You don’t have to be a professional video editor to understand how practical, efficient, and impactful the latest updates to Final Cut Pro are. Apple today launches a long-awaited revamp of its in-house editing program, Final Cut Pro 11, and updates to its cross-platform versions, Final Cut Pro for iPad and Final Cut Camera.
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AI is definitely a big focus of Final Cut Pro 11, and with MacOS Sequoia’s Apple language model, your Mac can help you, whether it’s identifying moving objects to crop and edit, or creating transcriptions and captions. It’s all about how it helps automate and streamline your workflow.
“Our creative apps give artists, producers, directors, and editors around the world the tools they need to express themselves and realize their artistic visions,” said Apple Apps Worldwide Products. Brent Chiu-Watson, senior director of marketing, said in a press release Wednesday. Here are the best new features available in the new free update.
1. Magnetic mask
Traditionally, green screens and rotoscoping have been used to precisely stitch together subjects in a video, but this not only requires resources but also takes a lot of time. The new Magnetic Mask feature leverages M-series chips (specifically the Neural Engine) to intelligently track and select moving objects in footage, such as cars, people, and pets. Once you select a smart object, you can layer it over a customized background, correct colors, and apply video effects.
2. Transcription to captions
Thanks to a large-scale language model trained by Apple, this new feature extracts audio from footage, transcribes it, and automatically applies it as closed captions throughout the video. However, it is currently limited to English only, with more languages to be added in the future.
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AI-powered transcription services are on the rise, but this is one of the more natural applications since content creators often rely on third-party services like Scribe and Rev. When I used to work as a video editor, I would send and receive transcriptions. Video always felt like an extra step in the creation process, and ultimately led to significant time loss during production. Proprietary tools built into editing software can be very beneficial if they work as reliably as Apple has demonstrated.
3. You can now edit spatial videos
When Apple first launched Vision Pro, spatial video was probably its biggest feature. The emotional and immersive nature of the 3D-looking videos is one of the more memorable aspects of the $3,500 headset, and it’s something Apple has continued to build on with its immersive videos and movies. Final Cut Pro 11 allows users to edit their own spatial videos only if they were captured with Vision Pro, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, or Canon RF-S7.8mm F4 STM. DUAL lens combined with Canon R7.
Editing features include adding effects and color correction to your footage, as well as the ability to add immersive titles with adjustable depth position. Users can also preview different left and right eye viewing angles on the Mac display or Vision Pro (via Mac Virtual Display).
4. Show or hide clips in an organized timeline
If you often have too many video, text, and audio tracks to concentrate on, you now have the option to show or hide clips. While it’s not as flashy a change as, say, editing a spatial video, this feature greatly organizes your timeline, allowing you to hide content that can play in the background and focus on just a few pieces of content.
5. Small (but useful) improvements to the iPad
With Final Cut Pro for iPad 2.1, Apple is introducing new Light and Color features that adaptively adjust aspects such as color balance, contrast, and brightness of your clips, regardless of whether they were shot in SDR, HDR, RAW, or LOG. Introducing enhanced features.
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of Apple Pencil Pro and magic keyboard It also registers haptic feedback when you trim a video, drag media on the timeline, or resize a clip with a snap. Other changes include the ability to expand or minimize the timeline height with a vertical pinch, the ability to convert the viewer to picture-in-picture mode, and new inks for live drawing (watercolor, crayon, fountain pen, etc.) Includes:
6. Record more efficiently with Final Cut Camera
It’s only been six months since Apple released a version of Final Cut that works on iPhone, but the latest update to the app now lets you capture log-encoded HEVC video in standalone or live multicam sessions. This type of footage allows for more control over dynamic range and color in post-production while having a smaller file size than traditional log video.
You can also preview built-in Apple LUTs, eliminating the need to guess how elements like gamma, brightness, and hue will affect your footage after it’s captured. Finally, Final Cut Camera 1.1 introduces a Leveler to help editors better frame and compose shots.
