no messing with that.

So now my question becomes... how far back do I need to go before a version of FCP will work somewhat comfortably on my system?

Jeff

The Final Cut versions, QuickTime Versions, Operating System and machine tend to work best when married in sets. If you split them badly enough, you may very easily spend most of your time fighting an unstable machine and no time actually editing.

Hire yourself out for editing gigs until you get enough bux for a modern system, rent something, or go in with a buddy on a shared system.

Koz

FCP 3 will probably run on that machine, don't know about 4.5 though. I ran 4.5 on a 500 MHz g4 and it would do it but any renders were sloooooow. So... it will run slow on renders straight cuts will be fine. I'm assuming your working with DV.

good luck,

kevin



"A problem can never be solved by the same consciousness that created it"
Einstein

Cool. I'll try FCP3.

Many thanks, Jeff

I'm running FCP5 without any problems on a machine that was 500mhz/AGP/Sawtooth originally. I upgraded the processor to a 1.2Ghz a couple of years ago and it's currently running 1.5GB of ram. Your problem is going to be the display card. Mine is an ATI-8500 with 64mb of vram which ATI no longer makes. It supports Quartz Extreme, but not Core Image. As I said, I have no problems running FCP5. There is a new card, the ATI-9800/256mb vram, which will run on Macs with a 2X AGP slot, but the problem is it requires a 300 watt power supply. The power supply in Macs like mine is 233 watts. I looked on [xlr8yourmac.com] for solutions on upgrading the power supply, but I finally have decided to buy a new Mac when the professional Intel models come out.

FCP4.5 will run on your Mac w/o problems, as long as you upgrade the processor and up the Ram to 1.5GB. That may be your solution.

BTW, good luck with your new career.

-Russ



Post Edited (06-03-06 07:45)

Hi Jeff

I had a dual 450 --FCP 3.4 ran super smooth--
anything higher and I started having problems--

FCP 4.5 would not run at all-crashed at end of capture everytime

get 1 gig of ram--Jay-