FCP Cafe is a community for professional Final Cut Pro editors and developers.

This website has been thrown together by Chris Hocking at LateNite.

Introducing Off-topic Rants! 🥳

Over the years, I've written hundreds of blog posts on various personal and LateNite websites, as have some of my friends, collaborators and co-workers at LateNite.

When we re-designed the LateNite website a few years ago, we simplified it, and removed links to the very old blog - the pages were still online, but kinda hidden, only to be found if you Googled them.

However, rather than letting all that content die, I've decided to keep it alive here on FCP Cafe in the *Off-topic Rants section.

Yes, I'm a digital hoarder. We have 267 hard drives in NeoFinder and 353 LTO tapes. 🫠

I also created Unreal Cafe and Resolve Cafe very shortly after setting up FCP Cafe, but they never really took off, so I've moved my Unreal Cafe blog posts here, and have taken down both these sites, so I can just concentrate on Final Cut Pro. 👋

So basically... Off-topic Rants is a random collection of blog posts that contain technical information, creative information, film reviews (apologies if I wrote something bad about your film!), and who knows what else.

Some interesting posts from over the years include:

• Philosophy of Open Source (13th September 2006)
• Post Production Workflow (23rd December 2008)
• Final Cut Studio 3 Predictions (21st February 2009)
• Avid vs FCP – My thoughts… (10th May 2009)
• Mac Hardware Predictions – Death to the Mouse (22nd June 2009)
• Assistant Editor Lecture (30th October 2010)
• Waiting on Sound (16th September 2012)
• The Hard Drive Challenge (12th December 2013)
• FCPX Rant (28th January 2014)
• Directing The Wizards of Aus (20th December 2015)
• Superannuation for Filmmakers (6th June 2018)

Some of the old blogs have formatting issues, broken links, and missing content, so feel free to submit a pull request if you come across anything, or just let me know on the Discord or GitHub.

Also the main Off-topic Rants page currently doesn't list everything, so you can only find a lot of the old blogs by searching, or stepping through the blog posts page-by-page (which will take a while, as there's currently 349 posts!).

If nothing else... all these decades of old blog posts will probably explain why I'm so crazy... 🤷

Enjoy!

Jumper for Final Cut Pro has been on display at MPTS show at Olympia Grand Hall in London today, and will be back again tomorrow! 🥳

The amazing Ronny Courtens from OWC (Head of Enterprise solutions - Jellyfish/Jupiter/LTO) and Max Lund from Witchcraft Software (the lead developer of Jumper) will be on the stand demoing Jumper, running large shared media volumes and on-premises machine learning datasets off a Jellyfish NAS.

Ronny is giving live demos of their latest high-performance Jellyfish NAS systems, their powerful new Jellyfish Manager v3.0, and the very first release of their brand-new Jellyfish Media Management software.

The Jellyfish systems is connected to super-fast OWC Thunderbolt 5 hubs, docks, and drives, to demo high-speed edit-while-ingest collaboration workflows.

If you want to see the fastest and most user-friendly storage solutions for creative teams, and the latest developments in on-premises machine learning, go and visit MPTS on the ccktech booth, Stand B42.

The event runs:

Thursday 15th May - 09:30 - 17:00

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New Case Study!

Dev Benegal has written an awesome new case study covering his film An Arrested Moment.

You can read all about it on FCP Cafe.

Thanks heaps Dev for sharing with the Final Cut Pro Community! 🥳

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Marker Data v1.2.0 is out now!

In includes the following improvement:

• Introducing Pagemaker – a new feature that allows users to create PDFs directly within Marker Data
• Swatch analysis now provides percentage progress, including completion status for each processed image (#122)
• Updated Notion Module CSV2Notion Neo to version 1.3.5
• Increased Notion Module's upload threads

You can learn more and download on the Marker Data website.

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Jumper for Final Cut Pro will be on display at MPTS show at Olympia Grand Hall in London next week thanks to OWC! 🥳

The amazing Ronny Courtens from OWC (Head of Enterprise solutions - Jellyfish/Jupiter/LTO) and Max Lund from Witchcraft Software (the lead developer of Jumper) will be on the stand demoing Jumper, running large shared media volumes and on-premises machine learning datasets off a Jellyfish NAS.

