Overview

Congratulations! You re about to install one of the most creative video tools available on a desktop computer, running on one of the most elegant, efficient, and stable operating systems yet devised. Welcome to Final Cut Pro 3, Apple s professional video editing software for use with its Macintosh computers. This wonderful application has brought affordable desktop video production to the reach of most people. I m sure you want to dive right into it, but the application first must be installed properly on a properly functioning system. Video editing software is not a simple piece of shareware that you can install onto your computer and hope it will run without problems. Video editing software requires your system to be running in optimal condition, with all the correct system software and only the correct system software. Your hard drives must be clean and running properly, ready for moving large amounts of data at high speed.

Though FCP3 works equally well on both Mac OS 9.2.2 and OS X 10.1.1 and higher, I think many users will take this opportunity to migrate to Apple s new operating system. So for many FCP users, either first time or experienced, this version will present a new challenge, a new and very different operating system to run it. In many ways, this is much more than a new operating system; it is a fundamentally new platform, a Unix-based platform running inside a Macintosh operating system s GUI (graphical user interface) shell.