Apple Final Cut Pro X review

Ben Pitt Read more July 13, 2011

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£180

Price when reviewed

Apple is used to whipping its customers up into a frenzy, but it’s usually a less vitriolic response than the one it’s been getting for Final Cut Pro X. It’s such a radical departure from Final Cut Pro 7, we’re amazed it’s billed as an update rather than a brand-new application.

It’s rewritten from scratch, ostensibly to move to 64-bit code, but the interface is unrecognisable and old projects aren’t compatible. Apple advises that existing users should keep version 7 installed alongside Final Cut Pro X.

In fact, some users should just stick with version 7 until further notice. Various features that professional editors depend on – multi-camera editing, tape import and export, EDL, XML and OMF support for transferring projects to other systems, and lots more besides – are notably absent. Apple has responded to criticisms by publishing an FAQ, which quells some complaints and makes vague promises about others, but ignores many and confirms that some issues will remain unresolved.

It all looks pretty disastrous for existing professional users. However, for consumers, amateur enthusiasts and business users who produce video by themselves on a single computer, it shows more promise, especially since it costs only a quarter of the price of the previous version. It’s available only from the Mac App Store, and, not surprisingly, there’s no discounted upgrade price.

Consolidation

The six applications that made up Final Cut Studio 3 have been consolidated down to three. Final Cut Pro now incorporates some features from the defunct colour-grading and audio-editing applications. There’s nothing to replace DVD Studio Pro, though. Final Cut Pro X can burn DVDs, Blu-rays and AVCHD discs, but authoring options are virtually non-existent.

The encoding utility, Compressor 4, and the compositing application, Motion 5, are available separately for £30 each. If £180 for Final Cut Pro seems remarkable, £30 for an application that’s a convincing rival for After Effects is extraordinary, especially since it’s made the transition to 64-bit relatively unscathed.

A couple of Motion 4’s effects have disappeared but most changes to the interface are cosmetic. We were able to open files made in Motion 4, edit them further and send them to Final Cut Pro X. That last step took us a long time to figure out, though – the gap-riddled Help was, frankly, no help at all. Motion 5 and Final Cut Pro X use the same rendering engine, but Motion files can no longer be imported directly to the timeline. Instead, we had to save them as Generators, restart Final Cut so it spotted them, and only then could we import them to the timeline.

Motion 5 will feel familiar to existing users, but the same can’t be said for Final Cut Pro. It seems its developers were determined to find new ways of doing everything. The project management system reminds us of iOS applications, with all projects appearing in a list, regardless of where they’re stored on the disk. Virtual folders are available, and thumbnail strips provide a guide as to their contents. Media assets are stored in Events, and although this name is misleading and the system takes some getting used to, it’s flexible enough.

Media can be subjected to various kinds of analysis on import, identifying stabilisation and rolling shutter problems, colour casts, how many people are in shots, and audio problems such as background noise. Keyword tags can be applied, not just to whole clips but also to ranges within them, and there’s ample scope to search, sort and flag up media for use or rejection.

It’s a good system, but we wonder how many one-person production teams shoot such vast amounts of material to need it. We’d rather Apple had concentrated more on format compatibility. The list of supported camera formats looks good on paper, but it refused raw MTS files from AVCHD cameras, instead only accepting footage taken directly from these cameras’ memory cards. That’s sensible practice, but to disallow any other practice is absurd.

To trim clips, before adding them to the timeline, you drag them across the thumbnail, which animates to show the media contained within. iMovie users will feel at home, but Final Cut Pro 7 users will be reeling at the lack of precision compared to viewing and trimming clips on a monitor window. Precise trimming is performed on the timeline, but we don’t like being forced to make a sloppy edit first and then having to tidy it later.

The magnetic timeline

Apple’s big idea for Final Cut Pro X is the trackless, magnetic timeline. In practice, there’s a single main track called the Primary Storyline, which other media cluster around, stacking up as necessary when multiple clips overlap. There’s something subtly brilliant about this system, since video productions do centre on a key element, be it a series of video clips or an audio track. However, the inability to mute, solo or apply effects to an entire track is just as significant. We particularly missed being able to assign tracks to dialogue, music and sound effects to control each element as one.

Clip Connections is just another name for grouping clips, but Compound Clips is smarter, collapsing clips into a single timeline object. Most serious editors – including Final Cut Pro 7 – can do that with nested sequences, though. We really like the Auditions feature, which embeds alternate takes or effects treatments into a single clip, and allows the user to switch between them with a couple of clicks.

