Skip to content

Getting started

System requirements

Supported operating systems, disk and memory guidance, GPU notes, and what ships bundled with FramePilot.

FramePilot is a local-first desktop application. It runs entirely on your machine, and rendering happens locally through a bundled deterministic engine. This page lists what you need to run it comfortably.

Operating systems

FramePilot ships as a native desktop build for all three major platforms.

Platform Supported versions
macOS macOS 12 (Monterey) or newer
Windows Windows 10 (64-bit) or newer
Linux Recent 64-bit distributions (AppImage)

Apple Silicon and Intel Macs are both supported. On Linux, the AppImage runs on most modern distributions; a .deb is provided where available.

Memory and disk

Video editing and rendering are memory- and disk-intensive. Treat these as practical guidance rather than hard limits.

  • RAM: 8 GB minimum, 16 GB or more recommended for longer or higher-resolution projects.
  • Disk: enough free space for your source media plus renders and cached proxies. Budget several gigabytes of working space beyond your raw footage; final exports and preview proxies are written locally.
  • CPU: a modern multi-core processor. Rendering is CPU-heavy because encoding runs through FFmpeg.

Because FramePilot is local-first, your projects and media stay in local project folders — nothing is uploaded to edit or render.

GPU

A discrete GPU is not required. The editor preview uses HTML video and canvas layers, which are lightweight, and the deterministic render engine leans on FFmpeg. A capable GPU can help with smooth preview playback on high-resolution timelines, but it is not a prerequisite for rendering or export.

FFmpeg is bundled

You do not need to install FFmpeg separately. It ships with the app, so rendering and export work out of the box after activation. This keeps the deterministic render pipeline consistent across machines rather than depending on whatever version happens to be on your system.

Bringing your own AI provider key

FramePilot's AI features use a bring-your-own-key model, so your account and usage stay yours. Supported providers are:

  • Anthropic (Claude) — the recommended default.
  • NVIDIA NIM — an OpenAI-compatible endpoint.
  • A deterministic mock provider for offline testing, which returns canned patches and needs no key.

Add your provider key in the app's AI settings. See the AI agent for how the agent uses your key and what it can do.

Next steps