System Requirements
Our tests have shown that our products perform best when used with the system configurations listed below. Although many of our products will run on older or less-powerful systems, those listed below are the minimum system requirements which we support for Magic Bullet Looks 2.
Macintosh
Mac OS 10.5, 10.6, 10.7
After Effects CS3, CS4, CS5, CS5.5
Premiere Pro CS5, CS5.5
Final Cut Pro X
Final Cut Pro 6, 7
Motion 3.02, 4, 5
Avid Media Composer 5.5, 6.0
Windows
Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, 32-bit & 64-bit
After Effects CS3, CS4, CS5, CS5.5
Premiere Pro CS5, CS5.5
Vegas Pro 10, 11, 32-bit & 64-bit
Avid Media Composer 5.5, 6.0
GPU/CPU switching & graphics cards
Looks 2 will fall back to CPU rendering if there is no GPU or if the graphics card doesn't meet the Looks 2 minimum specs. See the Preferences Panel for details about GPU/CPU switching. Looks 2 performance is much better when using a graphics card, and we support a wide variety.
For ATI cards, we recommend ATI 9600 XT or greater, along with an X series card starting with the X700 series. Cards with greater model numbers and at least 128 MB of RAM can run the Looks engine better then CPU alone.
For NVIDIA cards, we support the 6600 model and higher or QuadroFX 1300 and up. Cards with higher model numbers and a minimum of 128 MB of RAM can run Looks. For users working with HD images, we require that the video card have at least 256 MB of RAM. In all cases, we suggest using the latest video drivers for your graphics card.
All media is processed at 32 bit. For newer cards from ATI and NVIDIA, we recommend a minimum of 320 MB of RAM. For 2K projects, we recommend 512 MB or a larger amount of RAM on the graphics card.
Looks 1 Note: In Looks 1, a graphic card with specific capabilities was required to run the software properly. Without the correct card, Looks 1 would not install and the installer would warn that you didn't have the necessary graphics card on your system.
Rendering & performance
In most cases, the Looks plug-in requires rendering to generate final color-corrected output. With host applications like Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro, you can use Looks as a real-time color correction effect with the dynamic playback capabilities. With applications such as Apple Motion and Adobe After Effects, rendering is required to generate any output with Looks applied. In general, the faster the graphics card, the faster the rendering of media. NVIDIA cards are generally faster than ATI cards of the same level for HD or HDV projects.
NOTE: The maximum render size in Looks is 8192 x 8192 but is dependent on the video card in the system. Most cards will support 2K media (2048 x 1536) rendering but only the NVIDIA 8800 series cards or Quadro 4600/5600 support 8K output at time of this writing.
Since the processing requirements vary wildly by the number of tools in a look, it is difficult to give exact output or render speed expectations on every system with every look. On the highest-end systems such as a Mac Pro or PC workstation with the Quadro 4000 series of graphic cards, you can expect relatively speedy rendering.
As a rule of thumb you can triple render times for full resolution 2K media in QuickTime format. For DPX or Cineon media, the render times can be more than 10x real time because of the overhead of writing this format. You have been warned. :-)