Here is a rundown of the new features added to Final Cut Pro since 2016.

For details on stability improvements and issue fixes, visit Apple’s Final Cut Pro release notes.

October 27, 2016:

Final Cut Pro 10.3

• New interface
• Save window layouts
• Fill a second display with the Timeline or hide the Timeline completely
• Magnetic Timeline 2 – roles, color coding, audio lanes
• Automatic asignment of iXML data

• Wide color for working with log footage
• MXF support
• Flow transition
• Remove effects/attributes
• SMB-based libraries
• Consolidate custom Motion projects into individual Final Cut Pro libraries
• Option for continuous playback of clips in the Browser
• Search custom metadata in the Browser and Timeline
• Search Timeline Index for Auditions, compound clips, multicam clips, and synchronized clips
• Ability to roll trim on adjacent connected clips
• Ability to drag and drop clips, projects, and events as XML with supported applications
• Ability to export a library an XML file from Final Cut Pro via drag and drop
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts for adding audio fades
• Align Audio to Video function quickly resets J or L cuts in the Timeline to straight cuts
• New Broadcast Safe Effect allows you to limit video levels to a specific color space including Rec. 601 PAL and NTSC, Rec. 709, and Rec. 2020
• Users can now create and save a custom default Generator, Title, and Lower Third Title which can then be added to a Timeline with keyboard shortcuts

December 14, 2017:

Final Cut Pro 10.4

• 360° VR editing, effects, transitions, overlays, preview in VR headset
• Advanced color – color wheels, color curves, balance color, custom LUTs, keyframeable corrections
• High Dynamic Range
• iMovie for iOS import
• Canon RAW Light support
• HEVC and HEIF support
• NFS-based libraries and media support

April 15, 2018:

Final Cut Pro 10.4.1

• Closed captions
• ProRes RAW
• Video Roles share options

November 15, 2018:

Final Cut Pro 10.4.4

• Workflow extensions
• Batch share
• Video noise reduction
• Timecode window
• Comparison Viewer
• Tiny Planet effect to show 360° footage in a non-360° project
• SRT captions
• Burn in captions
• Comic effect
• New 360° transitions

March 21, 2019:

Final Cut Pro 10.4.6

• Detects media files that may be incompatible with future versions of macOS after Mojave and converts them to a compatible format

October 7, 2019:

Final Cut Pro 10.4.7

• New Metal-based processing engine
• Multiple GPU support
• Afterburner support
• HDR on Pro Display XDR
• Enhanced color mask and range isolation tools
• View HDR video tone-mapped to compatible SDR displays
• Select which internal or external GPU is used

August 25, 2020:

Final Cut Pro 10.4.9

• Improved proxy workflow – Different resolutions, formats, proxy libraries
• Social media tools – Smart conform to change aspect ratio, custom overlays
• Adjust ProRes RAW camera settings
• Crossfade audio on adjacent clips in one step
• Sort clips and projects by last modified date in list view
• Preview 360-degree stereoscopic 3D video in simultaneous left and right eye views
• 360-degree video stabilization

November 12, 2020:

Final Cut Pro 10.5

• Improved performance and efficiency on Mac computers with Apple silicon
• Accelerated machine learning analysis for Smart Conform
• Option to create a copy of your library and automatically transcode media to ProRes Proxy or H.264 at various resolutions

March 4, 2021:

Final Cut Pro 10.5.2

• Universal RED plug-in support enabling native RED RAW decoding and playback

June 17, 2021:

Final Cut Pro 10.5.3

• Create and edit custom column views with the new column editor.
• Search for media in the browser using expanded criteria including clip names, markers and notes.
• Sort clips in the browser according to type, including proxy, optimised and missing media.

October 18, 2021:

Final Cut Pro 10.6

• Object Tracker
• Cinematic Mode
• Neon effect

In case you missed it, I wrote about how Apple might transition the Mac to Apple Silicon over the next 18 months over on fcp.co. As well as replacing or discontinuing all current Intel-based Macs, Apple have the opportunity to make new Macs for new price points and new markets.

• Apple likes to keep Macs at the same price points over the years. This means the extra power the M-series SoCs will provide more Mac at the same price. Not new Macs with the same power at lower price points.
• I suggest that a new industrial design for iMacs could include a transparent bezel – like the outer edge of the screen used in the 2004 iMac. Wide enough for users to be able to grip the edge to turn the screen vertical:
  
• The limits to how fast the transition will take place. Not all Macs will transition this Summer – which Macs will be last.
• A new opportunity for Apple in education:

Hundreds of dollars below that $899 education price, Chromebook tablets and laptops prices start at $269. I expect that schools will hope to allocate $300-$350 to buying each tablet plus keyboard or laptop. At this level, computers for education have 4GB of slow RAM and 32GB of slow SSD storage.

• If Apple wants to seriously compete in education market, what would a new M1E-based Mac be like?
• 4 CPU cores (including at least two high-performance cores)
• 4 GPU cores
• 4GB of fast RAM
• 64GB of fast SSD storage
• No screen
• No keyboard
• Single USB port for keyboard/mouse
• HDMI port for display
• Separate power port
• $250

• New Mac price points and form factors:

As Apple are likely to using a small variety of M-series SoCs at any one time, in a larger range of enclosures (13-inch, 14-inch, 16-inch, mini, iMac and Mac Pro), eventually Macs might also be available in additional enclosures:

• 11-inch MacBook Air/Pro
• 18-inch MacBook Pro
• 16-inch iMac
• 40-inch iMac
• Mac Pro mini – a smaller version of the Mac Pro
• Mac nano – the smallest ‘hockey puck’ Mac that can contain an M-series SoC, for those who think a Mac mini is much too big
• Mac Pi – a tiny circuit board-only Mac version of the Raspberry Pi computer that is used in education and embedded systems

Read the article over at fcp.co, the home for Final Cut Pro on the internet.

