Final Cut Pro X, Apple's professional and prosumer-level video editing software, targets both consumers who want more power for their video-editing projects than iMovie offers and professionals who create content for the cinema and television.
It does a remarkable job of bridging these two worlds, and, though professionals may complain about its nontraditional trackless timeline and amateurs may scratch their heads over its wealth of sophisticated options, it is in fact a magnificent tool for both groups.
Final Cut Pro X remains a Daxdi Editors' Choice for professional video editing software.
What's New in This Version?
Since our last review update, Apple has been busy.
The glitziest new feature in the latest release, version 10.4.9, is Smart Conform, which uses AI to crop widescreen content to fit mobile device screens and social media formats.
Updates to how you can work with proxy files are especially useful for video pros who are increasingly doing work remotely.
It also adds stabilization for 360-degree clips; improved performance with RED RAW and Canon Cinema RAW Light codecs; Inspector panel improvements, and audio crossfades.
FCPX's companion apps also get new features: The Motion app now can edit 3D object animation and has a new Stroke filter, and Compressor can apply camera and creative LUTs.
Other recent updates let you use macOS Catalina's Sidecar feature that turns an iPad into a second display; grade HDR video with enhanced color mask and range isolation tools; and use HSL (hue, saturation, and luma) controls in the Color inspector to select a range of color with greater precision.
The application has long since regained initially missing pro-level features—including multicam editing, XML importing, and external monitor support.
Those have been joined by many more capabilities, including powerful 3D titling and an impressive Flow transition to smooth out jump cuts.
Rich support for 360-degree VR content, updated color grading tools, and support for HDR and HEVC (High Efficiency Video Codec, aka H.265) arrived in version 10.4, along with a slew of smaller tweaks and added capabilities, stability, and fixes.
Final Cut Pro X still shuns the traditional timeline-track interface of its predecessors, a change that drove off a lot of video professionals.
The company did this to take advantage of the more powerful hardware in newer Macs as well as to reimagine the craft of video editing.
The result is a surprisingly powerful and (once you get the hang of it) easy-to-use application.
Pricing and Setup
As with any modern Mac app, Final Cut Pro X is obtainable only through the Apple App Store.
You can install it on multiple Macs for $299, and you receive updates automatically.
There's no upgrade pricing, but, really, compared with the old Final Cut's $999 price, $299 is basically upgrade pricing.
By comparison, you can only get Adobe's competing Premiere Pro (19.99 Per Month at Adobe) with a Creative Cloud subscription for $19.99 per month.
Once you've bought Final Cut Pro X, you're entitled to all updates, including to the present version, 10.4.9.
At over 3GB, Final Cut Pro X is a hefty download, so make sure you have enough local storage.
The program requires at least a Core 2 Duo-based machine running macOS Mojave 10.14.6 or later, an OpenCL-capable video processor, 3.8GB free disk space, and a minimum of 4GB RAM (8GB is the recommended amount).
I tested Final Cut on 2019 iMac with a 3.6GHz Core i9 processor, a Radeon Pro Vega GPU, and 16GB RAM running macOS Catalina and on a 13-inch MacBook Pro with at 3.1 GHz Core i5 CPU and 8GB RAM and Touch Bar.
As you might expect with the iMac's specs, performance was responsive whether I was importing, scrubbing, previewing compound picture-in-picture montages, or adding effects, but it's also reasonably performant on the less powerful laptop.
Libraries, Import, Organize
Final Cut Pro X Libraries let you keep assets together for use in multiple projects.
They combine the previously discrete Events and Projects panels.
Libraries are similar to the Catalogs in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom ($9.99/Month at Adobe) in that they are databases that can be backed up to a separate drive, and they receive automatic backups.
Luckily, you don't have to worry about projects you created before this Library arrangement: Final Cut offers a simple update option to get them with the program.
Libraries are a big part of organizing your assets, but before you use them you have to import media.
In fact, at import, you can tell Final Cut to copy the media to a specified Library.
Within the Library, the import is an Event.