Ronny will give live demos of their latest high-performance Jellyfish NAS systems, their powerful new Jellyfish Manager v3.0, and the very first release of their brand-new Jellyfish Media Management software.

The Jellyfish systems will be connected to super-fast OWC Thunderbolt 5 hubs, docks, and drives, to demo high-speed edit-while-ingest collaboration workflows.

If you want to see the fastest and most user-friendly storage solutions for creative teams, and the latest developments in on-premises machine learning, come and visit MPTS on the ccktech booth, Stand B42.

The event runs:

Wednesday 14th May - 09:30 - 18:30
Thursday 15th May - 09:30 - 17:00

Caption Pop AI v1.1.5 is out now!

It now includes background text boxes, improved color pickers, new languages, and a DTD bug fix.

The auto-update’s broken, so to install:

• Quit FCP & SR app
• Delete the SR app
• Download and install new version
• Restart FCP and then relaunch Caption Pop AI

After updating, both the SR app and Caption Pop AI should have 1.1.5 version numbers.

You can learn more on the Stupid Raisins website.

evrExpanse v5.6.2 is out now!

This update is packed with powerful new features and enhancements for Canon users, making it easier than ever to unlock the full potential of your EOS Cinema camera metadata — especially for those working with legacy equipment.

New Features:

• Canon XF Utility Integration: Seamlessly integrate with Canon XF Utility for a more efficient metadata workflow with Canon XF-AVC MXF media.

Enhancements:

• Expanded Metadata Support: Direct extraction of Camera Index, Reel Number, and Clip Number from Canon EOS Cinema MXF files, providing deeper insights into your footage.

FIXED:

• Improved Color Space Detection: Resolved color space extraction issues for Canon C200 (XF-AVC) files.

Read the Full Release Notes

You can download and learn more on the evrExpanse website

72-Hour Flash Sale – 50% OFF evrExpanse! Claim Your Discount

EDL-X v2.14 is out now!

In includes the following improvement:

• New Choice for Clip Names: Top-Level Clip Names - Forced - grabs the first name found while drilling down in the timeline

You can download on the Mac App Store.

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Audio Design Desk v2.2 is out now!

It contains the following changes:

• +Sounds Marketplace is here. The way that sound packs are browsed and downloaded has been changed to an online model based on the ability to individualize sounds.
• Stem Splitter
• Generate new sounds using the integrated SoundGen tools
• New triggers panel in the Timeline
• Bug fixes and UI refinements

You can learn more and download from the Audio Design Desk website.

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Dylan Bates (The Final Cut Bro) has released a new app called Motion Template Version Tool.

I'm so incredibly proud of Dylan for jumping neck deep into development and programming - that's awesome!

You can watch him explain the application on YouTube:

You can pay what you want - with a minimum of USD$5.

You can download and learn more on The Final Cut Pro store.

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CommandPost is now on Discord!

You can sign up for our new CommandPost Discord community on Discord.

I haven't had Facebook on my phone for years, and at the start of the year I removed Twitter as well.

Sadly, as a result, I was very slow to respond to Twitter DM's and questions on our CommandPost Facebook Community.

I'm an active member of a few Discord Communities, so I figured, I might as well try move the CommandPost community to Discord! We'll see how it goes.

Hope to see you there!

Jumper is coming to Avid Media Composer & DaVinci Resolve!

Whilst this isn't technically Final Cut Pro news, it will bring some benefits, as Jumper's analysis files will be common between Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve (Mac & Windows), Adobe Premiere Pro (Mac & Windows) and Avid Media Composer (Mac & Windows)!

A standalone/desktop version of Jumper is also in active development.

You can learn more on the Jumper website.

MotionVFX has updated a bunch of their products, for example:

• mFlare 2 v3.1.6: Crash fixes, added base template
• mTracker 3D Area v1.1.2: Added base template, updated separator for templates

You can download and learn more on the MotionVFX website.

X2Pro5 v5.0.44 is out now with the following bug fix:

• Support for mov files created on iPhones.

You can download on the Mac App Store.

Builder NLE v4.2.12 is out now with the following bug fixes:

• Bug fix for dealing with stale security scoped bookmarks when accessing media files
• Bug fix for audio playback

You can download on the Mac App Store.

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BRAW Toolbox v1.4.4 (74) is out now!

