Created by Augusto de Fraga. Edited by Marcos Castiel (Ep's 1, 2, 5 & 7) and Pedro Ribeiro (Ep's 3, 4 & 6).

You can read the full case study.

Edited by Knut Hake.

FCPXMLs were sent to DaVinci Resolve for colour grading and X2Pro was used to send AAFs to ProTools for mixing. The sound designer was very impressed with the neatness of the timeline.

Here's a collection of some of the great Final Cut Pro (for iPad) YouTube videos:

• Ripple Training - Final Cut Pro for iPad Getting Started (39mins)
• iJustine - Final Cut Pro on iPad Review - Forget everything you know about editing (13mins)
• Dylan Bates - The Complete Guide to Final Cut Pro on iPad (53mins)
• Tyler Stalman - Final Cut Pro for iPad: Guide & Review (16mins)
• PetaPixel - Final Cut Pro for iPad Review: It FINALLY Happened! (12mins)
• Six Colors - Hands on with Final Cut Pro for iPad (32mins)
• The Verge - Final Cut Pro for iPad review: still rendering (10mins)

Chris at LateNite has also announced Transfer Toolbox on Twitter, allowing you to convert Final Cut Pro (for Mac) libraries into Final Cut Pro (for iPad) projects.

He also discovered that Final Cut Pro (for iPad) can actually read files from an external SSD.

• FCPXML v1.11 doesn't support Soundtracks (May 28, 2023)
• Audio Presets don't migrate from earlier versions to v10.6.6 (May 27, 2023)

We've reported them to Apple, and will keep track of them in our Bug Tracker.

Only install Color Finale 2.6.6 after updating to Final Cut Pro 10.6.6. The plugin won’t work otherwise.

If you are on Color Finale 2.6.5, update by launching ColorFinale.app and navigating to ColorFinale > Check For Updates… in the menu bar.

You can learn more on their website.

• BRAW Toolbox is now 79.99 in your local currency (i.e. AUD79.99, USD79.99, CAD79.99).
• Marker Toolbox is now 19.99 in your local currency (i.e. AUD19.99, USD19.99, CAD19.99).
• Gyroflow Toolbox is now 4.99 in your local currency (i.e. AUD4.99, USD4.99, CAD4.99).

Their upcoming apps will have the same pricing model:

• Recall Toolbox is now 29.99 in your local currency (i.e. AUD29.99, USD29.99, CAD29.99).
• Transfer Toolbox is now 4.99 in your local currency (i.e. AUD4.99, USD4.99, CAD4.99).

However, for example, if your country doesn't have an equivalent of 4.99 (i.e. Rp89,000 in Indonesia), it will default to a USD$4.99 equivalent.

Transfer Toolbox is currently waiting for approval on the Mac App Store, but you can download from TestFlight.

Recall Toolbox is currently on TestFlight, and will hopefully be submitted to the Mac App Store by the end of this week for review.

We're still working on the formatting - they're currently a bit "buggy" in terms of automatically resizing, and sometimes require a hard page reset to appear properly. We're investigating a proper fix - stay tuned.

Recall Toolbox is a Final Cut Pro Workflow Extension that acts as a Shared Pasteboard.

Anything that you can copy and paste in Final Cut Pro, Recall Toolbox can store.

They've also released a nice new package called mProduct.

AudioSwift for macOS transforms your trackpad into a set of MIDI tools like sliders, triggers, XY pads, mixing controllers and MPE. With support for MacBooks and Magic Trackpads, the app runs in the top menu bar waiting to be called. Tap the trackpad with a four fingers tap gesture to activate and a console window appears showing the current controller mode. You can then start sending MIDI with simple touch gestures and when you finish, press the Esc key to turn AudioSwift off. It’s the perfect compact MIDI controller for the mobile or desktop producer.

AudioSwift works great in companion with CommandPost via MIDI for controlling Final Cut Pro.

Spring is in the air, and so are the savings!

Here's what's on offer:

Colourlab Ai Studio Annual License: Get a whopping 50% off on their Colourlab Ai Studio Annual License. This brings the cost of Colourlab Ai, Look Designer Plugin, and Grainlab Plugin down to just $249. That's less than the cost of a single plugin! Considering the combined value of all three applications is over $1000, this is a massive saving. Use the code springstudio50 to take advantage of this offer. Look Designer Perpetual Licenses: Colourlab Ai is offering a 30% discount on their Look Designer Perpetual Licenses. This means you can own Look Designer forever for just $349. Look Designer 3.0 for Davinci and Premiere runs on both Mac and PC and is the perfect companion for creating X01 files, Look Design, Look Testing, EL Zones, and Full Color Management. Use the code springlook30 to avail this offer.

Buy Colourlab Ai Studio.

Buy Look Designer Perpetual.

This is very exciting for Final Cut Pro users - as Alteon is very committed to the Final Cut Pro ecosystem!

Learn more about Alteon.

The only change according the release notes is:

• Fixes an issue where the validation of third-party Audio Unit Extensions prevented Final Cut Pro for iPad from opening.

You can find the release note on FCP Cafe. We'll update that page if we find anything undocumented.

Learn more at Transfer Toolbox.

It's a 6 x 45min mystery series cut in Final Cut Pro, based on a novel by Melanie Raabe.

The journalist Norah (Deleila Piasko / Transatlantic) moves from Berlin to Vienna to start a new life and job at a young & arty magazine. As soon as she arrives, a homeless woman foretells her that she will kill a man named Arthur Grimm six weeks later. Norah tries to ignore the incident - until strange things happen.

Trailer:

You can watch the trailer for Der Schatten.

Commentary Head of Editing:

Florian Duffe writes:

Editing a TV show in Final Cut is a charm if you set it up right. Especially with the new MacStudio and fast SSDs we could fly through the tons of footage. Postlab provides the necessary tools to collaborate between different workstations. Since we had a lot of Flashbacks, the structure of FCP - editing every Scene in a Compound Clip - made it really easy to 'steal' edits of another episode from our fellow editors.

I will follow up with a decent case study on this site in a few days. Stay tuned.

Fun Stats:

• 3 Film Editors (Florian Duffe, Silke Botsch & Martin Wunschick)
• 1 Assistant Editor
• 174 shifts of editing
• 89 hours of footage
• 3946 Video Clips
• 3500 Audio Clips

Tools Used:

• Sync-N-Link - creating Sync Clips with Metadata
• CommandPost - using Titles to Keywords for line-by-lines
• Notion - to build a digital bulletin board, one scene one card
• PostLab - collaborating in 6 libraries on 4 workstations in 3 cities
• X2Pro - send Audio to Soundpost
• Producers Best Friend - creating lists (ADR, VFX, Music, DI, Motion Design)

Screenshots:

Picture Lock Timelines of all 6 Episodes

Poster:

Learn more about Transcriber at Ulti.media.

I proposed creating avid.cafe and premiere.cafe/premierepro.cafe on some big Facebook Communities and my posts were pretty quickly removed.

Meanwhile, the Final Cut Pro community has fully embraced my crazy spur-of-the-moment idea, and gone full steam ahead - love it!

Thanks team!

Chris @ LateNite

We've been using mocha Pro for years, and love it dearly - so are always excited by what BorisFX have in-store!

They just need to HURRY UP and give us native mocha Pro support within Final Cut Pro! In the meantime, this is great...

BCC+ Looks Includes:

• 80 drag-and-drop presets
• Award-Winning Mocha tracking through Pixel Chooser: Quickly mask & isolate effects
• Fully customizable: Easily adjust hue-sat, brightness, contrast, grain, and more
• 8mm film stock, bleach by-pass, and day for night looks
• Diffusion, color gradients, and lighting gels
• Custom FX Editor: Browse and apply presets in seconds

!button text="Visit Website" target="blank" variant="info"

Get all of their plugins in an easy to install package with the Mega Bundle. I've just pressed the buy button!

!button text="Visit Website" target="blank" variant="info"

Audio Design Desk is to audio software what Pro Tools was to the tape machine. It’s an entirely new breed of Digital Audio Workstation that artists can play like an instrument, revolutionizing the process of adding music and sound effects to picture and cutting down what can typically be a full day project to just a few minutes. It comes bundled with 75,000 sounds embedded with patent-pending Sonic Intelligence™, using AI-assisted content creation tools to enable filmmakers, sound designers, composers, and creators to produce cinema-quality compositions at the speed of thought, giving them a level of creative control that is unmatched by any other software.

Learn more about Audio Design Desk.

Learn more about Relink BRAW Clips.

You can buy BRAW Toolbox.

Here's a 17 big & little things at WWDC23.

Iain Anderson has also written Apple Vision Pro revealed at WWDC over at ProVideo Coalition.

Below are some of the relevant highlights for Final Cut Pro editors.

First up, the new Mac Pro:

Learn more about the new MacPro.

There's the new M2 Ultra.

Learn more about the M2 Ultra.

There's the new 15-inch MacBook Air:

Learn more about the new 15-inch MacBook Air.

There's the new macOS Sonoma:

Learn more about macOS Sonoma.

There's the new Vision Pro.

It's USD$3499 and "available early next year in the U.S".

DaVinci Resolve will run on Vision Pro out-of-the-box. No word yet on Final Cut Pro support.

Learn more about Vision Pro.

You can watch the entire WWDC Keynote.

NeoFinder 8.4.1 is another free update for all customers with a NeoFinder 8.x license.

NeoFinder 8.x is a paid upgrade for NeoFinder 6.x, NeoFinder 7.x, and CDFinder customers.

Learn more about NeoFinder.

Learn more at atomos.

The movie depicts Deaf actor Troy Kotsur's journey to winning an Oscar and his father's inspiring influence on him, despite a tragic accident.

Troy previously won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Apple TV’s CODA.

Josh Meyers, the film’s editor, had previously presented this project as a work in progress as part of his Keynote Presentation at the 2022 FCPX Summit in Austin, Texas.

Josh and the team at Emergent Order Foundation has truly enjoyed collaborating with Troy and hope people can come out to support the film if you’re in town!

Screening:

To My Father will be screening 4 times at the festival as part of the Shorts program.

Thursday June 8th @ 8:15pm
Friday June 9th @ 2:30pm
Wednesday June 14th @ 6:00pm
Saturday June 17th @ 3:30pm

There's more information on the Tribeca Schedule and Tickets Page.

It is also available for streaming with the Tribeca At Home pass.

Credits:

Director: Sean Schiavolin
Producers: John Papola, Troy Kotsur, Justin Bergeron
Screenwriter: Sean Schiavolin
Cinematographer: Brody Carmichael
Editor: Josh Meyers
Composer: Hanan Townshend
Associate Producer: Jessi Bennett

Trailer:

...editing in Final Cut Pro in AR will be available for launch 👀 editing with eyes and gestures. We freaking finally get to edit minority report styles.

You can read more over at AppleInsider.

Michael Kammes has also written a great article on Empowering Creatives: The Future of Creativity and Collaboration in the M&E Industry.

This will allow us to add better documentation more quickly - especially developer documentation. We'll also release a new CommandPost update within the next few days, so stay tuned!

This framework provides a means for developers to create format readers and video decoders for media that the system doesn’t natively support.

This means that for macOS Sonoma, we'll be able to add native Blackmagic BRAW support directly to macOS!

We intend to add this as a feature to BRAW Toolbox for the public release of macOS Sonoma, so stay tuned!

Learn more about Premium VFX.

Learn more about the Introducing Final Cut Pro for iPad course.

If you haven't already checked out the Cut on Final Cut Pro page, it's worth a visit!

Learn more about evrExpanse

Here's another sneak peak - explaining how to import subtitles into existing sessions:

• “Clearly predatory”: Western Digital sparks panic, anger for age-shaming HDDs

He has also designed a new logo/icon for Resolve Cafe, which is equally amazing.

Thanks to the help and support of the awesome Final Cut Pro team, we finally have a workaround to the Synchronised Clips bug.

Previously, Synchronised Clips could cause random glitches during playback, and produce unexpected results in some, but not all, cases.

As a result, in BRAW Toolbox v1.1.1 we made Create Multicam Clips the default option as a workaround to this issue.

We now know this was actually due to the fact that we're applying the BRAW Toolbox effect to a Custom Solids Generator.

Whilst Final Cut Pro worked correctly when scrubbing and skimming a clip, during playback, because the Custom generator normally doesn't change its output (i.e. it's always a static colour), Final Cut Pro was using a cached frame, rather than rendering a new frame, which caused the glitches.

Essentially, it's very unusual for an Effect to change the output of a Generator, so we were getting unpredictable results.

We now workaround this issue by simply applying keyframes to the Custom Solid, so that Final Cut Pro always renders the frames - simple, but effective.

To fix Synchronized Clips created in earlier versions of BRAW Toolbox, we've added a Repair Synchronized Clips (prior to v1.1.3) Toolbox, which will add keyframes to all your Generators within the BRAW Toolbox Clip.

HUGE thank you to Tangier Clarke for supplying a reproducible library to help us solve this annoying bug.

We'll leave Create Multicam Clips on by default, however you will no longer get a warning message when you toggle this preference.

Learn more about Continuum FCP Units.

A few new features, and a bunch of bug fixes, especially for those on macOS Ventura.

Learn more and download from CommandPost.

The author, Mike Seymour, is one of the smartest and best educators in the entire film industry, period.

Read Apple M2 Studio Learns Nuke Machine Learning.

There's lots of great training for filmmakers and video editors.

Jonny Elwyn has some great summaries here:

• Master Filmmakers on the Craft of Film Editing
• Masterclass All-Access Pass Reviewed

Here's the trailer:

It has added support for Fujifilm X-S20 Blackmagic RAW clips, and the Blackmagic RAW SDK has been updated from v3.1 to v3.2.

You can download and learn more from BRAW Toolbox.

You can read the case study of Der Schatten.

Here's the trailer:

You can learn more at Dylan Bates's site.

Transfer Toolbox allows you to convert Final Cut Pro (for Mac) Libraries into Final Cut Pro (for iPad) Projects.

You can now easily get from your Desktop to your iPad! Simply drag your existing Final Cut Pro library into the application's drop zone.

Learn more and download Transfer Toolbox for free.

The Transfer Toolbox icon was designed by Matthew Skiles.

It explains why he jumped from Final Cut Pro to DaVinci Resolve for editing, from a sound designers perspective.

For context, for the stuff LateNite does Final Cut Pro is still king, for the simple fact that it’s the most fun and most creative tool to edit with.

DaVinci Resolve is INSANELY powerful, and Blackmagic is a much more friendly company to work with than Apple.

However, I personally feel like I'm an engineer when using Resolve, whereas in Final Cut Pro I feel like an artist.

You can do amazing things in both tools - but Final Cut Pro feels like the better instrument for creative flow.

You can read more over at Richard Taylor's website.

Philip Hodgetts will also be making an announcement on Richard's Live Stream later today:

On the anniversary of the release of Apple’s Final Cut Pro X, Lumberjack System has released their Text Based Editing app as a one-off purchase in the Mac App Store.

The original and most complete Text Based Editing solution for Final Cut Pro has long been available as part of the Lumberjack System Membership. This version makes Builder NLE more easily found, and more accessible to Final Cut Pro users who want a complete Text Based Editing environment for Final Cut Pro.

Builder NLE in the Mac App Store is the same app that is available through the membership, but without access to the wider Lumberjack live logging tools. It continues to include unlimited free transcription in 16 languages, closed caption support on Stories, unlimited stories, a comprehensive Keyword Manager, and extremely powerful search and filter tools to get you to your stories faster.

Learn more about Lumberjack Builder.

Download Builder NLE from the Mac App Store

• The Workflow Extension now gracefully aborts (instead of crashing), and shows an error message if a BRAW clip is corrupt, and the metadata can't be read. Thanks for reporting Dominik Radecki!

You can learn more from BRAW Toolbox.

BRAW Toolbox v1.2.2 (54) is out now, with some internal improvements:

• We've added a bunch of additional checks to the FxPlug4 Renderer, to ensure that all objects received from the Blackmagic RAW SDK are valid and correct to avoid any potential crashes due to referencing null pointers. Thanks for reporting Dominik Radecki! Big thanks to the Blackmagic RAW team and Final Cut Pro team for all their help and support!

You can learn more from BRAW Toolbox.

Happy to report that 2 major bugs are fixed in MacOS 14 Sonoma beta 2. XAVC bug is gone (with a few preliminary notes) and qnap qfinder pro is working (for those that edit from NAS)

• Allows you to apply Markers to Clips from Final Cut Pro
• Adds Resolve EDL Export
• Adds support for Frame.io's FIOJSON files

Learn more about Marker Toolbox.

It's used to rename MXF files generated by Avid Media Composer to match the Package Name in their metadata.

The script can process a single file or a folder containing multiple MXF files.

This is useful if you want to move native Avid MXF files from Avid Media Composer to Final Cut Pro.

You can download and learn more on GitHub.

New Features:

• Added the ability to export Avid Media Composer Marker Text files. Thanks for suggesting Scott Simmons!
• Added support for importing the Timecode+ TSV format. Thanks for suggesting pulpjedi!

Improvements:

• Various improvements to the user interface. Marker Toolbox now looks a lot nicer!
• We moved the OpenAI API key into the Settings panel, and added a "Validate" button so that you can check that the API key is valid.
• All settings are now saved between the main application and the Final Cut Pro Workflow Extension, meaning that if you change a setting in the Workflow Extension, it will also change in the main application and vice versa.

Learn more about Marker Toolbox.

You can watch the series here:

We've added actions to control all the parameters for a Colourlab Ai Effect in the Final Cut Pro Video Inspector. Enjoy!

See the Color Finale store.

You can watch on YouTube here:

Without a doubt iZotope RX10 is the very best audio recovery tool on the market - it can do magical things.

Learn more at Ulti.Media Converter.

You can learn more and purchase at FxFactory.

Get a 25% discount when you use the code: BADASSFAM25

Learn more Arthur Moore's store

It has added support for Panasonic Lumix GH6 Blackmagic RAW clips.

You can learn more from BRAW Toolbox.

It has added support for the latest Loupedeck CT hardware. Thanks for reporting Marshall Fife!

Learn more from CommandPost.

You can download it as a PDF.

PetaPixel also has an article that explains it in more detail.

There's lots of feature improvements and bug fixes. See the full list of changes.

Learn more about PostSync.

• Addresses an issue where audio effects would not be reset during playback.
• Fixes an issue where an Audio Units effect could have incorrect values when importing using FCPXML.
• Improves waveform redrawing on expanded audio components when adjusting volume with the Touch Bar.
• Resolves an issue where the Voice Isolation Amount slider would snap to 0% when trying to set a value less than 7%.
• Improves reliability when retiming a clip with the Scene Removal Mask applied.
• Fixes an issue where the Control Range setting in the Color Adjustments effect would be incorrectly set to SDR when importing using FCPXML.

Interestingly, this update requires a database update, so there must be some bigger changes under the hood.

Final Cut Pro for iPad 1.1 is out now with the following bug fixes and enhancements:

• Turn snapping on or off using the keyboard shortcut N.
• Move the playhead backward or forward 10 frames using the keyboard shortcuts Shift-Left Arrow and Shift-Right Arrow.
• Show info for browser clips using the keyboard shortcut Control-I.
• Turn skimming on or off using the keyboard shortcut S.
• Turn audio skimming on or off using the keyboard shortcut Shift-S.
• Split and switch multicam clip angles using the keyboard shortcuts 1, 2, 3, and 4.
• Show or hide the jog wheel using the keyboard shortcut Control-Shift-W; expand or collapse it using Control-W.
• Switch the jog wheel between playhead mode and nudge mode using the keyboard shortcut Shift-W.
• Resolves an issue with custom fonts not appearing in the inspector.
• Improves reliability and performance when dragging a clip from the browser to the timeline.
• Addresses an issue with keyboard shortcuts not working as expected in the content browser.
• Improves visual feedback when adding effects and transitions to timeline clips in Position mode.
• Fixes an issue where importing media on a device with no remaining storage would cause Final Cut Pro for iPad to quit unexpectedly.
• Improves reliability when retiming a clip with Scene Removal Mask applied.
• Resolves an issue where importing clips with the same name would generate blank clip thumbnails.
• Improves reliability and performance when using soundtracks and dynamic titles.
• Addresses an issue where copying and pasting transform settings would unexpectedly paste clip speed.
• Improves visual feedback and reliability when rating and adding keywords to clips while filtering clips in the browser.
• Fixes an issue where resetting audio settings would unexpectedly reset clip speed.
• Resolves an issue with the appearance of onscreen controls for cropping and shape masks.
• Addresses an issue where clip height adjustments would not update audio-only clips in connected storylines.
• Fixes an issue where the Keywords window would open offscreen with the timeline minimized.
• Resolves an issue where disabled multicam audio angles would appear in the audio component list in the inspector.