You can specify creating proxy and optimized media, analyze video for color balance, and fix audio problems on import.
Helpfully, clicking on a filename shows a large preview of its contents in the import dialog.
One quibble with the Import dialog is that there's no search—in case you have a large folder of clips and you need to find a particular one.
Premiere Pro has a simpler Import dialog, but it does include a search box.
The program supports expanded color spaces like those approaching Rec.
2020, such as the DCI-P3 color space supported by current iPhones and iMacs.
It also supports the H.265 codec (aka HEVC), designed to reduce files size of 4K and 360-degree footage.
Apple recently developed a format called ProRes Raw, which is analogous to Adobe's DNG raw still camera file format.
It gives you access to all sensor data, meaning far more leeway in adjusting lighting and colors.
Atomos recorders support the format, as does the pro-level DJI Inspire 2 drone.
New for the 10.4.9 update are controls in the Inspector panel for adjusting ISO, color temperature, and exposure offset of ProRes Raw content.
At import, you can have Final Cut Pro X create optimized media (in Apple ProRes format) and analyze it for stabilization issues, as well as color balance and the presence of people.
If you've chosen to analyze the clips, the program can create Smart Collections based on type of shot (long, close, or medium) or whether the shot is stable or unstable.
In my quick test, it created a People folder, with Group, Medium Shot, and Wide Shot Smart Collections below it, and a Stabilization folder with Excessive Shake and Steady Shot groups.
Final Cut Pro X can import (and export) both projects and events in XML format.
This means professional video editors can round-trip their work between video editing software and tools like Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve, a standard in pro video color correction.
The same holds for organizing projects in Square Box System's CatDV, which lets teams of professionals organize clips.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the ability to import iMovie on iOS projects, so you can start editing on an iPhone or iPad and continue in the more powerful desktop app.
For collaborative editing, Final Cut support Apple Xsan storage, with file locking so team members don't trip on each other's work.
A new option is the ability to export a ProRes or H.264 content as proxy files at 50, 25, or 12.5 percent of the original size, allowing remote editors to access huge projects more efficiently.
Premiere Pro, on the other hand, offers a bit more in the way of collaboration options with its Team Projects and Adobe Anywhere which leverages Adobe Creative Cloud to enable simultaneous editing with conflict resolution features.
In addition to its automatic clip-organization options, Final Cut Pro X includes manual keyword tagging.
Much like a good photo workflow app, Final Cut Pro X makes entering frequently used tags simple—you can even use keyboard shortcuts.
Tagging in Final Cut Pro X still isn't as sophisticated as the keywording feature in Adobe Lightroom, but Premiere can only use tags through the separate Adobe Bridge manager (though it does offer lots of metadata and face detection).
One very cool keyword tagging option in Final Cut is that you can apply a tag to just part of a clip.
You can also star, rate, or reject a clip from icons below the source tray.
I'm always surprised at how many video editing apps lack this basic metadata capability.
Interface
The interface sports a consistent dark gray that makes the content you're editing the most prominent thing on the screen.
Four preset window layouts in Final Cut include Default, Organize, Color & Effects, and Dual Displays (which is grayed out if you don't have dual displays).
You can also create your own custom workspace layouts.
You can't, however, undock panels to make them float free, as you can in Premiere Pro.
While the Final Cut Pro X timeline looks something like that of iMovie, with its free-form, trackless Magnetic Timeline view, the pro program packs vastly more editing power.
As with pretty much every video editing app, Final Cut Pro X presents the standard three-pane view, with source clips on the top left, preview on the top right, and timeline across the bottom.
A timecode indicator appears below the preview window, along with an indicator of rendering percent complete.
You can full-screen the preview and resize any panel, but you can't pull panels off into separate windows (Corel VideoStudio Pro and Premiere Pro let you do this).
You get Undo and Redo in Final Cut, but Premiere Pro's history window offers more in the way of letting you get back to any point in your editing process.
There are no track numbers along the left edge; Final Cut Pro X calls tracks lanes, and you can add as many of these as you like.