Magnetic is Apple’s glitzy name for ripple editing – a standard feature in all editors whereby clips move to make space or close gaps when others are inserted, edited or removed. Its implementation here is a little more sophisticated than usual, thanks mostly to the Primary Storyline concept. We particularly like the ability to expand a clip and its soundtrack to allow staggered cuts, known as L cuts and J cuts, without having to break the link and risk losing audio sync. However, we found it infuriating that ripple editing can’t simply be turned off. It seems that users must either fully embrace Final Cut Pro X’s way of working or find another editor.

Colour grading

Colour grading is Final Cut Pro X’s best feature. Having analysed a clip’s colours, the software can match them to colours in another clip. A specific frame from the reference clip must be chosen, which can lead to overcooked settings – it’s a shame there’s no Mix slider to tone down the effect. Still, it’s a useful feature for when variable natural light creates discontinuity between shots in a scene.

Manual colour grading isn’t up to the sophistication of Final Cut Studio’s dedicated application – but frankly, we’re glad to see the back of Color’s clunky interface. The usual trio of colour wheels for shadows, mid-tones and highlights has been replaced by a single rectangle for all three plus a master control. This allows colours to be cut as well as boosted, and the more efficient use of screen space gives greater fidelity to make small adjustments. We immediately felt comfortable working with it.

Colour grading can be applied to a specific area of the frame. Masks are defined either by a colour key or an area that varies from ellipse to rectangle. We’d have liked a little more flexibility to the mask shapes – keys lack a feather option to smooth their edges, so even small amounts of video noise produced messy results. Still, in most instances it performed well, and couldn’t be easier to use.

Effects

The 102 effects in the library include some impressive treatments, including stylish film-like simulations. However, even the simpler effects such as Tint and Sepia offer less control than we’d like. In truth, far greater control is available by opening the effects in Motion, whereupon the individual components are presented for unfettered access. That would be fine, except opening an effect in Motion doesn’t carry the footage with it, so settings are adjusted without being able to see the result.

Keyframe animation envelopes now appear on the timeline rather than next to the effects editors, which makes some sense. However, full Bézier curve control is another casualty of progress. It’s possible to choose a linear path or to ease in and out between keyframes, but there are no Bézier handles to define the precise trajectory. There are Bézier controls for animating the position of clips for picture-in-picture effects, but only for position, not for speed.

The titles templates look extremely smart. Anything more than changing the text requires a trip to Motion, but at least editing titles in isolation isn’t as confusing as it is for effects. However, it’s annoying that titles can’t be sent to Motion directly from the timeline. Instead, we had to find the template again in the Titles browser, edit it and reimport it to the timeline. The Replace command meant we didn’t have to type in the text again, but it didn’t preserve the effects we’d applied to the original clip.

Apple makes grand claims about this version’s improved performance. We tested on an iMac with a Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz and 2GB RAM, which only just meets the software’s minimum requirements. It’s little surprise, then, that the interface was lethargic and previews stumbled badly when playing back anything more than a single 1080p AVC clip. We installed Premiere Pro 5.5 on the same computer and its preview performance was no better, but it was much more responsive to user input. We can’t say for sure how that will change of a cutting-edge Mac. Background rendering worked well, though, automatically using idle processor cycles to cache complex sections of the timeline.

The buying decision

If we ignore Final Cut Pro 7 and take Final Cut Pro X on its own terms, there’s a lot to like. Colour grading is excellent, some of the timeline innovations are genuinely useful and designing animations in Motion is a joyful experience. However, it very much feels like version one, with lots of kinks still to be ironed out, and Apple’s my-way-or-the-highway attitude is deeply patronising. It’s a strong product for Mac owners who have grown out of iMovie, but it isn’t as sophisticated as Premiere Pro or as elegant as Vegas Pro.

Ultimately, though, Final Cut Pro X’s strengths – now or in the future – won’t matter much to those who have had their confidence knocked by this dramatic upheaval for existing users. Change can be unsettling, but when that change involves the disappearance of features on which your livelihood depends, it’s a different matter.

Perhaps the missing features are only a temporary blip in the transition to 64-bit code; on the evidence, however, we doubt it. Final Cut Pro X can import iMovie projects but not Final Cut Pro 7 projects. It can upload directly to Facebook but not export an Edit Decision List (EDL) or even a properly authored DVD.

Apple’s vague, tardy reassurances to professional users suggest that it really has lost interest in them, and wants to concentrate on consumers. Picking editing software from a company that’s on this trajectory seems risky.