Importantly, Final Cut Pro 10.6.7 on Mac uses a newer Library format than Final Cut Pro 1.1 on iPad. This means that if you want to use Transfer Toolbox to go from Mac to iPad, you should keep using Final Cut Pro 10.6.6.

Compressor 4.6.5 is out now with the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Changed the Settings and Locations sidebar to now be resizable when the Inspector is open.
• Improves reliability when processing 4:2:2-based H.264 media on Mac computers with Apple silicon.
• Addresses an issue where the color space of a Photo-JPEG source was incorrect when Color space was set to Automatic.
• Fixes an issue where an exported IMF supplemental package was one frame shorter than the original package.

Motion 5.6.5 is out now with the following bug fixes:

• Improves stability with FxPlug 4 plug-ins.
• Improves stability when dragging a group that contains an FxPlug plug-in to the Favorites folder.
• Improves performance when using the Sequence Text behavior with Anchor Point set to Line (in the Layout pane of the Text Inspector).

We're excited to test it out, and see if there's other undocumented fixes and improvements.

Scott Simmons has also written his thoughts on the acquisition over at ProVideo Coalition.

This is a fresh job (i.e. not something migrated from 10.6.6), and it has a LOT of third-party Motion Templates, effects, random still images, random videos in a variety of formats, etc.

Unfortunately, whilst I was able to successfully edit, and export without too many dramas, 10.6.7 definitely seems more buggy and unreliable than 10.6.6.

I had to manually quit and restart Final Cut Pro quite a few times throughout the day because the Viewer was just black. Nothing I could do would bring it back to life, apart from a restart.

This is consistent with other professional long-form editors I've chatted to.

After one of the restarts, after applying an cut to an audio clip, and adding a transition, suddenly the Viewer went "strobing" - again, requiring another manual restart.

I haven't had any crashes, but it's definitely got... issues.

One major confirmed bug is that Final Cut Pro 10.6.7 doesn't properly respect 0% opacity in Motion Templates. For example, if you apply the Placeholder Generator, it will ALWAYS show the notes:

This could be a deal breaker if you're using a Motion Template that uses this technique to hide things. Luckily none of the Motion Templates I used today had any issues.

It's also worth nothing that Final Cut Pro 10.6.7 (for Mac) uses a newer Library format than Final Cut Pro 1.1 (for iPad).

This means that if you want to use Transfer Toolbox to go from Mac to iPad, you should keep using Final Cut Pro 10.6.6 (for Mac).

My suggestion would be to stick with Final Cut Pro 10.6.6 for now, and wait for another bug fix in a few weeks time.

Chris @ LateNite

Builder is a Text Based Editing app that’s tightly integrated with, and complements, Final Cut Pro. Builder NLE is a fully featured Text Based Editor that works with Final Cut Pro.

Builder includes:

• Unlimited free transcription in 14 languages
• Full keywording support (to and from Final Cut Pro)
• A unique Keyword Manager
• Superb search and filtering tools
• Unlimited stores
• Built-in synthetic voiceover
• Multiple outputs including sending to Final Cut Pro for finishing

Builder is the ultimate solution for text-based video editing for productions that rely heavily on transcripts.

Come for the free transcripts, and write great stories with our superior workflows!

Builder is designed to write stories from multiple transcripts using transcripts to edit text and video at the same time.

Builder is a hybrid of word processor and video editor combined! It's faster for transcript-based workflows than in Final Cut Pro.

Text and video are always linked so you can go from scanning text to observing nuance, instantly, anywhere in Builder.

Learn more about Builder NLE 2.

You can buy Builder NLE 2 on the Mac App Store.

Quickly add dreamy lens flares to your #FCP projects — only $39!

😎 300+ drag & drop presets 😎 Mocha tracking 😎 Create your own flares 😎 Beat Reactor + more

You can learn more and purchase at FxFactory.

The 2023 FCP Summit will take place in Cupertino in November.

We will be announcing dates, venue and the program in about a week.

The Summit will feature a full day at Apple followed by 2 day of breakout sessions and a mini expo at a hotel venue close by.

Courtesy Apple, the cost of Full Pass will only be USD$299 for the entire 3 days.

Exciting times!

Kino is an AI assistant for tracking footage metadata and organizing your media assets.

Automatically index your footage and search your library with natural language. No cloud required.

Currently it only exports to Adobe Premiere, however Final Cut Pro support is on the roadmap.

We've been testing it out, and it's very handy. It uses everyone's favourite whisper.cpp, and Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) under the hood.

You can watch a demonstration here:

Learn more about Kino.

The beta program is entirely free for you to use and experiment with. As SoundGen matures, the developers will be integrating it directly into Audio Design Desk.

Their goal is to give their users access to an even broader collection of sounds on demand, right within the DAW.

The alpha version can only do a maximum of 30 seconds. Depending on the prompt, sometimes it can found great, other times it's very computer generated. It'll definitely improve dramatically over time!

You can sign up.

Here's also a very early sneak peak of Audio Design Desk 2.0:

Pull the right strings and bring your assets to life with organic movement!

Get it now at 30% OFF on the biggest storewide sale of the year!

The release notes only have one line:

Fixes an issue where video could freeze in the viewer.

However, based on early reports, this release seems to fix the various crashes that users were reporting too, in addition to the Viewer sometimes going black or strobing.

If you're currently using Final Cut Pro 10.6.6 or earlier we recommend sticking with that for the time being.

However, if you're using Final Cut Pro 10.6.7 we recommend updating.

Please make sure you make a backup of your Final Cut Pro application by creating a ZIP file of it, before updating. You should also manually backup any libraries before updating.

You can learn more about the issues in Final Cut Pro 10.6.7.

Most of their apps will be at super discount from the 1st to 15th of August.

You can watch on YouTube:

I've dramatically improved the user interface to make it much easier, faster and more powerful.

You can now just drag & drop clips from the Final Cut Pro Browser to the Effects Inspector, including BRAW Toolbox clips!

Learn more and buy Gyroflow Toolbox on the Mac App Store.

It's been written by the amazing Iain Anderson - an author, editor, director, videographer, programmer, animator and educator based in Brisbane, Australia. An Apple Certified Trainer who regularly presents at conferences and user group meetings, Iain is a Lead Trainer for macProVideo.com, and creates educational video content for CoreMelt and many other organizations.

You can buy on Amazon.

This release includes two bug fixes:

• Fixed an issue where the Gyroflow Toolbox output could be incorrectly clipped when in a HDR project. Thanks for reporting Tumist! Thanks to AdrianEddy for fixing the issue in Gyroflow Core!
• Fixed an issue where a Gyroflow Project could fail to reload correctly after restarting Final Cut Pro due to FxPlug4 incorrectly HTML decoding the string value. We solve this by now base64 encoding the Gyroflow Project in FxPlug4.

Thanks to everyone who has purchased, downloaded and tested the latest Gyroflow Toolbox updates! The response has been awesome!

Learn more and buy Gyroflow Toolbox on the Mac App Store.

You can read the over eight-thousand-word case study on the feature film SCHOCK.

As there's no official notification system for when FxPlug and Workflow Extensions SDK are updated, we'll try and keep an eye out and let you know on FCP Cafe when there's an update.

It will take place November 6th to 8th at Apple Park & The Hyatt Regency Santa Clara.

Whether you are a trained professional or just starting your creative career, Apple has the software and tools you need to power your creative work. This unique event is where Apple power users and Final Cut Pro Professionals come together to learn and discuss their craft. We are excited to be back in Cupertino! The FCP Creative Summit features 2 full days of sessions in multiple tracks and a unique day at Apple!

You can visit the official Final Cut Pro Creative Summit website.

This release includes two bug fixes:

• Updated to FxPlug v4.2.7, which offers improved stability and reliability.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a memory leak. Thanks for reporting Денис Глушков!

Thanks to everyone who has purchased, downloaded and tested the latest Gyroflow Toolbox updates! The response has been awesome!

Learn more and buy Gyroflow Toolbox on the Mac App Store.

These are awesome Final Cut Pro plugins personally created by Steve and Mark.

Learn more about Ripple Training Final Cut Pro plugins.

You can follow along with the latest news on the FCP Creative Summit.

There's so many great FxFactory plugins out there. Here's a look at some of the ones we use:

You can learn more here.

We're massive fans of everything MotionVFX do, so we're super keen to find out what they've been building!

It's a free update for existing users.

You can use the FxFactory promo code SUMMER to get 20% off today only!

You can watch a video of the new features below:

You can learn more here.

Interestingly, Scott's using CommandPost to control Avid Media Composer over screen-sharing.

You can read it over at ProVideo Coalition.

You can have a watch here:

You can learn more here.

Fast Collections is a Final Cut Pro Workflow Extension that allows you to quickly create a Smart Collection from a list of Keywords.

When you're working on massive long-form projects, such as feature-length documentaries with hundreds of clips and thousands of keywords, the Final Cut Pro interface can grind to a halt when using the built-in Smart Collection panel.

This simple Workflow Extension allows you to create a new Smart Collection, using a list of supplied keywords within seconds, rather than minutes.

If you have thousands of keywords across many events, it can take a long time to create a new Smart Collection with your preferred keywords directly within Final Cut Pro - but with Fast Collections, it can now take seconds.

!button text="Visit Website" target="blank" variant="info"

Iain Anderson has also written a great blog post over at ProVideo Coalition on How to make animated product mockups using Apple Motion.

You can read it here.

This release includes some improvements for Monogram users, and adds "Animation Amount" actions for some handy MotionVFX titles. Enjoy!

Learn more from CommandPost.

His latest project, OSCar Rectangle, is an FxPlug4 plugin that works in Apple Motion to provide a powerful rectangular on-screen control that can be used and combined with other Apple Motion effects. For example, if you wanted to build a colour correction tool with powerful masking features, you could use OSCar Rectangle to allow your users to draw masks via an on-screen tool in the Apple Motion and Final Cut Pro Viewer.

Whilst OSCar Rectangle has been written in Objective-C using the FxPlug4 API (Apple Motion's Effects API for third party developers) - it's easily accessible within Apple's Motion, just like regular built-in tools, so anyone who's making Motion Templates in Apple Motion can make use of this functionality without knowing any code. Essentially these are tools to make it easier for people to make awesome Motion Templates, which can then be "exposed" in Final Cut Pro.

Luke is currently demonstrating OSCar Rectangle via a series of YouTube videos, with the intention of trying to raise funds to cover a new Mac and Apple Developer Account via this Indiegogo campaign. If he can raise the necessary funds to finish OSCar Rectangle, he will release the software for free, and potentially even open-source.

There are very few FxPlug4 developers in the world, especially in terms of solo indie developers - so it's awesome to see Luke really tackling uncharted territory. These tools could potentially be game-changers to the growing list of Final Cut Pro YouTuber's that are also building their own Motion Templates to sell.

OSCar Rectangle is still very much a work-in-progress, with a beta build hopefully coming in the coming weeks.

You can learn more about OSCar Rectangle and his other Luke’s Got Groups project here.

You can find the Indiegogo project here.

This is just a quick small update with a few new features. Enjoy!

Learn more from CommandPost.

With around 12.47k unique visitors per month, FCP Cafe continues to grow and expand.

HUGE thank you to EVERYONE who's helped make this happen!

Onwards & Upwards!

The Final Cut Pro universe is about to get bigger!

We're very excited to see what they have up their sleeves!

You can sign up to their email newsletter here.

Whilst this isn't strictly Final Cut Pro related - I'm sure it'll be of interest to many of the Final Cut Pro Community - especially those shooting, as well as editing. There's a whole world of possibilities here, for both production and post.

Video Assist allows you to use your iPad as an external monitor and recording device with compatible USB Capture Cards.

You can easily record videos or capture frame grabs from any HDMI Video Source. SDI Video Sources are also supported with specific capture cards.

Video Tools such as Color Correction, Transform, Grid Lines, Center Marks and Aspect Ratio Masks are built-in.

Record Trigger is supported for all ARRI Alexa and Sony Venice Cameras via a custom computer vision model.

Support for RED and Blackmagic Cameras will be coming prior to public launch.

Only yesterday Bradley built RGB & Luminance Histograms into the app and has enabled a clean video output from the iPad. This means you can use your iPad as a recorder and then output a clean video feed of live or playback via a USB-C to HDMI Adaptor or via AirPlay.

To date, the only way to use your iPad as a monitor is via a QTake ScreenPort or the Accsoon SeeMo range.

This app-based approach is super exciting, as it allows people to use off-the-shelf hardware to turn under-utilised USB-C iPads into great displays.

USB Capture Cards range from $20-$250 depending on compatible resolutions, so they are well within reach for most people.

You can watch a short demo of the app in action on YouTube:

Bradley is super lovely and insanely talented, and Video Assist is such a great implementation - you can tell he's had decades of experience in the camera department, as the user interface is so familiar and easy to use.

We've been chatting with Bradley about all the possibilities for hooking up his app to Frame.io and Final Cut Pro for more seamless exchanges of favourites/selects and on-set notes. Exciting times!

If you are curious and want to test it for yourself on a USB-C iPad running iPadOS 17 Beta, you can try the pre-release version via Apple TestFlight here.

Apple’s iPhone Media Event is scheduled for 12th September, and typically new iOS versions go live the day after the event or at the end of that week.

It just contains a couple of bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug where the stabilisation wouldn't load correctly after importing a clip or Gyroflow Project into Final Cut Pro until after you modified a parameter or toggled the Stabilisation Overview. Thanks for reporting JoneyMacaroney and JLPG!
• Fixed a bug where the Gyroflow Toolbox version information at the top of the Final Cut Pro Inspector was incorrect. Thanks for reporting JoneyMacaroney and JLPG!

You can learn more here.

It will be available 22nd November 2023 for a one-time payment of USD$19.99.

You can watch the keynote on YouTube:

You can learn more here.

You can learn more and download a TestFlight build here.

You can learn more here.

You can read here.

The description reads:

In the video, Alex expresses concerns and opinions about Final Cut Pro's development and features, comparing it to other software options like DaVinci Resolve and discussing the need for certain features like automatic ducking and transcription. Alex also encourages viewers, especially editors, to share their thoughts and opinions on the state of Final Cut Pro and Apple's commitment to professional applications. Overall, it's a commentary and opinion piece about Final Cut Pro's evolution and the content creator's personal experiences and concerns with the software.

You can watch on YouTube:

You can join the live stream starting:

• Los Angeles 10 AM PDT on Thursday the 14th of September
• New York 1 PM EDT on Thursday the 14th of September
• London 6 PM BST on Thursday the 14th of September
• Singapore 1 AM SGT on Friday the 15th of September
• Tokyo 2 AM JST on Friday the 15th of September
• Sydney 3 AM AEST on Friday the 15th of September

With USB-C capture cards soon to be supported on iPad, rumours of USB-C iPhone’s, and BMD hiring so many web programmers, maybe IBC will be where BMD really takes on “Camera to Cloud” workflows? I expect more metadata from cameras in BRAW too! Exciting times…

You can learn more here.

When the universe of video editing and AI collide...that's when the magic happens! 🪐✨ Get ready to explore the vast universe of new possibilities and take command of the space in your scenes with the power of AI! 🚀 Revolutionize your workflow with intelligent tools! 🦾 Get ready to #CreateFurther with MotionVFX. Sign up to be the first to know 👉🏻

You can learn more here.

It includes:

• Support FCPXML v1.11 and fcpxmld files.
• Fixed when edit note tag export FCPXML.
• Improved more stability and reliability on export fcpxml.

You can learn more here.

It has the following improvements:

• Added support for Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K.
• Added support for Fujifilm GFX100 II Blackmagic RAW clips.
• Updated from Blackmagic RAW SDK v3.3 to v3.4.

You can learn more here.

These updates drop support for macOS Monterey - only macOS Ventura and Sonoma are now supported, which is disappointing, but not surprising.

Unfortunately we've already had reports from FxFactory that the Final Cut Pro 10.6.9 update has at least one serious bug.

FxFactory writes:

Final Cut Pro 10.6.9 is now available on the Mac App Store. This version breaks all FxFactory products that perform object tracking or face recognition through the Title layer.

Regrettably this constitutes the entirety of our catalog featuring object tracking or face detection, since developers and users alike have come to favor the Title layer for its flexibility.

Because of the large number of products affected, we recommend that you do not apply this update.

Read more about this bug here.

Sadly, Apple doesn't provide beta releases to most third party developers, so it's a mad scramble to test and review updates once they're made public.

We're currently in the process of testing and reviewing all the updates, and will post more on FCP Cafe as new things come to light.

You can find our Update Recommendations here.

If you run into any issues, make sure you report them in our Bug Tracker.

Final Cut Pro 10.6.9 includes the following enhancements:

• Take advantage of the flexibility and dynamic range of log-encoded video shot on iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
• Use new third-party log profiles to enhance the look of footage shot on popular cameras from Fujifilm, DJI, and ARRI.
• Adds support for Cinematic video recorded with iPhone on iOS 17.

Improvements and bug fixes:

• Fixes an issue that could cause Motion templates to not respond to Opacity parameter adjustments.
• Fixes an issue that could cause duplicating a project to result in the original project opening in the timeline.
• Fixes an issue that caused some Canon 4K 24fps media to not be recognized properly.
• Fixes an issue that could cause the app to stop responding when the Share menu was opened.
• Fixes an issue where a background render would sometimes not complete when stabilization or rolling shutter were selected in the inspector.

Motion 5.6.6 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Adds support for log-encoded video recorded with iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
• Adds support for Cinematic video recorded with iPhone on iOS 17.
• Improves performance when using the Align behavior.
• Fixes an issue where Motion could hang when playing back 3D titles at high quality.

Compressor 4.6.6 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Adds support for log-encoded video recorded with iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
• Fixes an issue where the source/output comparison viewer would not reflect the camera log selection.
• Fixes an issue where Reveal in Finder was not available for clips with modified audio settings.
• Fixes an issue where luminance levels could be incorrect when Job inspector color space and Output color space were set to Rec. 709.
• Fixes an issue where enabling additional Compressor instances would result in the elapsed time of a batch encode to not appear in the Completed tab.

Final Cut Pro for iPad 1.2 includes the following enhancements:

• Take advantage of the flexibility and dynamic range of log-encoded video shot on iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
• Enhance the look of footage shot on popular Fujifilm, DJI, and ARRI cameras using new log profiles.
• 25 new soundtracks that dynamically adjust to fit the length of your project.
• Enable and disable clips to quickly compare your edit with and without them.
• Easily select and reposition keyframes using touch or Apple Pencil.
• Pinch to quickly resize clips in the browser.
• Adds support for Cinematic video recorded with iPhone on iOS 17.

New keyboard shortcuts:

• Enable and disable clips: V
• Import media from Photos: Command-I
• Import media from Files: Shift-Command-I
• Export your project: Command-E
• Unrate browser clips: U

Improvements and bug fixes:

• Tapping a keyworded, favorited, or rejected range in the filmstrip with Apple Pencil selects the range.
• Replacing a clip in the timeline preserves the duration of the source clip.
• Fixes an issue with trimming clips during volume keyframing.
• Fixes an issue that caused the Social Platforms export preset to default to SDR.
• Fixes an issue that caused the browser filmstrip to not respect the Skimmer Playhead setting.
• Fixes an issue that caused dragging a browser clip to result in scrolling.
• Fixes an issue that caused items in the content browser and search results to not appear in alphabetical order.
• Fixes an issue with keyframing the volume of a multicam clip with a single audio channel.
• Fixes an issue with the fader position not being reset when a volume adjustment was undone.
• Fixes an issue that caused the Done button to not appear in Live Drawing when using Larger Text and Display Zoom.
• Fixes an issue that caused browser clip name changes to not be saved unless the Done button was tapped.
• Improves reliability when resetting manual focus points for videos shot in Cinematic mode.
• Improves reliability when importing iMovie for iOS projects.
• Includes stability and performance improvements.

At this stage, there's been no update to the Workflow Extensions SDK (currently at v1.0.2, released in January).

The FxPlug 4.2.8 SDK includes the following:

• Removal of unsupported FxPlug 3 properties from the FxPlug framework
• Support for GPU and backwards analysis in the FxBrightnessAnalysis example
• Plug-ins built with newer SDKs now handle canceling of analysis without crashing in older hosts.
• The template and example properties have been updated to conform to the removal of some FxPlug 3 properties. This includes the kFxPropertyKey_UsesRationalTime and kFxPropertyKey_IsThreadSafe properties.
• Fixed an issue when an FxPlug 4 plug-in with custom UI displayed in the inspector crashed, or was terminated by the OS. It will now redraw its custom controls immediately rather than waiting until the next communication with the plug-in.
• Fixed an issue with a potential crash when using the FxColorGamutAPI.
• Analysis no longer returns frames with a 1-pixel border around them.

You can read it here.