It contains the following improvements:

• Added support for Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65.
• Added support for updated Constant Quality record settings on URSA Cine.
• Added support for Panasonic UB-50 Blackmagic RAW clips.
• Updated from Blackmagic RAW SDK v4.4 to v4.5.
• Updated from FxPlug v4.3.1 to v4.3.2.

You can learn more and download on the BRAW Toolbox website.

Arctic v24.3.2 it out now with support for Final Cut Pro 11.1.

You can learn more and download on the Arctic website.

MotionVFX has updated a bunch of their products, for example:

• mFilmLook v3.0: New Motion Blur Al effect available in CineStudio. All effects added as separate handy presets
• mRotoAl v1.1.5: Updated separator for templates
• mFilmLook Elemental Presets v1.0.1: Support for the latest mFilmLook, featuring Motion Blur

You can download and learn more on the MotionVFX website.

Creator's Best Friend v1.3.4 is out now with the following bug fix:

• Bug fix for determining the visibility of a marker on a clip's out point

You can download on the Mac App Store.

Simons Says Translation v3.9.6 is out now with minor bug fixes.

You can download on the Mac App Store.

Sync-N-Link X v1.3.5 is out now with the following bug fix:

• Critical bug fix for crashes caused by garbage collection (introduced in version 1.3.3)

You can download on the Mac App Store.

captionAnimator v1.1.4 is out now with the following bug fix:

• Bug fix for a crash caused by creating shortened titles from a caption (in some cases)

You can download on the Mac App Store.

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Apple has just released updates to Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Pro for iPad, Final Cut Camera, Compressor, Motion and FxPlug.

As always, please make sure you backup your current version of Final Cut Pro, Motion and Compressor before updating.

Iain Anderson has written up a detailed post over at ProVideo Coalition.

As usual Ripple Training is straight out of the gate with a great summary video, which you can watch on YouTube below:

The amazing Jenn Jager has also released a video:

...as has Dylan Bates (aka The Final Cut Bro):

Final Cut Pro for Mac has a database update (1133 in v11.0.1, and now 1150 in v11.1) - which means existing Libraries will need to be updated. We recommend manually making backups of your Final Cut Pro Libraries before updating.

There was no update to FCPXML in this release - it's still on FCPXML v1.13.

Interestingly, new Adjustment Clips in FCPXML are just standard video items with a new special effect applied - so existing FCPXML-based tools should continue to work without any updates:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE fcpxml>

<fcpxml version="1.13">
    <resources>
        <format id="r1" name="FFVideoFormat1080p25" frameDuration="100/2500s" width="1920" height="1080" colorSpace="1-1-1 (Rec. 709)"/>
        <effect id="r2" name="Adjustment Clip" uid="FFAdjustmentEffect"/>
    </resources>
    <library location="file:///Example.fcpbundle/">
        <event name=" 🎬 EDITS" uid="917D28EF-04EA-4A6B-A8B4-FAB14E5AA649">
            <project name="Adjustment Clip" uid="23781BD2-0E2A-4BF9-9ED0-6E1DA0844336" modDate="2025-03-28 12:24:17 +1100">
                <sequence format="r1" duration="86400s" tcStart="0s" tcFormat="NDF" audioLayout="stereo" audioRate="48k">
                    <spine>
                        <video ref="r2" offset="0s" name="Adjustment Clip" start="3600s" duration="86400s" role="adjustments"/>
                    </spine>
                </sequence>
            </project>
        </event>
    </library>
</fcpxml>

Whilst this isn't a major update (compared to what Blackmagic will most likely announce next week before NAB), it does have a lot a very useful additions for professional editors.

Adjustment Clips is something the Final Cut Pro community has been asking for a very long time, so it's awesome to see that Apple's finally built this in.

Whilst we've always been able to build empty Motion Titles to basically act as adjustment layers (I personally always used Alex4D's free adjustment layer) - it became a bit annoying with collaboration, because different people would use different adjustment layer Motion Templates. I have about 10 different Adjustment Layers on my system for example.

As you'll see in the above videos, Adjustments Clips are also an improvement upon the legacy Adjustment Layers, because they can be applied from the Effects Browser, and they also support transitions.

