Heath McKnight's Tech Blog
Heath McKnight's blog

Final Cut Studio 3 and My Misadventures With My Old MacBook

So I received the newest Final Cut Studio (not officially called "3" but it certainly is version 3) and I used the excellent and free FCS Remover from Digital Rebellion and uninstalled Final Cut Studio 2 from my trusty MacBook (which was able to handle editing a short, commercials, and a feature film in Final Cut Pro 6) last night in anticipation of installing FCS 3 today.

Excited, I put in the installation disk, only to get a warning that 128MB of VRAM is needed and I only have 64MB:
















BUMMER!  And not only that, but the integrated Intel graphics processor also throws out my chances.  Okay so I wasn't able to use Color 1.0 in FCS 2, but can't I at least install FCP 7 and the newest versions of Compressor (3.5) and DVD Studio Pro (4.2.2--no Blu-ray authoring)?  No luck.

And now dear reader, we should all look at the FCS 3 system requirements.  Hmm, I need an NVidia or AMD graphics processor.  hmm, I should've looked at this first...

One solution pointed out to me is Pacifist by CharlesSoft.com, which may force FCS 3's install disk to ignore the warnings.  Okay, but still, I may have major issues with some of the new flavors of ProRes, etc.  I need a MacBook Pro!

After a call to the Ft. Lauderdale Apple Store, and two calls to the main phone number at the Apple Store (800-MY-APPLE), I was told that a 13.3" MacBook Pro with a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, and 160GB hard drive should be just fine.  It's the bare minimum (check out the specs here), but they told me the 2.66 GHz 15.4" model would be better with its two graphics processors (specs).  But neither have the ExpressCard/34 slot that the 17" model has (specs), which I need to use my Matrox MXO 2.  That system can cost around $2,500 or higher with the proper RAM, etc.

So I'm gonna go with a 13.3" model, but which one?  For around $1,199, I can get the 2.26 GHz model and drop in a 300GB drive I own and trade in some RAM to MacSales.com and get money off 2x2GB RAM chips to give me 4GB of RAM total.  But according to a review by Macworld, that extra RAM only gives a 2% boost in performance.  Which brings me to the $1,499 2.53 GHz system that includes 4GB of RAM and a 250 GB hard drive and offers up to 21% better performance than the 2.26 GHz model.  And at MacMall.com, I can get that system for $100 off!

When will I buy the new system?  Hopefully in a couple of weeks--I need to get the old MacBook up on eBay and try and get a good chunk of cash for it.  And of course, lesson learned: read the darn specs!  At any rate, I may try out Pacifist and see if it'll actually work.  Good thing I'm getting a 17" MacBook Pro (complete with 8GB RAM, an anti-glare shield, and more) to review for 30 days.

Posted at 03:43PM Aug 01, 2009 by Heath McKnight in General  |  Comments[18]