CoreMelt ShotAnvil is a powerhouse plugin combining tracked paint, masks and graphics inserts together with one click AI person keying, all in a single plugin.

If you own any previous CoreMelt product with Mocha tracking, you can get 50% off the purchase price.

Owners of the CoreMelt Detonators bundle will also get ShotAnvil for free - a license upgrade will get sent to you automatically.

Features include:

• Powerful compositing in one plugin with multiple different tracks applied
• AI one click person masking
• Auto applying of effects only to people, eg night vision
• Beauty skin smoothing using AI person detection
• Integrated tracked paint including animated paint strokes
• Advanced edge feather controls for masking
• Combine paint, masks, tracking and graphic inserts in one plugin
• Tracked warping with multiple brushes
• AI Inpainting for removing wires, cables, touch-ups

There is a free two week trial available, video tutorials and online documentation.

You can learn more on the CoreMelt website here.

It is compatible with macOS Sonoma and Ventura.

You can learn more here.

This simple workflow extension solves a problem the developers have every time they make a video for YouTube, collecting the names of all the music tracks they used so they can put them in the credits and in the description.

Drag your project onto the Music Reporter window and the Workflow Extension will list all of the clip names of the clips who were set to the Music role.

To join the Music Reporter beta email: wes@automaticduck.com

It features Jenn Jager, Christopher Lawley and Steve Martin, and there will be lots of awesome giveaways during the stream.

You can watch on YouTube here:

You can learn more about the FCP Creative Summit here.

When you're working on massive long-form projects, such as feature-length documentaries with hundreds of clips and thousands of keywords, the Final Cut Pro interface can grind to a halt when using the built-in Smart Collection panel.

This simple Workflow Extension allows you to create a new Smart Collection, using a list of supplied keywords within seconds, rather than minutes.

This was originally intended to be a very niche application, primarily used by long-form documentary editors.

However, as requested by Vigneswaran Rajkumar, we've added the ability to Generate a list of sequential numbers, for example, Scene 01, Scene 02, Scene 03, etc.

This is very handy for long-form projects, so to make the application more accessible, we're also reduced the price to a one-time payment of USD$9.99 on the Mac App Store.

You can learn more here.

Picture This allows you to harnesses the power of Generative AI to create unlimited, copyright free images from a Final Cut Pro Project right on your Mac, using the latest version of Stable Diffusion.

To quote the App Store:

Create stunning AI text-to-image artwork from Markers in your Final Cut Pro Projects or Premiere Pro Sequences. Picture This… takes the text-to-image prompts from Markers in a Project or Sequence and generates image variations for each prompt, and returns these images to Final Cut Pro as a new Project with Auditions, or to higher tracks in a Premiere Pro Sequence, for easy comparison.

Using the latest version of Stable Diffusion, Picture This… provides background batch processing of images and the convenience of Auditions in your Final Cut Pro Projects.

Convenient Create your prompts where you will use them: in red Markers in your timeline.

Processes as a Batch in the Background Batch processing allows to you use your time productively while Picture This… — your “art department” — does it’s AI magic. Important: Do not continue working on that timeline. Any work you do on your edit will not be included in the results returned from Picture This…

Aligned in your Edit New images display right where you need them in your timeline.

Other Features Use multiple passes to hone in on the image you need. Optionally, fine tune the prompt each time. Images are always free, whether you generate one or 1000. Processing happens on your local Mac, never in the cloud.

Images cannot be copyright individually, but do not limit the copyright on the finished project.

How it Works In Final Cut Pro enter your image description (text-to-image prompt) in a To-Do Marker where you want the image to start. Or in Premiere Pro, add a red Sequence Marker with a prompt. Images continue to the next Marker or to the end of the underlying clip. Export and Import XML, or drag a Project (FCP only) to Picture This…. Choose your settings and click Start to generate images. After processing the Project is returned to Final Cut Pro with Auditions, and each Audition contains the alternative images for each prompt. Or the Sequence is ready to import to Premiere Pro, with the generated images stacked on Video Tracks above your existing edit. There will be on track for each alternate image generated from the prompts. You can modify prompts and send the Project/Sequence to Picture This… again.

Requirements: An Apple Silicon Mac running macOS Sonoma At least 8GB of RAM, but 16GB or more is recommended English text-to-image prompts are currently supported It requires macOS Sonoma and an Apple Silicon Mac.

You can learn more on their official website here.

You can purchase on the Mac App Store here.

AI-Powered Speech Restoration: dxRevive is a versatile speech restoration plugin, dedicated to enriching the quality of various dialogue recordings. Unlike many other restoration plugins, dxRevive doesn’t merely filter the signal. It goes beyond, identifying and reintegrating missing frequency components, yielding studio-like recordings from diverse source materials.

Highly Optimized Neural Network: dxRevive features highly optimized algorithms based on artificial neural networks. The whole processing happens locally without sending data to the cloud or requiring special hardware. No uploading time delays or sharing of protected audio material required!

Multilingual Support: Our algorithms have undergone training using an extensive array of languages. They have been exposed to a diverse range of linguistic nuances and accents from speakers around the world through our custom-recorded speech database. Regardless of the input speech type, dxRevive excels at accurately restoring the intricacies of various pronunciations.

Key Features:

• Noise removal
• Reverb suppression
• Restoration of absent frequencies
• Elimination of Codec Artifacts (e.g., from Skype or Zoom recordings)
• Recovery of clipped audio
• Application of spectral corrections
• Restoration of band-limited audio like phone call recordings

You can watch a demo here:

You can learn more over at FxFactory.

• Fixes an issue that could cause an FxPlug-based title that analyzed a clip to result in an incomplete analysis.
• Fixes an issue that could cause a Motion template with an applied Align To behavior to display an incorrect animation.

This fixes FxFactory products that perform object tracking or face recognition through the Title layer.

HUGE thank you to Apple to listening to companies like FxFactory and turning around a bug fix so quickly!

Final Cut Pro for iPad 1.2.1 is also out now, which includes the following fix:

• Fixes an issue that caused some titles and transitions to have incorrect animations.

It includes the following improvements:

• General playback performance improvements.
• Updated from FxPlug 4.2.7 to FxPlug 4.2.8.
• The wrapper application now quits when you close the main window.

You can learn more here.

LED Display Screens is a set of 15 new templates for Final Cut Pro (12 effects and 3 titles) that enable users to recreate the unique look and feel of LED panels in 3D space.

Once loaded with custom footage, the screens, which come in all sorts of shapes, can be animated and customized in many ways.

This is a very useful tool for ads, music videos, promos, news, sports, titling, 3D simulation and compositing effects, and much more.

It's currently on sale for USD$49 (normally USD$59).

Here’s the dedicated web page with Demo, Tutorial and samples to preview here.

You can buy now on FxFactory here.

Existing users will be an email in their inbox with a link to the latest update.

You can learn more here.

You can watch on Vimeo here:

If you've not yet booked, it's just USD$299 this year, and we'll be visiting Apple Park!

You can learn more here.

9 PM AEDT 6 AM EST US 3 AM PST US 10 AM GMT

You can watch live on YouTube here:

Get alerts from various post production applications and macOS sent to the Pushover smartphone app.

You can download and learn more here.

Subscribe and watch his YouTube live streams this week for a chance to win!

He also has 15% off promo code for the FCP Creative Summit: FCPRADIO

You can find him on YouTube here.

mLUT Plugin v3.0.4: Improved macOS Sonoma compatibility, minor bug and crash fixes mFlare v2 3.0.3: Improved macOS Sonoma compatibility, minor bug and crash fixes mFilmLook v2.0.5: Fixed memory leaks and visual artefacts, bug and crash fixes mPuppet v2.0.2: Improved macOS Sonoma compatibility, minor bug and crash fixes mTracker 3D 2.0.2: Improved macOS Sonoma compatibility, minor bug and crash fixes

You can find the official MotionVFX website here.

CoreMelt have extended the introductory special for CoreMelt ShotAnvil a few more days to give you a second chance to see just how powerful the all in one AI person keying, tracked paint, mask and insert graphic tools are.

If you own any previous CoreMelt product with Mocha tracking get 50% off the purchase price until 21st October.

ShotANVIL combines PaintX , SliceX and TrackX into one combined editor interface allowing you to do everything in one plugin, with powerful new tools for AI masking, paint, keying and enhanced shape masks.

Owners of the CoreMelt Detonators bundle will also get ShotAnvil for free - a license upgrade will get sent to you automatically.

Features include:

• Powerful compositing in one plugin with multiple different tracks applied
• AI one click person masking
• Auto applying of effects only to people, eg night vision
• Beauty skin smoothing using AI person detection
• Integrated tracked paint including animated paint strokes
• Advanced edge feather controls for masking
• Combine paint, masks, tracking and graphic inserts in one plugin
• Tracked warping with multiple brushes
• AI Inpainting for removing wires, cables, touch-ups

There is a free two week trial available, video tutorials and online documentation.

You can learn more on the CoreMelt website here.

Simply use the discount code FCPCAFE on checkout!

The amazing Iain Anderson has also written an article on our FCP Creative Summit page about WHY you should attend this year!

You can read this post here.

• Brand new tools to change your editing forever
• Cutting-edge technology powered by AI
• A whole new reality for creators all over the world

Break free of technical limitations and never again compromise your vision.

We set out to change the game in Final Cut Pro with cutting-edge editing tools engineered to powerboost your creativity, and it’s almost time to share it with the world.

Be at the forefront of the revolution. Dare to think bigger & create further.

You can learn more here.

You can read it here.

The site now permanently redirects to Peter's idustrialrevolution website.

We've been a big fans of everything Peter has done with fcp.co over the years, especially the incredible case studies.

I've personally been very fortunate to have articles about CommandPost, BRAW Toolbox, Gyroflow Toolbox and the Neighbours spin-off series, Erinsborough High featured on the site. HUGE thank you to Ronnie, Alex & Iain for writing articles about our stuff!

Running a website like fcp.co is a HUGE amount of work, especially when you're running a very active forum, so massive hats off to Peter for keeping it going for over a decade!

Peter explains on his site...

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO FCP.CO?

Good, question, hopefully this short blog will answer a few queries about the life and eventual closure of the best Final Cut Pro website.

The site ran for over 12 years, it started before Final Cut Pro X was released and surfed the wave of creation, innovation and finally in the latter years, frustration.

First of all, it is very hard to run a news site about a product when there isn't any news! Although there are some very active individuals in the FCP ecosystem who make a lot of noise, there isn't much happening these days.

That might be because there are hundreds of thousands of happy FCP editors out there that just get on and edit. It might be because everyone has bought every FCP product they need. Or have the majority of editors shifted over to Premiere and Resolve?

Secondly, it is the old problem of the cost and effort of running a site compared to the return. Although we had a few great advertisers who worked with us for a long time, there were a lot of companies who wanted a lot for nothing. That doesn't pay the bills. We were in fact quite shocked by the rudeness of a few individuals when asked for help after promoting their products/services for free for a number of years.

Over the last 18 months our hosting became a problem. What started off as a brilliant home for the site, lost all of its peripheral services and scheduled maintenance that made the site tick over. So it was either move the site to a new host that had better customer care, or close.

So, why is the explanation of the closure on this website? Because, for the majority of its life, Idustrial Revolution's sales have underwritten the cost. We were in discussion with a few parties about taking over the site, but they all eventually fizzled out.

It breaks my heart to close the site, I still believe FCP is the fastest and most creative NLE out there, but the industry doesn't share the same opinion. At one point Apple had a massive share of the NLE market with FCP7. FCPX never really recovered from the disastrous launch and Premiere (as bad as it was/still is) filled the vacuum.

Finally, chapeu to a few of the people that made the site the success it was. Thank you to David R, Sam, Ronnie, Roger, Philip & Gregg, Iain, Oliver and of course Karsten who without his daily help, the Forum would have died under a mountain of spam.

All is not lost though, I will add content to the blog section on this site. So please come back, you might even like one of our plugins!

Peter

You can checkout Peter's awesome plugins and blog posts over at idustrialrevolution.

We hope he continues to release new and exciting Final Cut Pro plugins, and interesting blog posts!

We're also hopeful FCP Cafe can help fill the void fcp.co has left for Final Cut Pro professionals - especially in terms of Case Studies.

The aim for FCP Cafe has always been for it to be open and community driven. You can learn more on our Contribute page.

It's all hosted and managed from GitHub, so people can always fork the site (like Sequence already has!) - so hopefully it will never disappear from the Internet.

Thanks again Peter for EVERYTHING you've done for the Final Cut Pro Community! Onwards & Upwards!

The "Scary Fast" presentation is anticipated to include Mac updates.

You can add to your calendar via the official Apple website.

You can read Apple Insider's predictions here.

Faster Mac's is always a great thing for Final Cut Pro users. The 16-inch MacBook Pro M3 Max looks like an absolute beast!

The fact they shot everyone on an iPhone is insanely impressive. However even more exciting is finally seeing some behind-the-scenes footage from a keynote - camera aside!

You can watch the full keynote on YouTube here:

You can watch the incredible behind the scenes video on YouTube here:

You can also read Apple's Behind the scenes at Scary Fast: Apple’s keynote event shot on iPhone and edited on Mac article here.

Felipe Baez has also posted a video, titled Apple's Scary Fast event - Disappointing and mediocre?.

You can watch here:

You can watch here:

Today we announced new lower prices for the Blackmagic Cloud Store family of high performance network storage. The Blackmagic Cloud Store Mini 8TB is now reduced by $710 to $1,645, Blackmagic Cloud Store 20TB is reduced by $1,950 to $5,645 and Blackmagic Cloud Store 80TB is reduced by $7,400 to $15,595. These new prices will help make high performance network storage affordable for anyone!

Blackmagic Cloud Store and Blackmagic Cloud Store Mini are extremely fast high capacity network disks designed to handle the large media files used on Hollywood feature films. The design uses an advanced flash memory core so it easily handles lots of simultaneous users accessing media files at the same time. There is also an HDMI monitoring output so you can watch a live graphic view of the storage operating on a TV or monitor. Plus, with built in Dropbox and Google Drive sync, files can be distributed between multiple Blackmagic Cloud Stores globally so each site has very fast local file access, even though files can be distributed on lower cost internet connections.

Blackmagic Cloud Store models are in stock and available from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide.

This is really interesting for Final Cut Pro users, as Blackmagic's network storage is now one of the most cost effective options around.

You can learn more here.

Starting in macOS Sonoma 14.1, cameras and video output devices that don't use modern system extensions won't be available to use unless you restore the legacy settings.

You can learn more here.

To celebrate they're offering 30% off both ShotAnvil and PaintX until 10th November.

Just use the offer code: FCPCS23XD*

If you missed what ShotAnvil can do, take a look at the range of tutorials.

If you don't need everything ShotAnvil does, PaintX gives you powerful tracked paint as a more affordable option, but is still very flexible and useful.

Both application are a one time purchase.

You can learn more here.

Just use the offer code: CW20

You can learn more here.

It's well worth a watch, as it's fun and educational:

You can learn more here.

Tim and Vincent from ArcticWhiteness are happy to celebrate FCP Creative Summit, by offering 30% off on Final Cut Library Manager complete pack.

You can learn more here.

The day opened with an incredible talk with Nick Harauz interviewing the amazing Justine Ezarik (aka iJustine).

Nick was the perfect interviewer, helping create an engaging, entertaining, insightful and honest conversation that was a joy to listen to.

Justine is so incredibly talented and insanely hard working. The talk provided a unique insight into how a person with 7.1 million YouTube subscribers runs her business, stays healthy, deal with trolls and haters, collaborates with other like-minded YouTubers, and how her and her editor use Final Cut Pro, PostLab and Frame.io to create great content quickly and consistently.

She's the real deal - open, honest, no bullshit, hard working, genuine.

Next up Chris Lawley talked about how he's gotten rid of his Mac all together, and moved completely to iPad and Final Cut Pro for iPad, in another very insightful, engaging and entertaining talk.

Then after a rather tasty boxed lunch, we all jumped on three buses and headed to Apple Park.

Sadly, there was no photos or videos allowed to be captured whilst in Apple Park.

You can watch this 2018 video on YouTube which shows some amazing drone footage of Apple Park during construction.

We all had special passes stored in our iPhone Wallets to gain access to the park, getting one of two coloured Apple lanyards (which we could keep) on entry:

We then walked around the insanely impressive Apple Park building, with friendly Apple staff evenly spaced along the fairly long walk making sure everyone was going the right way, with no phones out.

We then all entered an awesome little conference room inside the Apple Park circle, with one of the best LED screens and sound systems I've ever seen in that kind of smaller scale conference room.

Apple gave an insanely slick and polished presentation showing off the upcoming Final Cut Pro 10.7 release. Seriously - perfect sound, perfect presentations - it was like watching a keynote talk.

There was no NDA, and we were strongly encouraged to share things online (but again, no photos at Apple Park).

You can find all the specific details about the announcements here:

You can read the official Apple News Room Article titled Final Cut Pro takes video editing on Mac and iPad to the next level with powerful new features here.

You can read Iain Anderson's ProVideo Coalition article on More details: Final Cut Pro 10.7 at the FCP Creative Summit here. Iain is at the conference.

You can listen to Richard Taylor talk about the release on his YouTube Live Stream here. Richard is at the conference.

You can read Scott Simmons's ProVideo Coalition article on Final Cut Pro 10.7 announced, shipping later this month here. Scott is not at the conference.

You can watch Matthew O'Brien talk about HUGE Final Cut Pro 10.7 Update Just Announced! on YouTube here. Matthew is not at the conference.

There was nothing discussed in person that hasn't been publicly announced in the Apple News Room, however, one thing that was mentioned in passing in the demo room is that the Scene Removal Mask machine learning model has been dramatically improved on iPad and Mac, which is super interesting.

One interesting point to note is that even though the Scary Fast event wasn't cut in Final Cut Pro (yes, it was cut in Premiere) - everything for Apple Fitness+ is - over 4,700 videos, 15 hours every week, all cut in Final Cut Pro using ProRes. Apple is eating their own dog food, at a major scale. Also, all the WWDC talks this year were cut in Final Cut Pro.

After the Apple presentation we were then broken up into two groups. Whilst one group got a guided tour of further along the exterior of Apple Park, the other group went inside a demo room, where friendly Apple Staff showcased the latest Mac and iPad hardware, running the pre-release Final Cut Pro, and latest Logic Pro updates.

Apple Park is incredible - it's such a beautiful complex. Everything is perfect, everything is clean, everything smells good, everything inside is the perfect temperature, everything tastes good.

In the demo room we were able to play, hands-on with the new hardware. Yes, obviously I tried duplicating lots of audio clips to see how the scrolling timeline performed with a giant complex timeline, and I did get a spinning wheel of doom - but with the fairly complex demo timelines they had, it worked great.

Vincent Laforet was there to answer any questions about the new iPhone's - which is pretty special in of itself.

In terms of the Final Cut Pro announcements, it was basically exactly what I was expecting. After Apple finally gave us Dupe Detection, it was also fairly predictable that this would be the year that they'd finally give us a scrolling timeline - and it does look great.

Personally, I'm really happy with these incremental updates to Final Cut Pro, and they'll make my life as an editor better.

Tomorrow will be super interesting to see what PostLab has to demo!

You can learn more over at ProVideo Coalition here

You can learn more here.

Let's start with some super exciting news first...

Another unexpected thing that came out of yesterday's demonstration room at Apple Park is there's another undocumented feature in Final Cut Pro 10.7 that wasn't talked about in the official Apple Presentation...

Final Cut Pro 10.7 has enhanced the Reveal in Browser feature, so now if you’re in a Keyword Collection in the Browser, it will stay in that Collection if you reveal a clip from the timeline that’s in that Collection - meaning it no longer goes back to the "base" event, which is a HUGE workflow improvement!

For example, lets imagine you have an Event with a whole heap of graphics, music and sound effects in it, sorted by Keyword Collections. If you have the sound effect Keyword Collection selected in the Browser, and you Reveal in Browser on a sound effect on the timeline, it will find that clip in the Browser, without changing the currently selected Keyword Collection.

In Final Cut Pro 10.6.10 and earlier, pressing Reveal in Browser would always go back to the "root" Event, so this is a big change, and hopefully removes the need of CommandPost's Reveal in Keyword Collection action!

This is one of those little things that seems like such a small minor improvement, but is a MAJOR time saver. The whole reason CommandPost exists in the first place is that it was originally designed to make finding the playhead easier for Scott Simmons after match framing clips!

Apple is listening. Apple do care.

Another very exciting piece of news that came away from the show floor is that comedy feature film, For When You Get Lost has won the Audience Award for Best Comedy Feature at the Austin Film Festival!

This was cut in Final Cut Pro by Jeffrey Asher. Written by Jennifer Sorenson. Directed by Michelle Steffes.

