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Brandon Bohling

Final Cut Pro X on a MacBook Air

When it comes to video editing I am a complete novice. A few supporting facts:

  • I have been a Vimeo Plus member since November 2007 yet I have only posted 65 videos.
  • All have been posted with the simplest of tools: iMovie, iMovie for iOS, Vimeo for iOS, etc.
  • I purchased Final Cut Pro X on July 2 and today was the first time I used it.
  • Today I used about 0.0001% of the features included with Final Cut Pro X.

Any way you slice it…video editing is not my forte. Why should that stop me though?

Today I set aside a couple of hours and started playing with Final Cut Pro X…on my MacBook Air. Given my limited experience with video editing I was surprised1 how easy it was to figure out the absolute basics (adding clips, titles, transitions, export). What really surprised me though was how well the MacBook Air was able to handle running Final Cut Pro X. I dropped in clips, transitions, made edits and never witnessed the beach ball. I even used the MacBook Air to process the video and upload directly to Vimeo2…not bad for such a portable device.

There is no doubt that professional (and likely even amateur) users would never dream of using Final Cut Pro X on a MacBook Air, but for now it works just fine for me. And to prove my inadequate video editing (and video taking) skills the video I created…

One quick tip…if you want to spin up on FCP X quickly? Israel Hyman (aka Izzy) freely provides the best video tutorials I have found.



  1. I was only a little surprised given the backlash↩︎

  2. Unfortunately I did not capture an exact time, but it was under 20 minutes for a nearly 4 minute video. Maybe four months from now when I do my next video I will remember to capture the time. ↩︎