The addition of the Quantec QRS (Quantec Room Simulator) is awesome too - although not really unexpected, given it was featured so heavily at last years FCP Creative Summit when talking about Logic Pro. I would GUESS that they originally wanted this in FCP 11, but ran out of time.

Renaming audio effects in the Inspector is another super useful quality of life improvement, that was basically low-hanging fruit for the FCP team. Interestingly, this just uses the nameOverride parameter in FCPXML, which already was in FCPXML v1.13 for audio effects.

Revealing the source of a multicam angle or synced clip in the Browser is also another great quality of life improvement for professional editors. Previously, editors would have to use CommandPost to achieve similar functionality.

Moveable Markers have also finally been officially enabled! This has been a secret/hidden feature in Final Cut Pro for years - it was first discovered by Alex Goldner back in June 2014, and added to CommandPost.

Image Playground is a bit of unsurprisingly, but "meh" feature, however if you don't enable Apple Intelligence at the macOS level, you won't even see the option anyway (so your Import button will just open the Import window)!

There's also lots of documented (and some undocumented) bug fixes, which is always welcome. The improvements to FxPlug will hopefully mean third party plugins will become more stable and reliable.

We'll continue to explore and test it in more detail over the coming weeks.

In the meantime, here's the full release notes:

Final Cut Pro v11.1 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Add color corrections and effects to an adjustment clip above the timeline to apply them to a range of clips at once.
• Get inspired with Image Playground and use Apple Intelligence to quickly create stylized images based on a description, suggested concepts, or people from your Photos library.*
• Speed up your Magnetic Mask workflows with important bug fixes, performance improvements, and a new keyboard shortcut to show or hide the Magnetic Mask Editor.
• Use the Quantec QRS (Quantec Room Simulator) effect to create natural and transparent audio reverbs that simulate real acoustic spaces.
• Stay organized by renaming audio effects in the inspector.
• Reveal the source of a multicam angle or synced clip in the browser.
• Move markers in the timeline by dragging them in a clip, or remove markers by dragging them out of a clip.

Additional support and bug fixes:

• The Magnetic Mask Editor now closes automatically when the last Magnetic Mask is removed from a clip.
• Improves reliability when batch exporting compound clips that contain Magnetic Masks.
• Adds support for using Transcribe to Captions with a single audio role component.
• Improves stability when dragging a library item to a text editor to generate an FCPXML.
• Improves reliability when upgrading a library that contains 100 fps clips.
• Improves reliability when sharing a project that includes ARRI ProRes MXF media.
• Fixes an issue that prevented a LUT from being automatically applied when importing ARRIRAW MXF clips.
• Improves performance when applying Smooth Slo-Mo to ProRes 4444 files with an alpha channel on Mac models with M1.
• Fixes an issue that caused audio to go out of sync when adding 25 fps clips to a 23.98 fps timeline.
• Fixes an issue that could cause sound to slip out of sync when detaching audio from a clip with a J-cut and a through edit.
• Fixes an issue that caused an MP3 or AAC audio file to have a truncated audio waveform after export.
• Fixes an issue that caused black frames to be displayed when playing back HEVC clips from a RED camera.
• Fixes an issue that prevented the browser from automatically scrolling to an active cell in list view.
• Fixes an issue that caused the selected browser clip to change when Show Hidden Clips was enabled.

Final Cut Pro for iPad 2.2 includes the following features and enhancements:

• Expand your editing workflows with support for portrait orientation on your iPad.
• Speed up your editing with keyboard shortcuts to nudge a selection, replace with gap, and lift or overwrite to the primary storyline.
• Get inspired with Image Playground and use Apple Intelligence to quickly create stylized images based on a description, suggested concepts, or people from your Photos library.*
• Capture in 50 fps for additional editing flexibility and delivery options.