HUGE Congratulations Jeffrey and the team! We will be releasing a case study about this film in the future.

Back to the Summit...

The day opened with the Shaping the Future: Panel Discussion, hosted by Nick Harauz, and featuring Jenn Jager, Steve Martin, Andy To and myself (Chris Hocking).

Whilst I'm normally always "behind the camera" rather than in-front - I definitely had a lot of fun, and really enjoyed both Nick's fantastic questions/moderating, but also all the intelligent and thoughtful answers from Jenn, Steve & Andy, who are all so insanely talented, hardworking and super smart.

Afterwards there was sessions with:

• Warp Speed Editing Techniques in Final Cut Pro with Mark Spencer
• Let's Grade Together with Jeff Greenberg
• Sound Advice; How to Use Roles to Master Your Mix (Mac) with Steve Martin
• Mastering Transitions in FCP and Motion with Jenn Jager

I only personally attended Mark's first session - which was awesome, as you'd expect.

We then broke for lunch, with some yummy lunch boxes - generally speaking, eating outside on large tables.

After lunch there was some more sessions:

• Compress to Impress with Jeff Greenberg
• iPhone Workflows in Final Cut Pro with Abba Shapiro
• Creating Stunning Graphics in Final Cut Pro and Motion with Robin Kurz
• PostLab - The Event of the Year with Paul Matthijs Lombert, Jasper Siegers, and Isaac Terronez
• Why Multicams are One of Final Cut Pro’s Most Powerful Features with Dylan Bates
• 360° Footage in Flat Timelines with Iain Anderson

I only personally attended the PostLab session and Dylan's session - which was really great. Dylan is so enthusiastic, so lovely, so talented, but also there was some really fantastic audience engagement and discussion, and tips were definitely shared both ways, which is awesome! It was a really fun, educational and collaborative talk.

But PostLab. Wow.

For those that don't know about PostLab already, it provides incredible cloud based and on-premise collaboration for Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer & Adobe Premiere Pro.

It's powerful, and used by a huge amount of professional Final Cut Pro editors around the world. It's subscription, or you can buy PostLab Local for your own on-premises server solution.

Here's what the currently shipping public version looks like:

However today, Hedge threw all that away, and has essentially announced they've started from scratch on a completely new version of PostLab, that uses the same perpetual licensing as their other Hedge products (like OffShoot and EditReady).

Unfortunately, because this new version is early days, soon to be released in "Early Access Preview" (i.e. beta), they've asked not to share any screenshots of the user interface shown, as things may change during development - so no screenshots here.

They've completely changed things architecturally - rather then requiring any cloud infrastructure, it now runs on your local machine, which means it's fast, and there's no ongoing cost.

There will be a standard version, and a pro version - similar to how OffShoot now works.

PostLab will now also support ANY and every application - not just Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere and Avid Media Composer. You can manage Pages and Numbers documents, Logic Pro projects, etc.

But the thing that blew my mind is Event Locking for Final Cut Pro.

Essentially how it works is that you create a Team Bundle anywhere you like, which contains all your data. It's similar to a Final Cut Pro Library in that it's a package (i.e you can right-click and select Open Package Contents in Finder).

The standard version will support a single Team Bundle, and the Pro version will offer unlimited Team Bundles.

You can then create Collections within the PostLab interface however you want, like Final Cut Pro and iTunes/Music. These Collections can contain any Documents (i.e. files).

However, where the magic lies is that if you create a Final Cut Pro library, PostLab now manages the individual events within that library.

For example, you could create a Collection for "Episode 1" and "Episode 2", which each contains it's own Final Cut Pro Library. However, shared between BOTH of those libraries, you could have a single Event for "Sound Effects" that is common between both libraries, in both collections.

PostLab manages all these individual Final Cut Pro Events, so that only one person can claim ownership of them (i.e. check them out) at a time. So, for example, the "Episode 1" editor could be the owner/have checked-out the "Sound Effects" Event, which means that any other editors that try to open this Event will still be able to open it, however, PostLab will automagically inject a 🔒 emoji in the filename, so you can visually see in Final Cut Pro that the Event is essentially read-only, and no changes to that locked Event will be saved.

This is... magic. I have no idea how it works, because unlike in Avid Media Composer, for example, you can't just copy and paste Events between Library bundles, like you can with Avid Bins.

However, the geniuses at Hedge have somehow managed to make Final Cut Pro Events, behave exactly the same as Avid Bin's. It's magic, and amazing.

Everyone at the Final Cut Pro Creative Summit has the opportunity to request access to the "Early Access Preview" that will go live at some point later this month.

The new version of PostLab will not only be massive for collaboration, but solo editors - because the new version of PostLab brings simple git-like versioning to ANY document type. This is big!

It also has an absolutely fantastic new icon!

Next up we had The Ultimate FCP Tip Session with Jeff Greenberg hosting and Dylan Bates, Abba Shapiro, Steve Martin and Mark Spencer. There was lots of handy tips and tricks!

Then the last session of the day was Making Media Inclusive For All: Accessible Creative Storytelling with Storm Smith, and Jenica Teregeyo.

This was an incredibly powerful, educational, informative and inspiring session talking about empowering every viewer through accessible media.

It was a very slick presentation, with some great videos showcased.

Here's the top five things to take away from the talk:

Then after this session it was Networking Expo Night, where you could talk to the Hedge Team, CoreMelt Team & others.

There was several prizes given away on the night, and free food and drinks.

The legends that are Philip & Greg also gave away a free copy of Picture This... to every Final Cut Pro Creative Summit attendee, which is amazing!

The Summit is all about connecting with like-minded people, and sharing knowledge, and the Expo Night was the perfect demonstration of just an insanely talented bunch of people all just hanging out together sharing tips and tricks.

You can watch a recording of Richard Taylor's YouTube Live Stream of the Expo Night here.

However, this discount does not apply to CineStudio, bundles & already discounted items.

You can learn more here.

It has an absolutely beautiful new icon, and a great new user interface.

You can learn more here.

Get more precise positioning of control dials, support for 6 additional languages, better layout of onscreen controls while in zoom mode, support for flicker-free shutter presets and more.

Here's the full feature list:

• Control dials now offer haptic feedback and higher accuracy.
• Support for 6 additional languages including Chinese, Japanese and Spanish.
• Improved layouts for iPhones with display zoom enabled.
• Improved animations for player and slate views in all iPhone models.
• Improved animations for stealth mode in smaller iPhone models.
• Improved organization and grouping of camera settings.
• Support for selecting a specific onboard microphone.
• Support to maintain zebra, peaking and false color during recording.
• Support for flipping the image for SLR lenses.
• Support for flicker free shutter presets for 50 and 60 Hz settings.
• Support for recording clip with LUT and tagging color space.
• Ability to export and import camera settings presets.
• Improved grid controls with horizon detection.
• Selectable time lapse duration in settings.
• Ability to drag clips between projects in the media panel.
• Support for iOS shortcut automation workflows.
• Multiple fixes for recording HUD.
• Apple Log to Rec.709 LUT is now included.
• Ability to turn off uploads when on data.
• General performance and stability improvements.

You can learn more on the iPhone App Store here.

Their new Firmware Boosts Blackmagic Disk Speed Writes up to 2X faster!

Pro Data is the world’s fastest Thunderbolt storage, but that doesn’t stop their world-class engineering team from trying to make it even better!

Their new firmware release boosts BlackMagic Disk Speed Test write performance up to 2.3GB/s (up to 2X faster than before), further improving Pro Data's performance and out-of-box experience on widely-used industry tools.

The new 1.4 firmware release will ship in November to all Pro Data customers, downloadable free from the iodyne Utility. And it will be pre-installed on new shipments after that date.

They also added nifty UI improvements, and even more intelligence to their app: iodyne Utility can now detect and report a defective Thunderbolt cable, or invalid cabling configurations.

You can learn more here.

Today was day three, and the final day of the Final Cut Pro Creative Summit.

This is the first time I (Chris Hocking) have personally attended the Summit, and it's a looooooooong and expensive trip from Melbourne, Australia.

HOWEVER, this conference has been absolutely awesome and worth every penny.

HUGE thank you and congratulations to both Future Media Concepts and Apple for putting on such an incredible event.

Ben, Megan, Jessica, Elise and the rest of the FMC team, you've all done an insanely awesome job. Thank you for making us all feel so welcome, and part of your FMC family. Putting on a huge event like this is a MASSIVE job, but you nailed it. Thank you.

MASSIVE thank you to Nick Harauz (Director of Product Marketing at Boris FX) for all the incredible work he did putting everything together, but also his insanely awesome leadership/MC'ing on all the panels throughout the Summit. He's a REALLY great interviewer.

Bill, and the rest of the Apple team, I can't imagine how much politics and incredible hard work it was to get us into Apple Park, so thank you, thank you, thank you. It was a one in a lifetime opportunity to visit the campus, and something I'll never forget.

CoreMelt, MotionVFX & Hedge - thank you for supporting this incredible community financially, and allowing the conference to happen at all. Please support these three awesome companies!

Thank you to Richard Taylor for allowing people at home that couldn't attend the Summit in person to still feel connected to the event via his live streams.

Over the last few weeks, I've had... concerns, about whether or not flying across the world to hang out with a bunch of Final Cut Pro editors would be a... bad investment/waste of time or not. By the time you add flights, accommodation, conference cost, food, social drinks, etc - it becomes a very expensive endeavour, and a long time away from my young family. However this conference has been unquestionably worthwhile.

I've had the incredible opportunity to meet people I've only previously known via the Internet. I've got to meet and make new friends from all over the world. I've been able to connect with people who use this site and my software to do absolutely incredible things. I've been able to casually chat with the team behind the tool I use every day, Final Cut Pro, as well as all the 3rd party developers that make the Final Cut Pro ecosystem so unstoppable.

Again, I've never been to previous FMC events, however what impressed me was both the turnout, and the quality and passion of the attendees. I had the honour and privilege of meeting talented people, from all walks of life, and all different parts of the industry, that use Final Cut Pro at a very high level. Everyone's a hardcore Final Cut Pro end-user.

It was pretty incredible how many people travelled from Australia, the UK, Germany, etc. to come to the Summit - it truely was a global audience.

So... what happened today? In terms of sessions, they were some of the best of the week.

First up we had:

• AI Person Masking, Tracking and Paint in ShotAnvil, a session presented by CoreMelt with Ché Baker
• Shooting and Editing Captivating Interviews in FCP with Abba Shapiro
• Word Play: Advanced Typography Techniques in Final Cut Pro with Jenn Jager
• Hooking in Hardware with Iain Anderson
• Social Media Workflows with Nick Harauz
• Hide and Seek: Advanced Masking and Tracking in FCP with Robin Kurz

I had the pleasure of attending the CoreMelt session first up. Ché Baker & Roger Bolton did an excellent demonstration of the new CoreMelt ShotAnvil tool.

You can get 30% off ShotAnvil and PaintX by visiting their special Final Cut Pro Creative Summit page here.

Next I attended Iain Anderson's Hooking in Hardware session - which showcased how he uses CommandPost + MIDI Controllers + Tangent Ripple + Monogram Console to control Final Cut Pro in fast and powerful ways.

You can watch one of Iain's older YouTube videos on MIDI controllers here:

After another delicious boxed lunch pack in the sun, we had:

• Chaos to Clarity: Mastering Clip Organization (iPad) with Dylan Bates
• Controlling the Color Pipeline: HDR Workflows in Mac and iPad with Steve Martin
• Media Management Techniques with Mark Spencer
• Becoming an Accidental YouTuber with Lee Herbet
• Custom 3D Objects in Motion with Iain Anderson
• Session Presented by MotionVFX with George Edmondson

Steve Martin's (from Ripple Training) course on HDR was incredible. It was by far the most polished and slick talk of the whole conference - I really felt like I was in a University classroom for the 45mins. Steve is such a great educator and communicator - he really takes it to another level (Mike Seymour-level as I like to call it).

Lee's talk was also great - very interesting and engaging. You can follow his YouTube adventures here.

MotionVFX's session was also insanely awesome. What I didn't realise was this wasn't a MotionVFX session - as in, there were no MotionVFX staff attending. MotionVFX basically just paid for one of their external contractors, Seed Media to do a talk about MotionVFX's new subscription tools, CineStudio.

George Edmondson and his team are one of MotionVFX's external collaborators, and produce and edit a lot of their online tutorials and promotional content - and what they do is really next level.

For example, George and his team made this entirely in Final Cut Pro:

George is such a great communicator and storyteller - but also the work Seed do for MotionVFX is world class.

You can learn more about Seed Media here.

You can learn more about CineStudio here. You can currently get 30% off all MotionVFX plugins here.

At 4pm, we had Storytelling in Final Cut Pro panel with Josh Meyers, Mike Yanovich, and Robin Moran - with Nick Harauz moderating.

These kinds of panels are what makes the Summit so powerful and so useful - true industry professionals, doing world-class high-end work, talking about their craft. Josh, Mike & Robin are all three of the nicest, smartest and honest people you'll ever meet - and it's such an honour to hear about how they make their amazing art.

We hope to have detailed case studies with all three panelists on FCP Cafe in the not-so-distant future, as their projects become publicly accessible.

Then finally, to wrap up the conference, we had a Q&A with the Final Cut Pro team - what a perfect way to wrap up the event!

This event wasn't under NDA - however they asked for no photos, videos or recordings.

Microphones were handed around, and anyone could ask anything.

There were six people from Apple on the stage from marketing, engineering, quality control, user interface design and product manager for Final Cut Pro for iPad.

Obviously, with Apple being a giant complex company - the team couldn't talk about anything unannounced or future product plans.

The Apple team said that Final Cut Pro and ProApps are "alive and well" and the team is "super excited about the future".

They said "don't worry about the Aperture thing... it's not a thing" - referring to the fact that Final Cut Pro won't go the way of Aperture, and be suddenly discontinued.

They mentioned they're really interested in seeing how people are using Final Cut Pro on iPad. They encourage people to send feedback to them, explaining in story form how you use their devices in the real world.

The audience all learnt a new term - S.P.O.D'ing - spinning pizza of death (i.e. the spinning wheel of death). They explained that if you do ever run into the spinning wheel of doom, sending detailed feedback of exactly how you got into this state is very, very helpful.

You can send Apple feedback in any language - they have teams dedicated to translating the feedback.

Apple has a plan for Final Cut Pro and the rest of the ProApps for the next few months, AND the next 5-6 years.

The Final Cut Pro team constantly have meetings with the wider Apple teams - for example, they're constantly meeting with Machine Learning teams to see what technologies and techniques they can bring back to the ProApps.

I personally asked if we'll ever see WWDC sessions on Final Cut Pro Developer technologies like FxPlug and Workflow Extensions - and they acknowledged that this is something they'd LOVE to see.

Overall the Q&A session was calm, civil, fun, personal and entertaining. There was no NDA secrets shared. The audience got to really connect with senior members of the Final Cut Pro team on a very human level.

It's always nice to remind yourself that the people behind our favourite tools are just human after all.

And just like that, three days of the Final Cut Pro Creative Summit was over - but the discussions kept flowing in the Aloft hotel bar for many hours more.

Again, a HUGE thank you to everyone at FMC and Apple for making this event happen. Thank you to EVERYONE who presented, and EVERYONE who attended.

It was such a privilege and an honour to attend - and it was so humbling to connect with people that use CommandPost, BRAW Toolbox, Gyroflow Toolbox, Fast Collections and even the TestFlight version of Recall Toolbox!

You can watch Richard Taylor's live stream directly after the Q&A session on YouTube here.

You can refer back to the FCPCreativeSummit hashtag on Twitter here. There's some fun photos in the feed!

Onwards & Upwards!

He give his theories on the future direction of Final Cut Pro, and why he believes Apple is designing the most revolutionary creator stack in history.

You can watch on YouTube here:

Onwards & Upwards!

CNET reports:

Final Cut Pro, Apple's video editing software, will get Spatial Video editing support, but not until sometime next year.

9to5Mac reports:

Apple released iOS 17.2 developer beta 2 on Thursday, enabling iPhone 15 Pro hardware to capture spatial videos for the first time. The public beta version just dropped as well, and so have some early press reviews of personal spatial videos on Vision Pro.

The company has also shared that Final Cut Pro will gain the ability to edit spatial videos sometime next year. iOS 17.2 beta 2 and macOS 14.2 beta 2 also introduce the “Spatial” media type in Photos for easy filtering.

As announced at the Final Cut Pro Creative Summit, Final Cut Pro 10.7 will come out later this month, so it's most likely that spatial video editing won't appear until Final Cut Pro 10.8 - maybe another 12 months away.

You can listen on iTunes here.

You can use the discount code: 25FCPCON

When you purchase the book, you also get free electronic updates!

You can learn more here.

This is interesting because yesterday Apple has announced that Final Cut Pro will gain spatial video editing at some point next year.

John begins with...

Yesterday Apple released developer beta 2 of iOS 17.2, the first version of iOS to include support for capturing spatial video with iPhone 15 Pro models. Today came the public beta, enabling the same feature. Apple invited me to New York yesterday, not merely to preview capturing spatial video using an iPhone, but to experience watching those spatial videos using a Vision Pro.

The experience was, like my first Vision Pro demo back at WWDC in June, astonishing.

You can read the entire blog post over at Daring Fireball.

• Added support for new GPUs: Apple M3, M3 Pro / M3 Max, Apple M2 Ultra
• Improved processing of certain error messages
• Minor corrections in GUI of Preferences
• Minor improvements in the installer
• Fixed several minor issues

You can learn more here.

For example, Apple supplied this screenshot for how the Collapse to Connected Storyline feature works:

You can read the updated blog post here.

You can read here.

⚠️ On another note, If you're having issues with our products on macOS Sonoma (mainly red screen in FCP), please make sure to update mInstaller (3.0.2 version) 🚀Only once that's done, uninstall the product and install it again (don't use the "repair" option this time) 😉

You can learn more about MotionVFX here.

This release includes the following bug fix:

• In the previous BRAW Toolbox v1.3.3 (59) release, we made some major under-the-hood changes to improve playback performance (such as only using one shared instance of the BRAW SDK Factory). Unfortunately however, those changes resulted in the BRAW SDK not releasing used threads correctly, and as the thread count grew, eventually the BRAW Toolbox Renderer would stop working correctly in Final Cut Pro. This would only really happen on older machines, and Libraries with hundreds of BRAW clips. We've now reverted back to how we were doing things in v1.3.2 (57) and earlier, with some additional checks and protections. We will continue to research and explore ways we can improve playback performance, so that the export times of timelines with BRAW clips in Final Cut Pro get closer to what you see in DaVinci Resolve.

You can learn more here.

For example, get Color Finale 2 Pro for USD$99, instead of USD$149!

You can learn more here.

Offer ends 30th November.

You can learn more here.

The FAQ explains:

Can Blip send Final Cut Pro projects? Yes! Unlike many other services, Blip can send Final Cut Pro .fcpbundle files without needing to zip them first. .fcpbundle files are technically folders, and Blip fully preserves folder structures and any links within. And of course, Blip works regardless of the tool you use, be it Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, or something else entirely.

Blip is currently a free service that allows you to send files directly between two desktop or mobile devices. It doesn't store files on the cloud - it transfers directly between devices.

You can learn more about Blip here.

You can watch here:

You can learn more about Jenn here. She's the best.

You can download a free trial, and purchase for USD$19.99 (instead of the regular price of USD$29.99).

You can learn more here.

You can purchase on the Mac App Store here.

You can learn more here.

• Up to $551 to be saved on single products!
• Two temporary special bundles, saving up to $264!
• Choose two Tomofon Extension packs (worth $30) for free with every purchase of our multi-layer wavetable synth Tomofon! Choose packs at checkout.

You can learn more on their website.

• Automated uploading of .csv or .json data to Airtable
• Ability to update and auto-create new entries for single select field and multiple select field
• No subscription of third party platform required
• Ability to upload attachments via build-in Dropbox client
• Ability to upload attachments to multiple attachment columns
• Uses long-lived refresh token for Dropbox client

You can learn more about the free and open-source tool here.

Get up to 50% off their products and bundles, like BeatMark Pro, FCP Diet 2, FCP Cut Finder, FCP STR Importer 2, BeatMark 2, Ulti.Media Converter 2, FCP Video Tag and PoweResize.

You can learn more here.

You can learn more here.

Achu P. Chandra writes about his project, Guardians of Himalayas.

This is a very detailed and technical case study with lots of screenshots. Enjoy!

You can read it here.

You can read it here.

Recall Toolbox is a Final Cut Pro Workflow Extension that acts as a Shared Pasteboard.

Anything that you can copy and paste in Final Cut Pro, Recall Toolbox can store.

You can even drag-and-drop clips and projects from the Final Cut Pro Browser, and link to files (such as logos on a shared drive).