There's no track limit like you find in other video editors such as Pinnacle Studio and CyberLink PowerDirector. ($51.99 Per Year at CyberLink) I should note that Final Cut still makes excellent use of keyboard shortcuts, such as for changing back and forth among the trim, select, blade, and range selection functions.
Good old J, K, L, I, and O still work as you'd expect.
You can display an on-screen keyboard showing them all, and edit key functions to taste.
Adding clips to the Magnetic Timeline is a simple dragging operation, and your dropped clip snaps to neighbor clips or the start (you can use a Position cursor tool).
If you're attentive, you'll notice a small hairline connects the clip you enter with the first clip you added.
This Clip Connection means that whenever you move the main clip, the one added after will stay in the same relative position on the timeline.
But if you drag a clip so that it overlaps another, that second clip scoots out of its way, dropping down to create a new overlapping lane beneath it.
Another concept unique to Final Cut Pro X is that clips are categorized into Roles.
Roles define what clips are for—it could be video, titles, dialog, music, and effects.
But the power of this comes when you create your own custom sub-roles, such as effects, dialogue, background, or B-roll.
Clear color-coding of these roles means you can use the default colors or choose from a tasteful palette of a dozen colors to assign your own.
Not only do these colors show up on the on-screen timeline, but also on the Touch Bar's mini timeline view, helping you see what kind of tracks are playing.
It's great organizational tool.
Editing 360-Degree Video in Final Cut Pro X
Apple's support for 360-degree VR video isn't just a gesture.
It's deep, well-though-out support with the tools editors in this medium need, including true 360-degree titles, VR headset support, effects, and 360° Patch.
The last is very useful for this kind of content: It lets you remove the camera rig from your production with a cloned area (usually the ground).
Because 360 VR captures everything in every direction, the camera itself is not excluded, but often undesired in the final product.
After importing 360 content, you can view and navigate through it by dropping down the 360° Viewer option from the View menu.
I tested with footage from a Nikon KeyMission 360 and a Samsung Gear 360 with no problems and snappy response.
The latest update adds stabilization for 360-degree footage, but it took a loooooong time on my test Macbook for a 50-second clip—over 4 minutes—though the result was good.
CyberLink PowerDirector has long offered both stabilization and motion tracking.
Effects that you can use on 360-degree content include variations of Blur, Glow, and Sharpen.
If you have Apple Motion ($49), you can create custom 3D, 360-degree titles and motion graphics, but the base Final Cut includes a selection as well.
When you're done editing, you can directly share to the biggest outlets for VR content these days: Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo.
Each of those has specific requirements that the program handles.
Editing Video on the Timeline
Final Cut offers precise, intuitive, and powerful tools for arranging and trimming clips.
Trimming and splitting can be done in the timeline or right in the clip's iMovie-style source entry.
You can easily mark any selections on a clip as Favorite, for later use.
Double-clicking a clip brings up the Precision Editor.
You can trim either end with a simple click-and-drag, and, if you change your mind, the trimmed-away part of the clip will still be there if you later drag back the other way.
A Blade tool does what makes sense for a tool with that name: It splits the clip in two at the edit point.
I also like the Region Selection tool, which lets you mark in and out points to select part of a clip, which you can remove or edit further.
I do, however, miss PowerDirector's multi-trim tool, which lets you mark multiple in and out points to remove undesirable bits in the middle of a clip in a simpler process.
Still, Final Cut Pro X does let you do this kind of multiple sub-clip selection in the source panel.
It also lets you easily make ripple, trim, roll, slip, and slide edits.
The edits are nondestructive, and you can always restore a part of a clip after you trim it.
One of Final Cut Pro X's key features, Compound Clips, lets you group together clips, audio, and effects so that you can move them as a unit and everything will stay in sync.
This really unclutters the timeline, by showing just a single clip for the compound.
You can easily expand the Compound clip at any time for further tweaking, separating it into its component elements—nothing is permanently flattened or joined in the compounding process.
It's a handy way to deal with complex combinations of elements.
Another clever innovation that lets you save space on the timeline is Auditions.
When you drag a new clip on top of one...