Improvements and bug fixes:

• Double-tap in the timeline to quickly start and stop playback.
• Automatically scroll the timeline when moving the playhead, moving timeline clips, or editing, including trimming, retiming, and selecting multiple clips.
• Animation keyframes now default to the Transform All property.
• Fixes an issue that caused the inspector to sometimes apply effect changes to the previously selected clip.
• Addresses an issue that caused clips to sometimes appear black in the timeline.
• Improves reliability when editing focus points of Cinematic mode videos in a connected storyline.
• Improves reliability when using onscreen controls to resize clips in the viewer.
• Fixes an issue that interrupted audio playback when changing the audio configuration in the inspector.
• Addresses an issue that caused multicam syncing to fail with the inspector open.
• Improves reliability when using the Continuous Zoom slider with the front-facing camera.
• Fixes an issue that caused incorrect voiceover controls to appear after a Live Multicam session.
• Addresses an issue that caused the app to rotate unexpectedly when using Stage Manager and Live Multicam.
• Fixes an issue in Live Multicam that caused incorrect lens options to appear in the zoom slider for certain frame rate and resolution settings.
• Addresses an issue that caused the Live Multicam Record button to sometimes appear offscreen.
• Improves reliability when using the jog wheel on iPad mini.
• Fixes an issue that caused the Picture in Picture viewer to flash and not resize correctly on iPad mini.
• Addresses an issue that caused the voiceover controls to flash on iPad mini.
• Improves the reliability of the inspector color palette when VoiceOver accessibility mode is turned on.
• Includes stability and performance improvements.

New keyboard shortcuts:

• Replace with Gap: Shift-Delete
• Overwrite to Primary Storyline: Option-Command-Down Arrow
• Lift from Primary Storyline: Option-Command-Up Arrow
• Nudge Left Many: Shift-Comma (,)
• Nudge Right Many: Shift-Period (.)
• Import from Image Playground: Shift-Option-P

Motion v5.10 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Get inspired with Image Playground and use Apple Intelligence to quickly create stylized images based on a description, suggested concepts, or people from your Photos library.
• Fixes an issue where disabling a soloed object in the Layers list would not clear its solo state.
• Improves stability when using the Timecode generator.
• Improves performance when playing back image sequences.

Compressor v4.10 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Get higher quality frame rate retiming powered by best-in-class machine learning, converting to higher frame rates, such as 60, 90, and 120 fps.
• Adds support for video pass-through of long GOP to MXF exports.
• Fixes an issue where the app would crash when applying an audio only preset to a video.
• Fixes an issue where custom frame size was constrained to a previously selected aspect ratio.
• Fixes an issue where multichannel audio layout was misinterpreted.
• Fixes an issue where log processing is retained when replacing a log-encoded video source file in an existing job.

FxPlug v4.3.2 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Improved overall stability.
• Added ability for plug-ins to close a remote window.
• Added tagged pop-up menus so that plug-ins can rearrange the items or add new items between existing items without having to change their parameter handling code.
• OpenGL is deprecated. Please update your plugins to work with Metal.
• Fixed an issue that would cause dynamically registered FxPlugs to not load during a “Send To Compressor” event.
• Fixed an issue where anamorphic footage was improperly cropped during analysis.
• Fixed some memory leaks in the FxPlug.Framework.
• Fixed an issue where the FxCustomParameterAPI’s -currentTime method could return an invalid time.
• Deprecated the -[FxImageTile openGLTextureForContext:] method.

Final Cut Camera v1.2 includes the following features and enhancements:

• Quickly switch to the 48 mm telephoto lens to capture the perfect shot. (Requires iPhone 14 Pro or later.)
• Play back your Log videos in SDR or HDR with the vibrancy of the original scene by applying the Apple Log LUT. (Requires iPhone 15 Pro or later.)
• Record videos in Spatial Audio for even more realistic and immersive sound. (Requires iPhone 16.)
• Capture in 50 fps for additional editing flexibility and delivery options.

Improvements and bug fixes:

• Improves reliability when recording in 4K 120 fps or 4K 100 fps.
• Fixes an issue that caused preview latency when recording in 4K 60 fps.
• Improves the reliability of HDR overexposure indicators.
• Addresses an issue that caused the thumbnail image to sometimes not appear or update when recording with an external drive.
• Fixes an issue that caused the Continuous Zoom slider to be hidden after switching to a different lens.
• Addresses an issue that caused focus peaking indicators to sometimes appear on the edge of the frame.
• Fixes an issue that prevented automatic exposure from resetting to zero after switching from manual exposure.
• Addresses an issue that caused the green dot indicator to sometimes appear incorrectly while in the media browser.
• Improves reliability with media transfers to Final Cut Pro for iPad.
• Improves reliability when changing device orientation.
• Includes stability and performance improvements.

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