Recall Toolbox automagically syncs to all your Mac's on the same iCloud account.

You can also share Folders with other iCloud users, and control permissions. For example, you could have a "read only" folder that contains client lower thirds for a current job.

Whilst there are third party tools like the amazing Copy 'Em ​(for Mac), they're not quite as visual as Recall Toolbox, and they're not built from the ground up for Final Cut Pro users.

Recall Toolbox works as a Final Cut Pro Workflow Extension, so it's window position gets saved with your custom Workspaces.

Whilst CommandPost has had a Shared Pasteboard & Pasteboard Buffers for years, it's really optimised for Control Surfaces. You can access the Shared Pasteboard from the CommandPost menubar, and it is super powerful, but it's not as visual - you just get text, not a fully customisable thumbnail.

Recall Toolbox feels like a natural extension to Final Cut Pro, with a similar look and feel to Final Cut Pro's Effects Browser.

It's 29.99 in your local currency (i.e. AUD29.99, USD29.99, CAD29.99).

You can find out more here.

This was the version demonstrated at the Final Cut Pro Creative Summit. Whilst there was no new feature surprises, it does have some very welcome bug fixes!

Final Cut Pro 10.7 includes the following enhancements and fixes:

• Automatically scroll the timeline to keep your clips in view under the playhead during playback.
• Increase editing efficiency by combining a selected group of connected clips into a connected storyline.
• View both video and audio role colors to easily see the organization of the timeline at a glance.
• See improved results when using the Object Tracker’s all-new machine-learning model to analyze the movement of faces and other objects on Mac computers with Apple silicon.
• Use the enhanced Reveal in Browser feature to easily locate a clip in the browser without losing your selected Keyword Collection or Smart Collection.
• Export HEVC and H.264 files faster by simultaneously processing video segments across available media engines (requires macOS Sonoma or later and a Mac with Apple M1 Max, M1 Ultra, M2 Max, M2 Ultra, or M3 Max).
• Fixes an issue that caused an offline media badge to remain on an event after reconnecting.
• Fixes an issue that could cause video to be cropped in the multicam angle editor.
• Improves performance when upgrading a library that contains many markers.

Final Cut Pro for iPad 1.3 includes the following features and enhancements:

• Record voiceover and live audio directly in the timeline using the built-in iPad microphones or external microphones.
• Dial in the perfect look with stunning new color-grading presets.
• Choose from a selection of new titles and generators.
• Increase editing efficiency by grouping connected clips into a connected storyline.
• Control stabilization in the pro camera mode.

New keyboard shortcuts:

• Group clips into a connected storyline: Command-G
• Ungroup clips from a connected storyline: Shift-Command-G
• Show or hide the voiceover controls: Shift-V
• Start or stop recording audio from the voiceover controls: Shift-Option-R
• Play full screen: Shift-Command-F
• Enter or exit Picture in Picture: Command-3

Improvements and fixes:

• Adds a skin tone indicator to the vectorscope.
• Adds color gradients to controls in the Color Adjustments effect and color-grading presets.
• Adds the Sharpen effect to the content browser and inspector.
• Increases the Volume Offset maximum to 20 dB.
• Allows dragging anywhere at the top of the timeline to resize it.
• Fixes an issue that caused resetting Format settings for a Live Drawing clip to remove its contents.
• Fixes an issue that caused Live Drawings in an HDR portrait project to show an unexpected border.
• Fixes an issue that prevented nudging of the last animation keyframe for clips in a connected storyline.
• Improves reliability when reimporting missing media files.
• Improves reliability when copying and pasting color conversion and rate conversion settings.
• Improves reliability when undoing a copy and paste of Audio settings.
• Improves reliability when importing iMovie for iOS projects.
• Includes stability and performance improvements.

Motion 5.7 includes the following enhancements and fixes:

• See improved results when using the Object Tracker’s all-new machine-learning model to analyze the movement of faces and other objects on Mac computers with Apple silicon.
• Title template backgrounds are now disabled by default.
• Fixes an issue that caused FxPlug-based plug-ins to stop responding when you cancel an analysis.

Compressor 4.7 includes the following enhancements and fixes:

• Export HEVC and H.264 files faster by simultaneously processing video segments across available media engines (requires macOS Sonoma or later and a Mac with Apple M1 Max, M1 Ultra, M2 Max, M2 Ultra, or M3 Max).
• Create, configure, and build stereoscopic packages for the iTunes Store.
• Preview Log encoded video with or without Log applied.
• HDR content now displays in the correct color space in the viewer.
• Improves performance when enabling or disabling audio tracks on long multi-channel ProRes clips.
• Adds support for JSON and XML output to batch submissions when using the command line.
• Fixes an issue where creating a Watch Folder would prevent the “Enable audio pass-through” setting from being selected.

Pro Video Formats 2.3 is also out now. The Pro Video Formats package provides support for the following codecs that are used in professional video workflows:

• Apple ProRes RAW and ProRes RAW HQ*
• Apple Intermediate Codec
• Avid DNxHD® / Avid DNxHR® decoder
• AVC-Intra 50 / 100 / 200 / 4:4:4 / LT
• AVC-LongG
• XAVC
• XF-AVC
• XF-HEVC
• DVCPRO HD
• HDV
• XDCAM EX / HD / HD422
• MPEG IMX
• Uncompressed 4:2:2

For developers, FxPlug SDK 4.2.9 is also out now with the following:

• A new -projectAspectRatio:error: method in FxProjectAPI_v2.
• The FxBrightnessAnalysis example has been updated to optionally perform backward analysis, image well analysis, and GPU analysis.
• Improved overall stability.
• Improved the speed of analysis cancellation.
• Fixed an issue in -timelineTime:fromImageTime:forParameterID: that had caused an incorrect time to be returned as timelineTime.
• FxColorGamutAPI can now be instantiated from within -parameterChanged:atTime:error:
• FxProjectAPI can now be accessed during a push button callback.
• Fixed a leak in the FxSimpleColorCorrector example plug-in.
• Fixed an issue that would cause a hang in Motion when multiple instances of the same plug-in were applied to an object.
• Fixed an issue that would cause generated output to be composited on frames requested by the FxAnalysisAPI and FxTimingAPI when a plug-in was applied to a title template’s Title Background layer.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a crash when analyzing very large inputs in effect templates that had relatively small project dimensions.
• Xcode 15 is now required to build FxPlug plug-ins.

As usual, Ripple Training have released an awesome detailed video explaining all the new features:

The incredible Jenn Jager has also released an awesome video:

And of course, the The Final Cut Bro, Dylan Bates is also on the case:

We'll be testing Final Cut Pro 10.7 and Final Cut Pro for iPad 1.3 in detail over the coming weeks, and we'll keep you posted if we discover any unexpected bugs or issues.

Sebastian Leitner has written an incredibly detailed and technical case study on the film Women of Resilience: Tales of Kurdish Identity, discussing Broadcast Versioning and Mastering.

You can watch the trailer for his project here:

You can read the case study here.

So far we haven't found any issues or problems with Final Cut Pro 10.7 and CommandPost, BRAW Toolbox, Gyroflow Toolbox, Marker Toolbox, Recall Toolbox or Fast Collections.

If you haven't already, you can read all the release notes in yesterday's post.

It's worth noting that Pro Video Formats & FxPlug SDK also got an update. The Workflow Extensions SDK did not.

There's lots of great videos out there talking about this update, such as:

• Ripple Training's "Final Cut Pro 10.7 New Features"
• Jenn Jager's "Final Cut Pro Update! | What's New in 10.7"
• Dylan Bates/The Final Cut Bro's "What's New in the Final Cut Pro 10.7 | Should you update?"
• Matthew O'Brien's "Final Cut Pro 10.7 Update Just Released! 🧲🎞️"
• Iain Anderson's "What's New in Final Cut 10.7"
• Robin Kurz's "Is This What YOU'VE Been Waiting For?! The NEW Auto-Scrolling Timeline in Final Cut Pro 10.7!"
• Richard Taylor's "Final Cut Pro 10.7 - FCP 10.7 Demos - User reactions - Tips and Tricks"

If you've found any other Final Cut Pro 10.7 videos you've really liked, please let us know in the comments!

Rather than just recapping what the above people have already covered in depth, we instead wanted to discuss some more of the niche/more technical things...

There have been no changes/updates to FCPXML in this update - it still uses FCPXML v1.11.

Sadly this means that FCPXML is still broken with certain text parameters - for example, Tracking, All Caps Size, Z Position, etc. don't translate properly in FCPXML:

This has been reported to Apple many times over the years. If this bug annoys you, please file feedback via Feedback Assistant referencing FB13434162.

The most exciting change to Final Cut Pro 10.7 is the addition of a Scrolling Timeline.

CommandPost has had a scrolling timeline in Final Cut Pro since 2016.

FWIW - the CommandPost scrolling timeline still works in Final Cut Pro 10.7, so you can still keep using it if you prefer it to the official scrolling timeline.

Funnily enough, in an very early version of CommandPost, we also had a feature called Timeline Playhead Lock, which locked the timeline playhead to the centre of the timeline - but this feature was removed at some point as very few people actually used it.

You've also been able to turn on Enable Rendering During Playback so that Final Cut Pro keeps rendering, analysing, and generating thumbnails and waveforms even during playback - which works great in combination with CommandPost's scrolling timeline.

The new Scrolling Timeline in Final Cut Pro 10.7 is definitely a big improvement from what CommandPost can offer, and is a really nice implementation, as you'll see in the various videos linked to above. Richard Taylor is VERY happy.

What's interesting though is that when you enable the scrolling timeline, it also enables Final Cut Pro's ability to generate thumbnails and waveforms during playback - and when you turn off the scrolling timeline it disables this ability.

It's also interesting that the scrolling timeline is disabled by default.

A scrolling timeline has been referenced inside Final Cut Pro for years now. My GUESS the reason it's taken so long for Apple to enable and release publicly is because they've been waiting for the hardware to catch up.

This also explains why it's disabled by default (along with generating thumbnails & waveforms during playback), as it runs pretty slow/laggy on very complex projects/timelines, especially on older Intel hardware, and Apple don't want new users to experience that straight out of the box - hence scrolling timeline is "hidden" in the preferences, and not with a simple toolbar button.

I'm sure eventually, once you can no longer install the latest macOS and Final Cut Pro on Intel machines, then Apple will make generating thumbnails & waveforms during playback always on - not just when you have the scrolling timeline enabled.

Once this happens, maybe they'll add a Scrolling Timeline toggle next to the Skimming button in the Timeline Toolbar.

In the meantime, CommandPost's Enable Rendering During Playback preference still seems to work on Final Cut Pro 10.7, which is great.

Alternatively, if you never want to use the new scrolling timeline, but still want to generate thumbnails and waveforms during playback without CommandPost, you can also use this Terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.FinalCut FFGenerateThumbnailsDuringPlayback -bool true

However, if you turn on the scrolling timeline and then turn it off again, FFGenerateThumbnailsDuringPlayback will also be disabled again.

The Final Cut Pro Library Database version has also been updated to 1090, compared to 1071 in Final Cut Pro 10.6.10.

This means that any Libraries created prior to Final Cut Pro 10.7 will need to be updated to the latest format, and you can't go back from 10.7 to earlier versions of Final Cut Pro.

Whilst Final Cut Pro does always do an automatic backup of libraries prior to updating them, we also strongly recommend manually creating a ZIP file of your library before updating too, so that you can roll back to an older version of Final Cut Pro if a major bug or regression is found.

The Backups for Final Cut Pro application is also highly regarded for automating library backups.

Interestingly, Final Cut Pro for iPad v1.3 also uses the 1090 database format - so Final Cut Pro for Mac and iPad are once again in version parity.

Unfortunately for us, Final Cut Pro for iPad has become less interesting after Apple prevented Transfer Toolbox from working - which was our solution to get from Mac to iPad.

We've since stopped developing Transfer Toolbox for now - you can read more about this decision in more detail here.

UPDATE (3rd Dec 2023): After writing this news entry, we've since brought back Transfer Toolbox to life with Final Cut Pro 10.7 support. You can learn more here.

Our big hope/dream with Final Cut Pro for iPad was to use it for doing director/client/agency selects, and then send those selects to the Mac, but ideally we want to do all the prep work on Mac - i.e. syncing everything with Sync-N-Link, etc.

You can easily get from Final Cut Pro on iPad to Mac, so we're now exploring ways to take the selects from iPad and translate them across to Multicam Clips created in Sync-N-Link (for example).

The fact that you can now import iMovie for iOS projects into Final Cut Pro for iPad might be a hint that native Mac to iPad is also on their radar/wish-list.

Apple still publicly advertise that Third-party Content is coming soon to Final Cut Pro for iPad - so we should see third party MotionVFX Motion Templates on iPad at some point in 2024:

The only two Command Editor items between Final Cut Pro 10.6.10 and 10.7.0 are Collapse to Connected Storyline and Timeline Scrolling.

They did however follow the more recent macOS naming conventions, and renamed the Preferences item to Settings.

They also replaced a lot of OS X to macOS in various warnings and error messages.

The built-in default Command Set also has had a few changes:

• Collapse to Connected Storyline has been added as COMMAND+SHIFT+DOWN.
• Set Monitoring Angle has changed from SHIFT+V to SHIFT+OPTION+M.
• Start/Stop Voiceover Recording has changed from SHIFT+OPTION+A to SHIFT+OPTION+R (same as Final Cut Pro for iPad v1.3).
• Record Voiceover has changed from COMMAND+OPTION+8 to SHIFT+V (same as Final Cut Pro for iPad v1.3).

It's worth noting that the enhanced Reveal in Browser feature allows you to locate a clip in the Browser without losing your selected Keyword Collection or Smart Collection.

However, if no Keyword or Smart Collection is currently selected, it will still just match back to the Event.

For a number of years now, CommandPost has had a Reveal in Keyword Collection action:

If you trigger Reveal in Keyword Collection on a clip in the timeline that has multiple keywords applied to it, it will prompt you for which one you want to reveal to:

This feature still works great on Final Cut Pro 10.7, and can be handy when you want to quickly match back to a Keyword Collection, rather than an Event.

Faster HEVC and H.264 export will only happen if you're using macOS Sonoma and a Mac with Apple M1 Max, M1 Ultra, M2 Max, M2 Ultra, or M3 Max.

It works by simultaneously processing video segments across available media engines, but it will only split up video to the different media engines if the content is long.

For example, you won't get faster exports if you have a 30sec or 1min timeline, but a feature length film you'll see improvements.

Because an export is essentially "split up" into multiple chunks for different media engines, there's also some time spent at the end of the process to "combine" the chunks again. Whilst this is all done in the hardware, there's still some overhead, which is why it won't split things up for shorter clips (as you'll waste time combining them at the end).

As an example, on my 2021 16-inch MacBook Pro (Apple M1 Max, 64GB RAM, 8TB SSD), a 1 hour and 35 minute timeline was split up into three chunks for HEVC export.

The Command Set Import window now only accepts .commandset files! This was reported as FB12868396. Thanks Apple!

The relink progress bar has been improved, so that the progress bar doesn't "block" the Relink panel interface. This means that as things relink in the progress bar, you can visually see things get removed in the matched files list.

Whilst so far Final Cut Pro 10.7 has been pretty stable and reliable, I've still seen it do some funky things.

For example, random red lines in the Timeline for no apparent reason:

If you see something similar, please report it in FB13434993.

The Scrolling Timeline sometimes misbehaves at certain Zoom Levels. This is discussed in FB13436367.

Some users have reported that Final Cut Pro thinks a QWERTY keyboard is attached, when instead a AZERTY keyboard is.

If you're using a AZERTY keyboard, we would suggest backing up your custom Command Sets prior to updating to Final Cut Pro 10.7, so that you can import them back in.

I've been able to make it crash using third party Audio Units, even after selecting Settings > General > Audio Units > Validate on Next Launch.

Also, since at least Final Cut Pro 10.6.10, Send To Compressor doesn't correctly render any third-party audio effects.

If you can reproduce, please report it in FB13435050.

The Inspector button tooltips have disappeared - it now just says:

If you can reproduce, please report it in FB13435003.

When first installing Final Cut Pro 10.7 it had the code name for ProRes Proxy in the Rendering Dropdown:

Since seeing this, ProRes Proxy is no longer an option in the Rendering Dropbox.

When trying to change a font, the font variation popup menu would sometimes loose it's text, and you couldn't select a different variation.

Interestingly, when this is happening and you hover over the empty popup menu items, the render bars above the selected Title go crazy.

This could prove to be a major regression - but we need to do some more testing to confirm exactly what's going on. So far some other users have been able to reproduce this, so it looks like a bug sadly.

If you can reproduce this issue, please let us know in FB13434977.

However, generally speaking, it's been pretty rock solid - even when enabling the Scrolling Timeline on our massive Blackmagic RAW test timeline, which is full of all kinds of weird and wonderful BRAW clips in all different types of frame sizes, frame rates and aspect ratios.

We'll continue to test and explore Final Cut Pro 10.7 over the coming weeks and report any findings on FCP Cafe.

If you spot any bugs or issues, please make sure you report them on the Bug Tracker. Thanks team!

We've updated Transfer Toolbox so that it now works with Final Cut Pro 10.7 and Final Cut Pro 1.3 (for iPad).

You can now transfer Final Cut Pro libraries from your Mac to your iPad for free!

You can learn more and download here.

The original X2Pro will remain on sale, as X2Pro5 only works on macOS Ventura & Sonoma.

It's been completely re-written and redesigned with the following new features:

• Native Apple silicon support
• Expanded roles
• Enhanced media management
• Simple workflow via redesigned UI

Marquis’ new X2Pro5 software has been designed to integrate Final Cut Pro projects into a professional audio workflow, enabling Avid Pro Tools to be used for audio finishing. It works by converting the exported Final Cut Pro XML into an AAF file, which Avid Pro Tools can then open as a session, delivering seamless integration between the two applications.

X2Pro5 is a complete rewrite of Marquis’ popular X2Pro Audio Convert software, bringing with it native Apple silicon support and a redesigned user interface.

X2Pro5 takes advantage of the innovative metadata-based organising features in Final Cut Pro X, with expanded role management allowing unlimited numbers of audio roles in Final Cut Pro X to be converted into Pro Tools tracks for further audio processing and finishing by the audio engineer.

X2Pro5 has a simple, straightforward interface and is easy to customise; for example, you can decide if you want to include disabled or inactive clips in the export, and you can choose the length of frame handles. The software provides a fully professional audio workflow for Final Cut Pro editors, enabling a very complex audio timeline to be sent to the Pro Tools audio engineer with ease.X2Pro5 faithfully translates your audio timeline along with L-cuts, J-cuts, transitions, levels, automatic gain and fade handles, as well as the incredibly powerful FCP X compound and multicam clips. Transitions are converted into linear cross fades. Audio media can be any QuickTime supported audio, non-PCM audio is converted to PCM at either 16 or 24 bit.

With immersive audio technology continuing to grow in popularity, X2Pro5 provides a quick way for FCP users to be able to deliver a project to an external Pro Tools audio editor, sharing the FCPXML file so they can mix – and deliver – multi-channel audio.

R3D media is supported.

We recommend rendering an off-line or proxy version of the flattened video and exporting that if a reference is needed within Pro Tools. Only audio media is translated by X2Pro5.

System Requirements:

• Final Cut Pro X, and FCPXML from v1.7
• macOS 13 Ventura and later. X2Pro5 is tested on the latest release macOS and the previous release.
• Pro Tools v7.0 or later for AAF import (not LE versions, v7 and v8 require Digitranslator for AAF import)

You can purchase on the Mac App Store here.

It now supports Final Cut Pro 10.7 libraries.

You can learn more here.

You can read it here.

Philip & Gregory are the geniuses behind Intelligent Assistance - please check out all their amazing tools!

We will also be bringing back some of Ronny Courtens's amazing case studies over the coming weeks! Stay tuned.

It includes the following changes:

🔨 Improvements:

• Added support for Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K G2.
• Added support for Panasonic Lumix G9II Blackmagic RAW clips.
• Updated from Blackmagic RAW SDK v3.4 to v3.6.
• Updated from FxPlug v4.2.8 to v4.2.9.

🐞 Bug Fix:

• Fixed a potential crash when pressing the Remove Selected button in the Workflow Extension.

You can learn more here.

It's now equipped with xxh64 hash, ensuring rock-solid data integrity during your media transfers.

Streamlined and secure – because your files deserve the best!

You can get 25% off using the promo code: MU8SNH9

This offer ends 24th December 2023.

You can learn more here.

You can also find this video on Twitter.

If you haven't read Thomas' case study on FCP Cafe - do it now!

For those Tangent Panel users out there...

They've added a great new feature to their Warp Engine which now allows you to simply record actions performed on the application’s GUI, and associate those recorded actions to a control on the panel.

