Apple released Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor on Tuesday. If you follow that sort of thing, you’ve probably already seen plenty of reviews and walkthroughs of the new features, new layout and overall performance enhancements of Apple’s “professional” video editing suite.

The new, lower price point (a total of $400 for all three apps versus about $1000 for Final Cut Studio 4), brings it much closer to the “prosumer” market that was formerly served by Final Cut Express. However, users of Express (as well as those using FCS 4 on older Macs) looking to upgrade may find that their current hardware may not support the new software.

So let’s take a look at the listed requirements for Final Cut Pro X and friends and see where things sit.

Final Cut Pro X $299.99:

• Memory: 2.0GB minimum, 4.0GB recommended
• Graphics: OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later and 256MB VRAM
• Display: 1280 x 768 resolution or higher
• Disk Space for install: 2.4GB of disk space

Motion 5 $49.99:

• Memory: 2.0GB minimum, 4.0GB recommended
• Graphics: OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later and 256MB VRAM
• Display: 1280 x 768 resolution or higher
• Disk Space for install: 2.0GB

Compressor $49.99:

• Memory: 2.0GB minimum, 4.0GB recommended
• Graphics: OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later and 256MB VRAM
• Display: 1280 x 768 resolution or higher
• Disk Space for install: 685MB

Of course, those are just the Apple “recommendations.” Let’s take a look at what you can do to upgrade your Macs to run FCP X the best. This may be old hat for you Final Cut professionals, but those moving up from iMovie or Express, you may need to do some upgrading. Article Continues…