When reading a web page or a document on my Mac, I often want to search for a film name, cast member or crew member I see in the Internet Movie Database. I’ve added a Global Quick Action that sends the selected text to the search system of IMDb.

Here’s how to add a ‘Search in IMDb’ command to the context or Services menu in Mac applications.

1. Open Automator from the Applications folder.

2. In the first dialog box, click the New Document button.

3. Choose Quick Action

4. Click the Library button in the toolbar.

5. Type shell in the search field.

6. Drag the Run Shell Script action to the grey area labelled Drag actions or files here to build your workflow

7. Paste in this shell script:

open "https://www.imdb.com/find?q=$(ruby -rcgi -e 'print CGI.escape $<.read.chomp')&s=all"

8. Save the quick action as Search in IMDb

9. Quit Automator

To use the global ‘Search in IMDb’ quick action, in applications where text can be selected control-click (or right-click) the text you want to search for on IMDb.

Alternatively, once you have selected your text, go to the application menu and choose ‘Search in IMDb’ from the Services submenu.

In October 2013 I published a new benchmark for video editing on the Mac: BruceX. It tests the graphics and compositing power of a specific combination of Mac and version of Final Cut Pro. It is a two second 5K (5120×2700) timeline with various Final Cut graphics generators laid one on top of the other. Exporting this timeline tests the graphics power of the Mac. This is relevant because much of the time Final Cut uses the GPU to render and composite multiple video and graphics clips together.

It is still being used today. Including for testing how fast the new M1-based Macs are.

Here is a graph that combines the results of testing Macs since 2013 by various testers over the years, mostly Rob-ART Morgan of Bare Feats  

BruceX measures how long in seconds it takes to export a complex 5K timeline to ProRes.

Edited to add… A 2019 Mac Pro 12 Core with AMD Pro Vega II 32GB took 4.6 seconds, George Manzanilla reported in the ‘Final Cut Pro X Editors’ Facebook group.

To test your system, follow the instructions on my original blog post from 2013.

New in Final Cut Pro 10.5:
-Apple Silicon optimised
-Option to copy library and transcode media
-Export HLG HDR projects with Dolby Vision metadata
-Avid DNxHR/DNxHD decoding/playback
-searchable, +PDF/Apple Books help system
-No ‘X’https://t.co/02wHh2sKGr#fcpx.5

— Alex Gollner ⧜ (@Alex4D) November 19, 2020

During the Dolby Summit* yesterday, I used the Q&A system them about the Dolby Vision workflow from iPhone 12 to Mac/PC. Here’s a summary of their answer:

1. Import media from your iPhone 12 / 12 Pro into any HDR-capable video editing application as plain HLG files, edit normally. [For us that means Final Cut Pro working with Hybrid Log Gamma media]
2. Grading: set up project as PQ, import media, apply HLG to PQ conversion, generate Dolby Vision metadata. [Most often this means using Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Studio 16]

You can’t import the phone’s Dolby Vision metadata into desktop applications. Yet.

Apple have said in their press release for the iPhone 12:

Dolby Vision grading is processed live and sustained during editing, whether in the Photos app or iMovie, and coming to Final Cut Pro X later this year.

Hopefully November will see an update for Final Cut that will be able to read the Dolby Vision (‘DV’) metadata. That metadata will ensure that footage looks good on Dolby Vision-compatible HDR displays. 80% of TVs sold in Europe have Dolby Vision.

The Dolby Vision mastering process includes automatically generating metadata for your video so that it displays well on SDR displays – such as older phones, TVs and most computers. Graders say that this automated process works for 95% of shots. The process creates colour and brightness metadata to each shot in your programme. The art of the colour grader is going through those shots, finding the 5% that need to be changed for SDR viewing and making the right changes.

To be ‘Dolby Vision compatible’ I expect Final Cut will be able to display the light and colour metadata generated by the iPhone camera app when footage is captured. It should also generate the metadata for edited programmes so that it can be modified in colour grading applications. It would be a bonus if that metadata could be changed in Final Cut too.

HDR and Final Cut Pro 10.4.10

Apple have a December 2019 white paper on the subject: ‘HDR and Wide Color Gamut in Final Cut Pro X’. In your timeline’s Project Properties, set the colour space to Rec.2020 PQ:

Choose this option if you want to create an HDR movie with the Rec. 2020 color space and PQ transfer function (Rec. 2100 standard). This format can be used for Dolby Vision and HDR10 mastering at a later stage.

So for now, although the footage from the iPhone 12 / 12 Pro is HLG, a PQ timeline is better if you want grading applications to be able to make the most of what was captured.

Here’s Dolby’s list of Macs that support Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos playback.

Dolby Vision and Final Cut Pro

I’ll update this post once Final Cut is updated.

*Dolby Summit was a streamed conference for those who make TV, films, music and video games that use Dolby technologies such as Dolby Vision for video and Dolby Atmos for audio.