The control can be a button, knob, dial, trackerball or ring.

Moving or pressing the control will trigger the playback of the recorded actions.

This means that there’s no longer any need to code Warp Scripts by hand (although you can still do this if you prefer).

Actions that can be recorded are:

• Mouse moves.
• Mouse drags. Note only a single drag can be performed in a recording.
• Mouse button clicks.
• Mouse scrolls. This is useful if sliders accept a scroll input.
• Keyboard keypresses.

You can learn more and join their beta program via their website.

Final Cut Pro Mastery: Learn How To Create Templates, Titles, Transitions, Effects & More

It's personalised 1-On-1 Training.

Afraid of Apple Motion like I am? This is the training for you!

You can learn more here.

This is explained in more detail on the Bug Tracker page.

For example, Threefold Films recently tweeted:

Simon Says Transcription is crashing #fcpx and making my day harder today….

However, as explained on the Bug Tracker, this is a Final Cut Pro bug - nothing to do with Simon Says.

There is also a workaround, as documented here.

This release contains the following bug fix:

• Fixed a potential crash that we've been trying to solve for ages. On SOME systems (specifically systems with Mac2 family GPUs), Apple's Metal Framework would generate a Metal Texture that the Metal Performance Shader in the Mac couldn't actually work with, causing a crash deep within Apple's code. It was very hard to reproduce, as it only happened on certain systems - and none of ours. HUGE thank you to Apple Developer Technical Support, the Final Cut Pro Team, AdrianEddy and Warren Moore for all their constant and on-going help, assistance, guidance, patience and support!

Gyroflow Toolbox also contains this same code/problem, which we've fixed - however, we're currently waiting for one more fix in Gyroflow Core before pushing publicly - hopefully soon.

I'd like to introduce you to a new plugin creator for Final Cut Pro.

Itallo is a former employee of LenoFX, he's now behind IF Motion.

He is launching his paid plugins and is offering a 20% discount when you use the code: LENOFX20

Leno says:

You can also download the freebies to try them out, they are great. Especially the Basic Transitions.

You can learn more here.

Metaburner Pro is a Motion Generator that accepts a FCPXML, and "writes" the FCPXML metadata over the top of your Final Cut Pro timeline.

Think of it as basically the same as the Data Burn-In tool in DaVinci Resolve.

It's incredibly early days - however we hope to have a early alpha on TestFlight in the coming weeks.

We are working closely with the professional Final Cut Pro Community, to make sure it's useful for high-end productions - especially long-form projects with big VFX deliverables.

It will be released on the Mac App Store for USD$100.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, feel free to post them in the GitHub Issues for Metaburner Pro.

Here's a sneak peak of the early development (with a placeholder icon):

Thanks to everyone who's already offered ideas and suggestions!

Onwards & Upwards!

The series was animated in Adobe Animate, and edited in Final Cut Pro by Kevin Luk.

If you haven't already, you can read a Case Study about the series on FCP Cafe here.

You can watch the series for free on YouTube here:

Hi all! We’ve finally been able to release our latest documentary “To My Father” on YouTube this week now that it’s completed its primary festival run.

It’s a short biographical documentary about Academy Award winning actor Troy Kotsur which illustrates how he drew inspiration from his relationship with his father.

We were inspired to make it based on his touching speech he gave as he won the Oscar in 2022 (the first for a deaf male actor) for his performance in the movie CODA (AppleTV).

Our hope in making this film was to honor Troy and his father, but also to present the piece in a way that was accessible to a hearing and deaf audience at the same time.

Troy’s story is told in American Sign Language (ASL) with open captions on for the duration of the movie.

This was a truly challenging piece to edit and we had to consult with a lot of deaf experts to make sure we were accomplishing our accessibility goals. I think we did what we set out to do and I’m very proud of the finished work.

I hope to do a longer case study in the future now that I can reflect on the project in its completion. I appreciate all the help and support I received from the FCP community in the editing process and will pass along what I’ve learned. Please watch if you get a chance. Thank you!

You can watch on YouTube here:

It includes the following improvements:

1. Increased amount you can scale video Inside of PIP from 200% to 800%
2. Added 4 Animations for introducing your PIP. More to come!
3. Added Long Shadow Effect
4. Added Gradient colors to outline
5. Added Glow Effect with Animation Capabilities
6. Added Sharpening Option to PIP video
7. Added Flip Option for PIP Video
8. Added Gradient option for background
9. Minor tweaks and fixes
10. Improved thumbnails
11. Overhauled the installation process, making updating even easier!

You can watch a video explaining the new feature on YouTube here:

Thanks for sharing!

You can learn more here.

• Improved stability and robustness when using multiple instances of the plugin.

You can learn more here.

• Final Cut Pro 10.7 has shipped (UPDATED 12/11/23) and export segmentation might speed things up for you

It's worth a read to hear more details about how to speed up exports with simultaneous processing in Final Cut Pro for Mac.

You can also read about it in the Final Cut Pro manual here.

For example, last night Nguyễn Quốc Hoàng contacted me asking the following:

Hi Chris, wanna ask if you know any app that can transfer / copy tags-metadata from original clips to trimmed clip (based on filename).

My problem is, after the project is finish and I trimmed all the project video files into a smaller segments to archive.

My metadata, finder tags are lost.

This is the perfect problem for something like CommandPost to solve, via it's powerful Lua scripting.

Here's the solution I quickly came up with (which was posted here on the CommandPost GitHub Discussions):

-- Get a the Source Folder Path:
local lastSourceFolder = cp.config.get("tagCopier.LastSourceFolder", "")
local sourceFolder = hs.dialog.chooseFileOrFolder("Source Folder:", lastSourceFolder, false, true, false)
local sourceFolderPath = sourceFolder and sourceFolder["1"]
if not sourceFolderPath then return end
cp.config.set("tagCopier.LastSourceFolder", sourceFolderPath)

-- Get a the Destination Folder Path:
local lastDestinationFolder = cp.config.get("tagCopier.LastDestinationFolder", "")
local destinationFolder = hs.dialog.chooseFileOrFolder("Destination Folder:", lastDestinationFolder, false, true, false)
local destinationFolderPath = destinationFolder and destinationFolder["1"]
if not destinationFolderPath then return end
cp.config.set("tagCopier.LastDestinationFolder", destinationFolderPath)

-- Get a table of Source Files:
local sourceFiles = cp.tools.dirFiles(sourceFolderPath)
if not sourceFiles then
    hs.dialog.blockAlert("Tag Copier Cancelled", "No source files could be detected.", "Cancel")
    return
end

-- Get a table of Destination Files:
local destinationFiles = cp.tools.dirFiles(destinationFolderPath)
if not destinationFiles then
    hs.dialog.blockAlert("Tag Copier Cancelled", "No destination files could be detected.", "Cancel")
    return
end

-- We'll store our Source File Tags in here:
local sourceTags = {}

-- Save all our Source File Tags for future reference:
for _, filename in pairs(sourceFiles) do
    if filename ~= "." and filename ~= ".." then
        local currentFile = sourceFolderPath .. "/" .. filename
        local currentTags = hs.fs.tagsGet(currentFile)
        if currentTags then
            sourceTags[filename] = currentTags
        end
    end
end

-- Count how many files we apply Tags too:
local fileCount = 0

-- Apply our Source File Tags to any matching Destination Files:
for _, filename in pairs(destinationFiles) do
    if filename ~= "." and filename ~= ".." then
        local currentFile = destinationFolderPath .. "/" .. filename
        local currentTags = sourceTags[filename]
        if currentTags and type(currentTags) == "table" then
            hs.fs.tagsSet(currentFile, currentTags)
            fileCount = fileCount + 1
        end
    end
end

-- Show Competition Alert:
hs.dialog.blockAlert("Tag Copier Complete!", "Tags were applied to " .. fileCount .. " files.", "OK")

You can literally just paste this into the CommandPost Debug Console, and away you go!

You can learn more about CommandPost's Lua Scripting here.

If you haven't already, you can read his INCREDIBLE Developers Case Study about Transcriber on FCP Cafe here.

Whilst you're there, you should also read Demystifying Final Cut Pro XMLs by Philip Hodgetts & Dr Gregory Clarke from Intelligent Assistance.

Alex makes some incredible tools such as:

• Transcriber
• BeatMark Pro
• FCP Diet 2
• Ulti.Media Converter 2
• FCP Video Tag
• FCP Cut Finder
• FCP SRT Importer 2
• FCPX AutoDuck
• Subtitles Extractor
• Smart Video Splitter
• Cleanterview
• ...and many more audio, After Effects, podcasting and utilities!

If you haven't already subscribed, Alex has been doing an super fun and entertaining YouTube series, called The Morning Rant.

You can find all the previous episodes on his YouTube Channel here.

He recently just posted this great rant:

The YouTube description says:

The main focus of the video is on my exploration of integrating automatic ducking into Final Cut Pro. I reflect on my past app, FCPX AutoDuck, and express the desire to enhance its functionality by making it work within Final Cut Pro. I detail the complexities of the task, involving parsing FCP XML and dealing with intricate timelines, nested timelines, and various editing techniques. I acknowledge the difficulty of achieving automatic ducking within Final Cut Pro, emphasizing the absence of this feature even in the latest versions.

I highlight my commitment to this project as a side venture while prioritizing the release of FCP Pause Cutter in 2024. Despite the challenges and doubts, I share my progress on Twitter, showcasing a potential icon for the app. I express skepticism about the feasibility of creating a seamless and efficient automatic ducking feature but remain dedicated to personal research in this area.

The video concludes with a mention of a pre-production meeting in Milan and my reluctance to take on low-budget, demanding projects. I express concerns about the future of Final Cut Pro, hinting at a possible decline.

Here's a full transcript of the video, created using Transcriber (so if there's any typos - Alex can only blame himself, haha):

Hi there, welcome to the morning rant.

I know that I treat this show as a podcast because you know this should be a YouTube show but I talked to this strange camera on my car as I will talk to a microphone to a simple microphone doing a podcast and that's a problem because this is not a podcast but I treat it as a podcast because I'm a podcaster since 2011 and so after something like more than a thousand episodes I recorded sometimes even longer than one hour so this is my comfort zone.

A podcast is my comfort zone.

Doing video is something like I do to force myself to look into a camera and try to do something not so ugly.

So today I want to talk about what happened yesterday and because it can be interesting for everybody who's trying to understand why something happens and something doesn't happen in the realm of a Final Cut Pro.

Okay so yesterday was a very strange day because the night before yesterday I couldn't sleep because my son had a little problem trying to sleep and so it was a blank night.

I don't know how to translate this into English but me and my wife didn't sleep almost anything and yesterday was a strange day because I couldn't go to the office.

I took one day off because you have to do a lot of things related to my son.

We had to do vaccination, having a meeting with the teachers of the kindergarten.

So doing a lot of stuff and I didn't have much time to focus on anything.

I spent something like one hour in the office with my wife in my wife's office trying to produce something but I couldn't focus on anything and so I started doing a little research and considered that I spent one hour but it was segmented in maybe three parts because twice we had to go to the bar and take some coffee.

In Italy, Espresso is something like a religion and we like coffee.

I like coffee and then we took a lot of coffee yesterday because we needed to stay awake.

I tried to do some research because I created many apps that communicate with Final Cut Pro in the sense of passing data to Final Cut Pro.

You know, you prepare something into my apps and then the apps prepare something and send the data to Final Cut Pro and then you can finish the work on Final Cut Pro.

So the workflow works on my app and then after computation, decision making and something like this, the final work can be done, should be done and must be done in Final Cut Pro.

There are a lot of apps that work inside of Final Cut Pro or using Final Cut Pro data and so they can take data from Final Cut Pro, computate them and then send them back to Final Cut.

Okay, there are a lot of stuff like this.

I think that Bitmark Pro can work like this.

Choose one music, you choose a lot of clips and then you can send all the stuff to Bitmark Pro to create a new timeline with the beats in sync with the music and then edit it in sync with the music and send the final result back to Final Cut Pro.

Now Bitmark works all in one direction.

You create all the documents, you load the music, you load the assets into Bitmark Pro and then Bitmark Pro creates this timeline and then it sends it to Final Cut Pro.

And I say to myself it would be nice to understand, to learn how to send data from Final Cut Pro to my app, to my apps and then send them back.

And so I started doing a little research.

Everything started because I needed to do an automatic docking.

My first app was FCPX AutoDock.

It does automatic docking outside Final Cut Pro because you load the speaker track and then the audio, the music track and then it produces a new timeline with the audio, with the music track, with keyframes that lower the music and raise it up to make automatic docking.

So when there's someone speaking or talking, the music goes down and then after the speech, after the talking, the music returns up in a very elegant and seamless way.

It's not an automatic docking that works in one direction because it goes backwards.

It analyzes the clusters of the talking and then starts lowering the music before the talking.

It's something like it goes backward in time.

It can do this because it works on files and not in real time.

And I needed to do something like this and then I said to myself "Ok, this is an app that is out since 2017.

I don't know.

It's one of my first apps I ever developed.

The interface is old, maybe ugly.

It works.

It still sells today because it's useful.

But it will be super, super, super, super, super, super, super useful if it can work inside Final Cut Pro, take in a timeline with many dialogues, stuff and many musics and then do automatic docking on the complete timeline.

And I said to myself "Ok, let's try to research this as a side-side project because I'm very focused to put out on the market FCP Postcutter that will be my super big app of the 2024 because it's a super big app.

It's super powerful.

But I said to myself "Ok, let's do this some kind of side-side project while I'm working in the office of my wife." Doing this kind of stuff is hard.

It's very, very hard.

I tried to understand if there's some library, some framework on GitHub to parse the FCP XML because Final Cut Pro communicates with other apps via an XML.

A subset of an XML or an extension of XML, that is FCP XML.

Something like a complete and total description of what happens in the timeline, in the event, in the library.

Almost everything that you can think about can be described in this XML.

It's a very huge and complex file.

It's something like an old kind of file because today everything is done by a JSON.

But once, a lot of time ago, before the introduction of JSON, we used XML.

It's beautiful that today we have JSON because XML is a pain in the I know what and you know what.

So I start trying to understand if there's someone who developed something like a parser for doing this.

And then I said to myself, "This thing is very complicated." Because think about a simple timeline, okay? You have a lot of dialogue.

You're doing something like an interview and then you have 10, 20, 50 little clips or segments of dialogue.

And then you have a background music.

So the music starts and then after 10 seconds of music, after the introduction, you have the first dialogue.

And then the music should go down and then should go up and that should go down to not interfere with the dialogue.

Then the dialogue finishes and then the music goes on for other 10 seconds.

The music goes up and then it fades out.

This is a very simple timeline.

To produce something like an automatic dacking, you have to do tons of stuff.

You have to recreate inside your app.

Inside my app I have to recreate the structure of the timeline with all the segments because you don't take a full clip without an in point or an out point.

You have to take dozens, hundreds of segments, shift them in time, understand if there's dialogue in this segment and then doing the same for the music or the musics, parsing what is dialogue and what is music but this can be done by other roles.

And then recreate a very complex structure of dialogues, segments of dialogues and music segments of music to produce this unique dialogue segment and a unique music segment, add keyframes and then send it back to Final Cut Pro.

It's not complex, it's almost impossible.

It's very, very hard and that's the reason nobody ever done an automatic dacking inside Final Cut Pro because it's hard.

And this is one of the easiest way of having a timeline.

What if you have a nested timeline, some compounds, secondary storylines, compounds with compounds of compounds, synchronized clip or if you do fade in and fade out of the music, crossfades.

There's a ton, a ton, a super ton of way of doing a single simple timeline, a common timeline, a normal timeline that you will do in your project.

And doing an automatic dacking for this is... it's a pain in the ass.

I don't know how to do this.

I'm trying to do this as a personal research, to do dacking with maybe one or two, let's keep it simple, one or two musics and a bunch of clips in the main timeline without compounds, without synchronized clips or without multicam.

Trying to understand if this is feasible as a personal research.

Yesterday I put on Twitter "okay I'm researching this kind of stuff with a version 2 of FCP Autodack" and I showed the ideal icon of the app, an icon that I developed for an episode of my podcast, TechnoPills.

It's in Italian, sorry for everybody who doesn't understand Italian.

And because I developed an autodacking feature for my app Ultimedia Converter and it works, it's cool, it's powerful, it's... yeah! Using artificial intelligence Firefly by Adobe I created this icon with a dack with a lot of speakers and it's beautiful.

And so I said to myself if I'll ever do an automatic dack, a version 2 of autodacking, I will use this as an icon.

So I think this is a some kind of a joke because I'm quite sure that I will never do an app that can do this in a seamless way, in an efficient way, in some way, because it's too hard to produce an automatic dacking.

Think about it, even Apple didn't do an automatic dacking for Final Cut Pro because there's so much you have to understand, to learn, to figure out.

It's almost impossible.

But they should do this.

I expect this is an upcoming version of Final Cut Pro but I'm working with an automatic dacking feature since 10.4 and now we have 10.7.

A huge improvement with the scrolling timeline for you! And no automatic dacking.

I don't know, sometimes I think that FCP is a die-hard platform but I keep it to myself because I base all my business on Final Cut Pro.

Well, I think that's all for today.

Now I have to run in the rain in my car towards Milan because I have a pre-production meeting for a very very very super strong low-budget product production that I don't want to do.

And I said to myself, you know, never accept this kind of works anymore because working with so little margins and with clients is so demanding, with an arrogant way.

It's something that hurts my stomach and then I need a lot of malox to survive.

Ok, that's it, now I run to this meeting and cross your finger for me and I'll keep you updated with the things that I will discover in my research trying to understand how Final Cut Pro thinks using XML.

It's 2023 and everybody should not use XML anymore.

That's all for today and as always I say... Ciao! Oh, remember to comment this video, like this video, subscribe to the channel, blah blah blah, all the stuff that all the good YouTubers do.

I don't do this because I'm not a YouTuber, I'm a podcaster.

This is just a video podcast.

I know that it will be more, more, more interesting doing this as an audiophile but you know what, I'm trying to experiment.

Ciao!

It's a great video, and it's inspired me to reply in more depth, here at FCP Cafe...

I absolutely love all of Alex's tool - I have personally bought them all, and use them all the time - especially Transcriber, BeatMark Pro and FCP SRT Importer 2.

However, one complaint I've always had is that Alex's tools don't use Workflow Extensions.

A Final Cut Pro Workflow Extension is a feature in Apple's Final Cut Pro that allows third-party developers to integrate their tools and services directly into the Final Cut Pro interface, enhancing the functionality and efficiency of the editing process.

They provide seamless integration as they appear as panels within the Final Cut Pro interface. This means editors can use third-party tools and services without leaving Final Cut Pro, maintaining a smooth and uninterrupted editing workflow. Their window position also gets saved in any saved Workspaces.

There is a diverse range of applications, and can vary widely in function, including tools for media asset management, stock footage libraries, music services, transcription services, and more. This variety allows editors to tailor their workflow according to their specific needs.

You can find Workflow Extensions on the Mac App Store, but they can also be released outside of the Mac App Store.

FCP Cafe keeps track of all the available Workflow Extensions here.

By having these additional tools integrated directly into the editing environment, editors can save time and effort. Tasks like searching for media, managing files, or transcribing audio can be done quickly and efficiently within Final Cut Pro.

I personally have a LOT of Workflow Extensions installed:

From a developers perspective, a Workflow Extension is basically just a custom view that you can put whatever you like inside it.

When you drag something from the Final Cut Pro Browser to any text box (i.e. TextEdit), what it's actually dragging is FCPXML data (try it yourself to see).

Because of this, you can easily drag objects from the Final Cut Pro Browser to your Workflow Extension, and vice versa.

For example, in Marker Toolbox you can drag your markers from the Workflow Extension back into your Final Cut Pro timeline as a Compound Clip (drag the green icon):

In BRAW Toolbox once you've imported all your BRAW footage, you can drag an Event from the Workflow Extension back into your Library:

You can also drag Libraries, Events and Projects back into the Workflow Extension via the Toolbox at the bottom of the user interface, for doing things like exporting a FCPXML for DaVinci Resolve.

You can also trigger a limited number of things via the Workflow Extension API.

For example:

• Observe Changes in the Final Cut Pro Timeline
• Move the Playhead Position

We use this API to allow CommandPost to programmatically move the playhead via the CommandPost Workflow Extension:

This Workflow Extension is super simple - it's just in Objective-C, and uses web-sockets to communicate back and forth between the Workflow Extension and CommandPost.

You can check out the source code on GitHub here.

Controlling the playhead via the API is a lot smoother and reliable than pressing virtual shortcut keys, or triggering menubar items.

But aside from that - that's really all Workflow Extensions can do. They're just a dumb window that a developer can control essentially.

