Am I completely backwards? Is it because I’m from Missouruh?

[DrPhaedrusHacker]

Btw I’m brand new to this site, video production of any kind and my first Mac is a Mac Pro 3,1 I bought in the middle of the night in KC I’m 2019 and am just now discovering the never ending clusteruouknowwhat of different versions of software playing nice with OSX and it’s 4,743 versions of cats, locales and they’d better get it together or *I’ll* start naming them, and then it’s too late!

The 90 minute video (movie, if you will) is footage I shot when still a trucker in 2019 and on the daily route from Kansas to Illinois and back to Kansas I got more footage than I could ever use so in that regard I’m in high cotton but so far iMovie is mocking me and whispering to the other apps what a maroon I am (they’ve known it for much longer as I just finally matched up Leopard with iLife 8 and that process only took several months…evidently EVERYTHING Mac/Apple has arrogance built in…but I’m imperfect as well so I’ve embraced it).

I came up with a soundtrack as I was mapping the video possibilities and that’s where 90-100 minutes estimate comes from and what I want to do is lay down the audio sequence first then patch together the pics and vid’s and whatever else I can steal from Adult Swim beyond their style of bumper messages!

Will welcome all wisdom and will actually work for food. Like steak and lobster…those bologna sammiches and honey buns aren’t gonna get it done, even in St Louis City Jail.

Thanks in advance y’all and I promise I’ll get smarter and ask gooder questions in the future!

[stubbsonic]

You can go up to that Apple in the upper-left corner, and choose "About this mac..." and see what version of OS you are running (as well as how much RAM you have).

If you really are in the Leopard OS (10.5.x), that means that the iMovie and GarageBand apps are both older as well. This limits your options for media editing.

Do you think you could install a later OS? Apple has made it more of a tricky process to find and install older OS's, but it's not impossible. I recently had to install an older OS on an older machine, and it involved patience and trial-and-error. I found a repository of older Mac installers to help out.

The advantage of having a later OS, and later versions of iMovie and GarageBand, is that newer features apply to your goals. You could at least update to Mac OS 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) which many here consider to be quite stable-- and one of the best older OS's.

I should warn you though, if you are as "helpless" as you have described, then all of this could be quite risky. I was able to do all my updates on that old machine because I didn't have anything on that machine, so no risk. You might want to try doing all this OS/software experimentation on a separate (external?) drive that leaves your current drive untouched. In any case, you don't want to risk losing your files.

For chopping video, iMovie is probably your safest bet. Might be a slow process and kind of annoying, but that's probably the simplest.

For sound, you might be able to use GarageBand, which has the ability to open your video, and stay in sync while you add tracks of sounds, instruments, loops, sound effects, etc, etc.

I don't know which version of Garageband will work with video. Again, that might be later than the one that comes with Leopard.

This forum mostly focuses on software & hardware from MOTU (Mark of the Unicorn), but there are some very helpful folks on here. Might be worth your while to find a local computer club with some helpful/affordable Mac nerd to help you get your rig configured for your project.

[mikehalloran]

There were four different builds of the Mac Pro 3.1. All shipped with Leopard OS 10.5.1.
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac ... specs.html

The latest MacOS that can run on these without a major hack is El Capitán MacOS 10.11 and is highly recommended. In El Cap, all the iWork apps are now free. GarageBand and iMovie are much improved and easier to use.

If planning to keep this machine running, the best money you can spend will be to replace your System drive with a SATA III SSD (solid state drive). This will not bring your machine to anything current but the speed and reliability increase will be quite noticeable.

In addition to the drive, you will need a 3.5” to 2.5” adapter.