In fact, we decided NOT to use a Workflow Extension for the CommandPost HUD - because there was really no advantage:

However, jumping back to Alex's video - I'd LOVE for Transcriber and BeatMark Pro to be quickly accessible from directly within Final Cut Pro.

I'd love to be able to just drag in an music track from the Browser into a Workflow Extension, do the processing, then drag the clip back into my timeline with markers added.

This is all possible, and somewhat easy to do.

You can learn more about Workflow Extensions on FCP Cafe here.

But Workflow Extensions are only one technology that third party Final Cut Pro developers get access to...

There's also Custom Share Destinations, which is something I've been digging into deeply recently, to help out Vigneswaran Rajkumar for his exciting upcoming app, Marker Data.

Sadly, Custom Share Destinations are terribly documented.

Essentially they're a way to "trigger" external apps once a render/export is complete - for example, this shows how Xsend Motion is triggered:

Final Cut Pro sends Apple Events to the third party application - and there's back and forth communication between Final Cut Pro and the third party app.

Thankfully, I happened to have a very old Apple sample project saved in my backups that demonstrates how this works - which has since sadly disappeared from the Internet.

I've uploaded the Objective-C example here.

I've also started attempting to port this example to a more modern Swift - but it's early days. You can track my progress here.

You can learn more about Custom Share Destinations on FCP Cafe here.

And last, but not least, we have FxPlug.

FxPlug is a powerful plugin architecture designed by Apple, specifically tailored for Final Cut Pro and Motion.

At its core, FxPlug enables third-party developers to create advanced effects, such as custom filters, transitions, and generators, expanding the capabilities of Final Cut Pro beyond its native features.

One of the key advantages of FxPlug is its support for high-bit-depth rendering, ensuring that the effects and transitions maintain the highest image quality without degradation. This is particularly important for professionals who require precision and high fidelity in their video projects. Additionally, FxPlug offers real-time performance, a crucial aspect for efficient workflow, allowing editors and motion graphic designers to preview effects without the need for time-consuming rendering.

Another significant aspect of FxPlug is its compatibility with Apple's Metal framework. This integration leverages the full power of modern Mac hardware, delivering accelerated performance and smoother playback, even with complex effects and high-resolution footage. The use of Metal also means that FxPlug plugins can harness the capabilities of the latest graphic processors, further enhancing the efficiency and speed of video editing tasks.

It provides a wide range of customizable parameters for each plugin, giving users complete control over the look and feel of the effects. This level of customization allows for greater creative freedom, enabling editors to achieve unique visual styles tailored to their specific project needs.

FxPlug is a robust and versatile plugin architecture that significantly enhances the capabilities of Final Cut Pro and Motion. Its support for high-bit-depth rendering, real-time performance, integration with Apple's Metal, and customizable options make it an essential tool for video editing professionals seeking to create high-quality, creative, and visually stunning projects.

Essentially though... FxPlug is basically just Filters & Generators for Apple Motion:

You can't directly use a FxPlug in Final Cut Pro - you need to make an Apple Motion template that uses it.

BRAW Toolbox and Gyroflow Toolbox both use FxPlug under the hood.

Here's a look at the BRAW Toolbox Motion Template:

Here's a look at the Gyroflow Toolbox Motion Template:

Gyroflow Toolbox is open source, so you can view the source code on GitHub here.

FxPlug is fairly flexible in that you can add your own custom parameters, and basically do whatever you want to the image.

I'm currently building a new app called Metaburner Pro which is using FxPlug on Swift:

You can learn more about FxPlug over at FCP Cafe here.

You can find a list of third party Motion Templates (some of which use FxPlug) here.

Ok, so you have Workflow Extensions, Custom Share Destinations, FCPXML and FxPlug.

There are third party frameworks for dealing with FCPXML too...

Pipeline Neo is a Swift framework for working with FCPXML files easily.

Originally developed by Reuel Kim and it is no longer maintained. Pipeline Neo was created as a spin-off project to fix and update the library when necessary.

You can learn more here. I've personally never really used it.

There's also DAWFileKit - a Swift library for reading and writing common import/export file formats between popular DAW and video editing applications with the ability to convert between formats.

DAWFileKit is made by Steffan Andrews, who is an absolute genius.

I've never personally used DAWFileKit, but I intend to play soon.

You can learn more here.

You also have Audio Units - which are basically system wide audio plugins that work in ProTools, Adobe Audition, Logic Pro, etc. You can use Audio Units on both Mac and iPad/iOS, which is interesting.

I've never personally played too much with Audio Units, as it's a GIANT rabbit hole, as you can see from the documentation.

Finally going back to Alex's video...

I totally think that Transcriber and BeatMark Pro could easily be ported to a Workflow Extension and improved to make it simpler and easier for Final Cut Pro editors.

In terms of bringing FCPX AutoDuck to a Workflow Extension, that's definitely possible too, but as Alex explains, you'd basically need to recreate Final Cut Pro's entire audio pipeline to mimic what Final Cut Pro does in FCPX AutoDuck.

One potential workaround could be to create a Custom Share Destination, allowing you to export AIFFs of dialogue, music and effects separately, and then the Workflow Extension uses these mix downs for the processing, and then applies the audio adjustments to a Compound Clip of all the audio clips in that role.

Because you can create a Custom Share Destination that can export roles as separate audio files, the user would just need to export to a single Share Destination, then at the end of the export/render, you could programmatically send these files to the Workflow Extension for processing. Once processing is complete, the user could drag a new project from the Workflow Extension to their Final Cut Pro Browser, which would have Compound Clips of the individual audio roles, and levels/effects applied to those compound clips.

It's slightly complex - because you need to communicate between the Custom Share Destination and the Workflow Extension, but certainly achievable.

But I totally agree with Alex in that CMTime is really hard and FCPXML can get insanely confusing.

For example, this is how we get the "current frame number" in Gyroflow Toolbox and BRAW Toolbox:

//---------------------------------------------------------
// Load the timing API:
//---------------------------------------------------------
id<FxTimingAPI_v4> timingAPI = [_apiManager apiForProtocol:@protocol(FxTimingAPI_v4)];
if (timingAPI == nil) {
    //---------------------------------------------------------
    // Show error message:
    //---------------------------------------------------------
    NSString *errorMessage = @"Unable to retrieve FxTimingAPI_v4 in pluginStateAtTime.";
    NSLog(@"[Gyroflow Toolbox Renderer] %@", errorMessage);
    if (error != NULL) {
        *error = [NSError errorWithDomain:FxPlugErrorDomain
                                     code:kFxError_FailedToLoadTimingAPI
                                 userInfo:@{
            NSLocalizedDescriptionKey : errorMessage }];
    }
    return NO;
}

//---------------------------------------------------------
// Load the Parameter Retrieval API:
//---------------------------------------------------------
id<FxParameterRetrievalAPI_v6> paramGetAPI = [_apiManager apiForProtocol:@protocol(FxParameterRetrievalAPI_v6)];
if (paramGetAPI == nil) {
    //---------------------------------------------------------
    // Show error message:
    //---------------------------------------------------------
    NSString *errorMessage = @"Unable to retrieve FxParameterRetrievalAPI_v6 in pluginStateAtTime.";
    NSLog(@"[Gyroflow Toolbox Renderer] %@", errorMessage);
    if (error != NULL) {
        *error = [NSError errorWithDomain:FxPlugErrorDomain
                                     code:kFxError_FailedToLoadParameterGetAPI
                                 userInfo:@{
            NSLocalizedDescriptionKey : errorMessage }];
    }
    return NO;
}

//---------------------------------------------------------
// Create a new Parameters "holder":
//---------------------------------------------------------
GyroflowParameters *params = [[[GyroflowParameters alloc] init] autorelease];

//---------------------------------------------------------
// Get the frame to render:
//---------------------------------------------------------
CMTime timelineFrameDuration = kCMTimeZero;
timelineFrameDuration = CMTimeMake( [timingAPI timelineFpsDenominatorForEffect:self],
                                   (int)[timingAPI timelineFpsNumeratorForEffect:self] );

CMTime timelineTime = kCMTimeZero;
[timingAPI timelineTime:&timelineTime fromInputTime:renderTime];

CMTime startTimeOfInputToFilter = kCMTimeZero;
[timingAPI startTimeForEffect:&startTimeOfInputToFilter];

CMTime startTimeOfInputToFilterInTimelineTime = kCMTimeZero;
[timingAPI timelineTime:&startTimeOfInputToFilterInTimelineTime fromInputTime:startTimeOfInputToFilter];

Float64 timelineTimeMinusStartTimeOfInputToFilterNumerator = (Float64)timelineTime.value * (Float64)startTimeOfInputToFilterInTimelineTime.timescale - (Float64)startTimeOfInputToFilterInTimelineTime.value * (Float64)timelineTime.timescale;
Float64 timelineTimeMinusStartTimeOfInputToFilterDenominator = (Float64)timelineTime.timescale * (Float64)startTimeOfInputToFilterInTimelineTime.timescale;

Float64 frame = ( ((Float64)timelineTimeMinusStartTimeOfInputToFilterNumerator / (Float64)timelineTimeMinusStartTimeOfInputToFilterDenominator) / ((Float64)timelineFrameDuration.value / (Float64)timelineFrameDuration.timescale) );

//---------------------------------------------------------
// Calculate the Timestamp:
//---------------------------------------------------------
Float64 timelineFpsNumerator    = [timingAPI timelineFpsNumeratorForEffect:self];
Float64 timelineFpsDenominator  = [timingAPI timelineFpsDenominatorForEffect:self];
Float64 frameRate               = timelineFpsNumerator / timelineFpsDenominator;
Float64 timestamp               = (frame / frameRate) * 1000000.0;
params.timestamp                = [[[NSNumber alloc] initWithFloat:timestamp] autorelease];

HUGE props to Dr Gregory Clarke for all the INSANE work he does with FCPXML - again, another absolute genius. It's a LOT of work - just look at how many updates XtoCC and SendToX have had over the years!

Hope this extended "rant" is useful! Any questions, please leave them in the Discussion below. Thanks team!

On Friday 15th December @ 1100 PST he will be doing a giveaway with over USD$9,000 worth of products and services!

Make sure you like and subscribe over at YouTube here.

The release notes simply say:

Updated to the Latest FxPlug4 SDK for FCP 10.7

You can learn more here.

It includes the following changes:

🔨 Improvements:

• We've updated to the latest Gyroflow Core Renderer. HUGE thank you to the amazing AdrianEddy for all his ongoing help, assistance, genius and support! There should be a minor performance improvement to playback, and slightly lower memory usage.
• Updated from FxPlug v4.2.7 to v4.2.9.
• 3156 lens profiles have been added from the hero Gyroflow project. Thanks to EVERYONE who has submitted lens profiles and another HUGE thank you to AdrianEddy for all the work that goes into managing them.
• We now load all lens profile when the FxPlug first starts, for faster importing later.
• We now show a loading popup when a Gyroflow project is being imported or generated for Final Cut Pro, so it's obvious that something is busy behind the scenes.
• We've added a Grant Sandbox Access and Reset Sandbox Access menu items to the Settings button in the Inspector, so that you can grant Gyroflow Toolbox access to an entire drive, for faster importing.

🐞 Bug Fix:

• Fixed a potential crash that we've been trying to solve for ages. On SOME systems (specifically systems with Mac2 family GPUs), Apple's Metal Framework would generate a Metal Texture that the Metal Performance Shader in the Mac couldn't actually work with, causing a crash deep within Apple's code. It was very hard to reproduce, as it only happened on certain systems - and none of ours. HUGE thank you to Apple Developer Technical Support, the Final Cut Pro Team, AdrianEddy and Warren Moore for all their constant and on-going help, assistance, guidance, patience and support!

You can learn more here.

• Bug fix to improve the accuracy of time stamps during speech-to-text transcriptions

You can download the latest version on the Mac App Store here.

• Code refactored to remove the optional use of non-XL Stable Diffusion models.

You can download the latest version on the Mac App Store here.

You can download the latest version on the Mac App Store here.

It's an advanced Metadata Generator for Final Cut Pro. You can access it via a Title in the Titles sidebar.

It gives you 25 text layers that you can populate with whatever metadata you want. You can full control over the text formatting.

You can even stack multiple Metaburner Pro Titles on top of each other for UNLIMITED titles!

You can import your Final Cut Pro project/timeline back into the Metaburner Pro Title via a drop zone, so Metaburner Pro has full access to everything that's in the FCPXML.

You can learn more here.

• Bug fix for the Transcript player loading and playing certain types of multicam clips

You can download the latest version on the Mac App Store here.

It includes the following changes:

🐞 Bug Fix:

• Fixed white balance control for Panasonic GH5S and BGH1 Blackmagic RAW clips.

🔨 Improvements:

• Updated from Blackmagic RAW SDK v3.6 to v3.6.1.

You can learn more here.

• mFlare 2 v3.0.5: Improved stability and robustness when using multiple instances of the plugin
• mTracker 3D v2.0.5: Improved stability and robustness when using multiple instances of the plugin
• mTracker 3D Area v1.0.6: Improved M3 support and stability when using multiple instances of the plugin

You can learn more here.

Hedge PostLab is now out in public beta!

If you're interested in joining the beta you can complete this form here.

You can learn more about the public beta here.

We're super, super excited to put it through it's paces!

The description reads:

Today I wanted to take a second to highlight some members of the Final Cut Pro community who make plugins for FCP. These creators are always lending a hand in the Final Cut Pro facebook groups, so let's return the favor and support their small businesses!

You can watch it on YouTube here:

This release includes:

• Improves stability on Intel-based Mac models when using Color Wheels or Color Curves on H.264 video clips (reported on FCP Cafe here).
• Fixes an issue with some default keyboard shortcuts working incorrectly on non-English keyboards.

Thanks for the fast turnaround Apple!

We'll test it over the coming days and weeks to see if there's any other undocumented changes/fixes.

• Bug fixes for syncing the preview player with the selected text block after splitting or merging paragraphs
• Bug fix for offline media warning dialog

You can download the latest version on the Mac App Store here.

Beta 14 introduced Lua scripting - allowing you to programmatically generate whatever text you want!

It's still very much a work-in-progress, with the aim to release on the Mac App Store by end of January.

You can learn more and join the TestFlight beta here.

You can learn more here.

• Critical bug fix for loading new clips into the preview player (introduced in version v4.1.10)

You can download the latest version on the Mac App Store here.

You can download the latest version on the Mac App Store here.

Season's Greetings, Colour Graders!

Big news: Colourlab Ai V3 Creator for Windows and Mac has landed! It's not just an update – it's a game-changer, rebuilt from scratch with a new Ai Color Engine, offering 10x more precision than ever.

Grab Your Gift! Download it free and enjoy a 15-day playtime. Current Colourlab users, you've got a free upgrade waiting in your account.

Quick Notes:

Syncs with DaVinci Resolve (more compatibility coming soon). January: Adding Premiere and FCP support. February: Pro Release with RAW support, SDI, and Tangent. Requirements: OS13+ or Windows 10.

Happy Holidays and Happy Grading!

You can learn more here.

It's worth having a look through the entire thread, as Carsten gives a lot of interesting insights into this fun workflow.

It reminds me when I was back in film school in 2008, working on my SAKOOZ feature film proof-of-concept, which we shot on an early RED ONE.

Inspired by this Tweet, here's an old blog post I wrote back in December 2008:

When we first started thinking about the best way to put together the Sakooz trailer, we originally thought that Super 16mm and a film scan route would be the most appropriate option given our budget, and the “Hollywood trailer” look that we were after. However, after various camera tests (we’ll post some further information on these tests another time), and a bit of number crunching, it became clear pretty quickly that shooting on the RED ONE was going to achieve better results, cost less and make the post production just that little bit easier (at least in theory) by keeping everything digital. And so, after getting in touch with Cail & Pete from Inspiration Studios, and doing some tests with their brand new toy camera – we decided to shoot the Sakooz trailer on RED.

In terms of Principle Photography, everything pretty much ran exactly the same as if we were shooting on film. We lit it exactly the same way, and Ben (our DOP) still had his light meter by his side. Because we needed to shoot so much very quickly (time wasn’t on our side), I decided against setting up a “video village” and even a directors monitor – preferring to be there in the action, behind Ben, peaking over his shoulder to watch the on-camera LCD. This worked really well.

Although the plan was always to shoot to card for safety reasons (we’ve all got disaster stories to tell about Firestore’s dying and hard drives being dropped!) – we decided to gamble and record straight to the RED-DRIVE (a special drive designed for the camera which can store 320GB in a RAID 0 configuration). Not only that – but we decided to leave the dumping to the end of the day. This was a HUGE risk, because if the drive died at the end of the day, we’d potentially loose a whole days worth of shooting. However, we didn’t have the crew available to have a dedicated “data technician”, nor did we have the hardware to dump the cards on a regular basis. This may seem really silly (I mean seriously – all you need is a Mac laptop and a card reader!), but we had neither of those things at the time, and it was just easier to use what we had available. Luckily – nothing went wrong, and the RED-DRIVE was faultless – it never dropped a single frame! However, to anyone else planning to shoot on RED – I strongly recommend you do the complete opposite to what we did! Record to CF card and dump as soon as the card is full.

Although in the end we didn’t end up using any of the sync audio – we recorded audio separately to a Sound Devices 744T, which was synced to a Smart Slate. Originally we had planned to sync the camera to the 744T as well, but for some reason we couldn’t get it to work on the first day of shooting, so we gave up. I believe the problem has since been fixed with one of the RED ONE Firmware Updates. We only had one microphone on set – a Sennheiser 416 on a boom. We basically just recorded sound to use as a guide track for when it came to adding sound effects later on.

At the end of each shooting day we dumped the RED-DRIVE and the 744T to two separate 1TB SATAII drives. For the duration of the shoot we managed to borrow a brand new MacPro Tower from Julian at Eidolon Creative and used this machine to do all the dumping as well as the transcoding. We put the two 1TB drives directly into the MacPro. We ended up with 508.34GB of camera footage, and a couple of GB of audio. We ended up purchasing two additional 500GB SATAII drives to make another backup of all of the R3D files – which we then stored at two separate locations away from our master edit suite, just in case. We called the drives Pinky (Master Edit), Bluey (Backup of Master Edit), Tumbles (R3D Master) and Splash (backup of R3D Master), because that’s what the names of the Sakooz creatures are called. Anyway… Now normally, on a “proper” production, you would have RAIDs and RAID 5 protection, etc. But unfortunately, we simply didn’t have the money for that, so we just had to make do with what we had. We had to manually copy and paste the files for backup purposes – we basically did this at the end of each day. We also kept a copy of the Final Cut Pro project on two USB thumbdrives just in case. Just for laughs, here’s a photo of some of the drives from our rather odd-ball collection. The top right one is Pinky. We ended up taking the covers off the enclosures as we found they got too hot when in use all day and night long.

After principle photography was wrapped we set the MacPro to work transcoding the R3D files using REDrushes (a free application which can be downloaded from the RED site). We were transcoding the R3D files to Apple ProRes 422 HQ files at 1920×1080. We were using the full debayer quality, and REDSpace for both the Colour & Gamma spaces. This took a HUGE amount of time (almost two weeks of none stop processing), but at the end of the day we ended up with some terrific QuickTime files that we could throw into Final Cut Pro and start editing, plus we could also send these clips to the visual effects kids so that they could start playing. We did run into one slight problem after we THOUGHT that everything was done. On inspection of the transcoded files, we realised that all the QuickTimes for Day Two of shooting were EXACTLY the same as Day Four. I’m still not sure whether that was human error or REDrushes being annoying – but either way we had to re-transcode all of the day four footage. Unfortunately at this stage we had to give back the MacPro, so we had to do all of this on a stock standard first generation MacBook. It wasn’t quite as fast as the MacPro, but it got the job done. Eventually.

Offlining using such high quality media may seem a little silly – I mean, really, we could have done a quarter res transcode to DV, and save a huge amount of time and disk space. Also, considering we were doing the offline on a bunch of eMac’s over Firewire 400 drives (that’s right… really old school eMac’s!), it would have also made the whole editing process a lot more fluid. However! By editing at such a great quality, it meant that whenever we did test screenings or had to show potential investors or sponsors, we could easily burn off a high-quality 1920×1080 QuickTime Movie that looks simply gorgeous even before grading. Here is a photo of our main editing machine.

...and the other babies:

I’m not even sure how this is possible, but we were able to play one video track of 1920×1080 ProRes on the eMac over Firewire 400 in realtime without any issues. And so, we basically edited away for several weeks in Final Cut Pro 6. We ended up doing a very rough grade using the 3-way Colour Corrector just so that when we showed other people to get opinions, they were looking at something that looked half decent. We tried a huge amount of different things in terms of the edit – we used a lot of different music as guide tracks. We even copied the audio from other big Hollywood trailers (such as the Dark Knight) and cut our footage to their soundtrack just to see what we could come up with. It was a very painful, long, but fun and creative process that I certainly won’t forget any time soon!

Whilst I was trying to lock down the picture, others were playing around with the visual effects. Initially, tests and trials were done by the various VFX artists using the ProRes QuickTime files. However, once we had locked down the trailer in terms of the edit, we used REDCINE to export out 4K TIFF sequences and 2K/1K DPX sequences for the visual effects people to work on. Ashley Smart (who did the effects for the Shed Explosion Sequence) was using 4K TIFF Sequences in After Effects on a laptop (which is quite incredible). James Otter used 1K DPX sequences in Nuke, and After Effects to achieve a lot of the effects shots, on a PC. And I used a good old MacBook, running After Effects and Shake to do the remaining shots. I ended up using After Effect’s own tracker for most of the tracking work, although I did use PFTrack for one of the shots. I also used Syntheyes on an old Dell Laptop for a small section of another shot. For Pinky eyes, I ended up brining in 4K DPX sequences into After Effects – which was fairly interesting on the poor old MacBook! But it worked, and the shots came out OK considering…

We ended up with 16 visual effects in total (including graphics). Once a visual effect shot was completed it was exported as a 1920×1080 DPX sequence ready for grading. For your viewing pleasure, here are some photos of After Effects genius James Otter, working away! I have no idea what the cardboard cartons are for, or where he got them. Needless to say, these photos were taken at some ridiculous early hour of the morning, after James and I had been stuck at uni for AT LEAST forty hours STRAIGHT!

Once the offline edit was complete, we tidied up the timeline so that everything was on the one track (where possible) and printed off an EDL. This then became our bible. At this stage, all the audio had been done in Final Cut Pro, with the occasional effect being done in Protools LE and Soundtrack Pro, and then exported out as an AIFF. We were still using guide track music.

By printing off the EDL we now had a hard copy of the trailer’s edit – which is always a good thing! But more importantly, it allowed us to easily track and manage everything. Because we couldn’t afford to purchase software such as Crimson Workflow, and we didn’t have time to write up our own proprietary software, we ended up doing a lot of things manually. For instance, we ended up going down the EDL line by line, and exporting a 1920×1080 DPX sequence from REDCINE. We made minor adjustments in REDCINE to get the most clean image and exported away. We put each shot in a different folder based on the EDL number assigned to the shot. For example, the first shot in the trailer was called 001_000001.DPX. This kept things nice and simple. Once every shot was exported out of REDCINE as DPX sequence (which took a night), it was ready for grading!

Originally we had planned to do the grade at one of the major post houses in Melbourne, but due to a lack of time and money, we ended up getting a very talented film school graduate called Nick Reid to do the grade in Apple’s Color. Getting the DPX files into Color proved to be a bit more tricky than anticipated! We ended up purchasing yet another 1TB SATAII drive (called Gizmo) for the colour grade.

What we ended up doing was wrapping all the DPX files as QuickTimes manually using AJA’s free DPXtoQTTranslator utility. Once all of the DPX’s were wrapped (including all the visual effects), we manually re-created the Final Cut Pro timeline based on the printed EDL using the newly wrapped QuickTime files. We then exported out a XML file from Final Cut Pro. This XML file was brought into Color and grading could commence. Nick took a couple of days to do the grade, and once completed, he handed back Gizmo, ready for the final stages!

With the grade now completed, we exported out AJA 10-bit Uncompressed RGB QuickTimes. We then used the AJA QTtoDPXTranslator to unwrap the QuickTime Files back to DPX files. As the AJA tool simply “wraps” the files – it doesn’t transcode them or anything like that, this process is really fast, although you do have to do it manually. For me, that means I have to do everything 69 times which isn’t too bad. The only annoying thing is that you have to rename all the clips again, as Color names everything sequentially, and we wanted everything named as per the bible (i.e. the EDL).

Now with a whole heap of beautifully graded DPX sequences, it was time to do the online. I ended up doing this at University on a nice and speedy MacPro in After Effects CS3. I imported all of the DPX sequences, and then manually put them all in the correct places based on the printed EDL. Once that was complete I simply rendered out a QuickTime File using the Animation Codec. Here is a photo taken at about four o’clock in the morning after I’d been at uni for about forty hours STRAIGHT working on Sakooz. You can see the insanity in my eyes.

The only thing left to do was sound! Once Frank (our composer) finished, he simply gave us a 24-Bit 48KHz Broadcast Wave File, which we threw into Final Cut Pro. After a bit of tweaking – adjusting the sound effect levels to suit the new score, the sound was ready to rock and roll! Originally we had planned to do a quite complex 5.1 mix just for fun – but at the end of the day, no one was ever going to listen to it in surround sound anyway, so we decided to skip on that idea (for now at least). Once the sound was done, we exported an AIFF and then merged the Animation Codec video and AIFF together to create the Final QuickTime Master!

From that QuickTime master we than could do any DVD, web, Blu-ray, etc. encodes using Compressor.

And that is the workflow we decided to use for Sakooz! At the moment we are just archiving all the project files to DVD, and keeping all the media on the SATAII drives. At some stage we will eventually put everything to LTO drives as a final backup – but we don’t have the money at the moment.

This wasn’t exactly the quickest workflow in the world (we did a lot of things manually that could have been easily avoided by using software such as Crimson Workflow, plus we used extremely old Mac’s and PC’s in a lot of cases), but a lot of it came down to money vs time. In some cases money won out, but more often than not, we decided to save money and do things the manual way. To be perfectly honest, it actually felt really nice to have a printed out EDL on which to direct everything! It felt much the same as the good old days with film!

If you have any questions about the workflow or how we did anything, feel free to post a comment. At some stage in the future we also hope to post some more detailed information on the various visual effects that featured in the trailer, so stay tuned!

Chris!

It's terrible, but you can watch the SAKOOZ trailer here:

Merry Christmas Team!

✨35% OFF STOREWIDE✨, 6️⃣0️⃣ mCredits CASHBACK and a FREE mLUT Vibrant! 🤩 Check out end-of-the-year deals👇 🎉 25% OFF STOREWIDE for all users, and 35% OFF for the CineStudio crew! Use the code: GREAT2024 👉 Don’t have it yet? Buy it now, and get a higher discount! 🎉 $60 in-store credit for buying a yearly CineStudio plan 🎉 FREE mLUT Vibrant for all who spend min. $100 in one order!

You can learn more here.

I know we're already 19 days into 2024, however rest assured, it's already been a very busy and exciting start to the year for the Final Cut Pro community!

For starters, we've just added a new case study about the Blood & Gold VFX Workflow.

We've also already released 32 beta builds of our latest app, Metaburner on FxFactory.

Why FxFactory? You can read more about our decision here.

For anyone who missed it, Metaburner is an Advanced Metadata Generator for Final Cut Pro.

It's a serious high-end professional tool, used by high-end feature film and television editors on projects for Netflix, etc.

!!!success Download Now! You can download Metaburner via FxFactory here. !!!

You can access it via a Title in the Titles sidebar.

Metaburner gives you 25 text layers that you can populate with whatever metadata you want.

You can even stack multiple Metaburner Titles on top of each other for unlimited metadata fields!

To begin, simply drag your Final Cut Pro Project from the Browser into the Metaburner Title Inspector via a drop zone, and then Metaburner has full access to everything that's in the FCPXML.

There's also a Lua scripting environment built-in, so you can even "code" your own text for unlimited possibilities.

You can even share Lua variables between multiple Metaburner titles for some crazy cool workflows!

Metaburner is currently in a public beta testing phase. You can download a free watermarked version from FxFactory, and you can also purchase to remove the watermark.

We've also started building another application called LUT Robot.

The above icon was designed by the amazing Matthew Skiles.

Unlike Final Cut Pro's built-in Custom LUT and Camera LUT tools, LUT Robot allows you to "link" to a LUT stored in any folder.

It also allows you to apply LUTs in bulk to clips - for example, if you have a unique LUT for each of your rushes files.

LUT Robot is currently in active development. We hope to release a beta on FxFactory in the coming weeks.

Looking back at 2023, it's pretty amazing to see what we've achieved...

On 26th May 2023 we decided to repurpose our Final Cut Pro Bug Tracker into FCP Cafe.

We launched the site with an awesome case study - Turn of the Tide.

We've since added a HUGE amount of information to FCP Cafe, including awesome case studies, developer case studies and highly technical information that you can't find anywhere else.

Our Bug Tracker has become the go-to resource for reporting and fault finding bugs in Final Cut Pro. We've been able to fix and solve several Final Cut Pro issues via this site, and have allowed Final Cut Pro users to connect with the Apple ProApps team - something that never really happened until now.

On 25th October 2023 we were very sad to learn that fcp.co had disappeared from the Internet, making FCP Cafe the new home for professional Final Cut Pro Editors.

Peter did such an incredible job with fcp.co, so it's quite a weight of responsibility for FCP Cafe. However, we're up for the challenge!

We've started slowing bringing back some older fcp.co articles - for example, today we're bringing back the Neighbours - Erinsborough High case study written by the incredible Ronny Courtens.

One of the best things about FCP Cafe, it's that's it's an open, community driven site. Anyone can contribute.

11 other video editors so far have taken up the challenge to learn GitHub and have contributed directly to FCP Cafe.

I've personally made over 801 commits to FCP Cafe so far.

Powered by Retype on GitHub, all the "back end" stuff is also completely open - you can even "fork" the site, and take our design and GitHub scripts for your own purposes!

For example, Sequence's Docs website is a fork of FCP Cafe.

In 2023 we attended the FCP Creative Summit and documented our adventures on FCP Cafe:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

We're hopeful that the FCP Creative Summit will come back in 2024, and we'll be able to cover it again.

In other exciting news CommandPost has now been downloaded over 200K times!

We've already pushed out two CommandPost updates in January 2024, and managed to do 8 updates in 2023. We'll continue to build-on and improve CommandPost this year.

It's pretty amazing to think that 2023 was also the first year we took the plunge into developing paid applications.

On 30th January 2023 we released BRAW Toolbox onto the Mac App Store - our first paid application.

There were LOTS of very smart people that told me that adding native BRAW support to Final Cut Pro would be impossible, but we made it happen, and BRAW Toolbox has now been downloaded over 1.98K times.

Next up, with the support of the incredible AdrianEddy, we brought Gyroflow Toolbox to the world. It's now been downloaded over 1.36K times.

We then brought Marker Toolbox to the world. It's now been downloaded 112 times - which is a shame because it's so darn handy! If you haven't already tried it, please look into it.

Recall Toolbox is a Final Cut Pro Workflow Extension that acts as a Shared Pasteboard. Anything that you can copy and paste in Final Cut Pro, Recall Toolbox can store. It's only been download 24 times, however those 24 users are extremely passionate about it, and seem to really love it.

Fast Collections is a Final Cut Pro Workflow Extension that allows you to quickly create a Smart Collection from a list of Keywords.

When you're working on massive long-form projects, such as feature-length documentaries with hundreds of clips and thousands of keywords, the Final Cut Pro interface can grind to a halt when using the built-in Smart Collection panel.

This simple Workflow Extension allows you to create a new Smart Collection, using a list of supplied keywords within seconds, rather than minutes.

If you have thousands of keywords across many events, it can take a long time to create a new Smart Collection with your preferred keywords directly within Final Cut Pro - but with Fast Collections, it can now take seconds.

You can also Generate a list of sequential numbers, for example, Scene 01, Scene 02, Scene 03, etc. This is very handy for long-form projects.

To be honest, we originally only built this application, to help out a single documentary filmmaker, but it's since been downloaded 19 times.

To make it cheaper and easier to purchase our Mac App Store Apps, we also introduced a bundle.

For only USD$100 (save USD$49.95!), you can now buy BRAW Toolbox, Gyroflow Toolbox, Marker Toolbox, Recall Toolbox & Fast Collections as a bundle!

The Mac App Store also supports Complete My Bundle - which credits customers for apps they’ve already purchased within a bundle. You only pay the balance for the remaining apps.

You can find the bundle on the Mac App Store here.

In addition to our paid apps, we also updated Transfer Toolbox.

Transfer Toolbox allows you to convert Final Cut Pro 10.7.1 (for Mac) Libraries into Final Cut Pro 1.3 (for iPad) Projects.

Transfer Toolbox has been downloaded over 579 times.

We also made a free little helper tool to Rename Avid MXF Files.

So what's in-store for the rest of 2024?

We'll continue to grow FCP Cafe into the go-to resource for professional Final Cut Pro editors.

We'll keep you up-to-date with all the latest Final Cut Pro related news.

We'll continue to teach and educate people on how to use Final Cut Pro technologies such as FxPlug, and Custom Share Destinations - as there's no other resources out there really to learn this stuff.

We'll continue to push Apple to fix and improve Final Cut Pro. We're in active discussions with them constantly over a range of things.

We'll continue to make tools to make your professional editing work easier, such as Metaburner and LUT Robot. We also have plenty more apps on the roadmap.

Thanks for your continued help and support!

Onwards & Upwards!

A watermarked trial of Power Tools PRO is now installed with the free Power Tools LITE.

You can learn more here.

Use the coupon code: WEEK30

You can learn more here.

Here's their press release:

evrExpanse 4.2.0 Ushers in a New Era of Media Management with Enhanced Offload Engine Milan, January 9, 2024 – EVRapp, a leading innovator in metadata-centric applications for videomakers, proudly announces the release of evrExpanse 4.2.0, a groundbreaking update that transforms the landscape of media management.

What's New in evrExpanse 4.2.0: 🚀 Enhanced Transfer Engine: Our Offload function is now turbocharged, delivering significantly faster file transfers compared to previous versions. Experience a speed boost that will revolutionise the way you manage your media and files. 📊 Genuine Multicore Experience: Harness the full power of your Mac, whether it's Intel-based or Apple Silicon. The enhanced transfer engine intelligently utilises all available cores, ensuring optimal performance for a seamless workflow.

Key Features of evrExpanse 4.2.0:

• Efficient Offload Process with Secure Data Transfer: The introduction of the Offloading Data Process ensures a streamlined and secure transfer of media files. The Offload function, empowered by the xxh64 hash function, guarantees comprehensive checksum verification, providing users with confidence in data integrity during transfers.
• Comprehensive Metadata Support: evrExpanse 4 boasts enhanced metadata workflow support for a wide range of cameras and file types, including MOV, MP4, MXF, and NEV. This compatibility ensures a seamless import of metadata into various NLEs, streamlining the post-production workflow.
• Smart Transcoding and Metadata Integration: The Smart Transcoding mode analyses audio and video streams, deciding whether to apply transcoding or passthrough based on the codec type. This ensures optimal quality preservation, and metadata integration facilitates a smooth editing experience.
• Process Plus© - Streamlined Workflow for NLEs: Process Plus© integrates transcoding, offloading, and metadata export into a single, cohesive operation. This streamlined workflow not only enhances efficiency but also ensures seamless integration with popular Non-Linear Editing systems (NLEs) like Final Cut Pro®, DaVinci Resolve®, and Assimilate SCRATCH®.
• Seal Processed Folders with ASC MHL or MHL v1: Users can seal processed folders using either ASC MHL or the legacy MHL v1. This feature ensures the creation of Media Hash List (MHL) files, tracking the integrity of all media files and providing a reference for digital motion picture production.

Note: The demo version of evrExpanse 4.2.0 has no limitations on the Offload function, allowing users to experience its full power before making a purchase.

Existing evrExpanse 4 users can upgrade to the latest version free of charge.

About the Developer: Antonio Marogna is one-man band in photography and multimedia production. Founder, antoinedelaroche - Photography and Multimedia Production. Founder, evrApp.cloud, an innovative software project dedicated to improving the accessibility and utility of metadata for media files within video editing platforms.

You can learn more here.

You can learn more here.

The description reads:

Everybody is switching to DaVinci Resolve, and a strange feeling is going through the Final Cut Pro Community. The lack of feature updates is the apparent cause – or is it? In this documentary, we will see that the underlying issue is something else entirely.

It contains all your favourite Final Cut Pro YouTuber's:

• Dylan Bates
• Jake Felzien
• Dylan John
• Rafael Ludwig
• Matthew O'Brien
• Richard Taylor
• Brad West

This was filmed before the Final Cut Pro Creative Summit in 2023.

You can watch on YouTube here:

• Increased the default number of banks from 15 to 30. Thanks for suggesting Daniel Rejowski!
• Updated from csv2notion v0.3.9 to CSV2Notion Neo v1.2.1. Thanks Vigneswaran Rajkumar!
• Added a new "Notion Workspace" field in the Notion & Shot Data Toolboxes. Thanks Vigneswaran Rajkumar!

Learn more from CommandPost.

• Added a Global Setting for Empty Data. This allows you to customise what gets displayed when no metadata exists for that Content Field. Thanks for suggesting Sam Pluemacher!
• Added separate content fields for Markers with Marker Type. Thanks for suggesting Sam Pluemacher!
• Added Stabilisation Content Fields. Thanks for suggesting Matthieu Laclau!

You can learn more here.

You can watch on YouTube:

Interestingly he hints:

WE HAVE A NEW FAVOURITE NLE

You can read it here.

• In Final Cut Pro 10.6.6, Apple merged the Masks and Keying Effects Categories into a single Masks and Keying Effects Category, which we never accounted for. CommandPost now correctly applies the Masks and Keying effects in Final Cut Pro 10.6.6 and later. However, if you already have a shortcut key or control surface button for any of these actions (such as Draw Mask), you may have to select the Scan Motion Templates button in the Final Cut Pro panel in CommandPost Preferences to re-scan all your effects, then reapply the action to your keyboard shortcut or button. Thanks for reporting Димитър Маратилов!

Learn more from CommandPost.

• Native support for Apple Silicon Macs
• Support for the latest version of Final Cut Pro
• Support for playing video and audio assets protected by DRM
• Updated Keychain permission prompt to only show when necessary
• Fixed a bug that prevented scrubbing asset thumbnails
• Bug fixes and performance improvements

You can learn more about Frame.io here.

You can watch a trailer on YouTube:

You can learn more here.

🔨 Changes:

• Metaburner Presets now have the file extension metaburnerPreset (instead of mbpPreset).
• The Metaburner Motion Template has been updated.

🔨 Improvements:

• Lots of big under-the-hood improvements. Metaburner now can handle very complicated and long feature film timelines without dropping frames. Thanks for reporting Sam Pluemacher!
• Added a new Open in Motion button to Controls. This allows you to easily create a new Apple Motion Template which you can customise however you want!
• We've moved the Open User Guide to the top of Controls so that it's more obvious.
• We no longer display "Text Layer 1", "Text Layer 2", etc in the Final Cut Pro Inspector to make it cleaner.
• We now save and restore Empty Data, Filter by Video Role and Filter by Audio Role in Presets.
• We've added a built-in Stabilisation Preset.
• Improved the error messaging when a FCPXML fails to load.
• Added a checkbox to Save FCPXML Internally within the Controls section. This is off by default. You'll only ever really need to turn it on if you want to access the FCPXML data via the Lua Scripting Engine.

🐞 Bug Fixes:

• Metaburner now correctly renders when in Half Resolution in Apple Motion and Better Performance in Final Cut Pro.
• Final Cut Pro now allows you to copy and paste the Metaburner Title. Thanks for reporting Sam Pluemacher!

You can learn more here.

Changes in this release:

• Added: V-RAPTOR [X] support
• Added: V-RAPTOR [X] Extended Highlights - BETA support
• Changed: improved IPP2 demosaic edge interpolation on strong color transitions
• Fixed: RED ONE clip UUIDs could be incorrect
• Fixed: unclosed R3D files could split a clip into multiple parts
• Fixed: HDRx clips could have undecodable frame at the end
• Fixed: Legacy decodes will now ignore RGB gains metadata if they are all set to 0

You can download here.

RT Markups is a set of 26 title templates for Final Cut Pro that gives you the ability to add customizable annotations to on-screen text, titles, or other elements that appear in web pages, newspaper and magazine articles, signs, posters, products, drawings, schematics, sheet music etc. Add them to any video, photo or illustration that has text or visual elements that you want to emphasize or exclude.

You can learn more here.

Quickly and easily lift subjects from the video background.

Background Remover automatically detects people, animals and objects that are the main focus of your videos, allowing you to extract a clean key from footage shot without a greenscreen or bluescreen. Background Remover is a quick, easy choice for masking the backdrop to a scene.

You can learn more here.

You can watch her using Final Cut Pro (on Mac) via the Vision Pro here:

They've also released this YouTube Video:

It allows you to easily convert between FCPXML versions.

For example, if you're working on Final Cut Pro 10.7, but you have an online artist on an older Autodesk Flame, you can convert from FCPXML v1.11 to v1.9.

Or if you have an old FCPXML in your archives, you can upgrade from v1.8 to v1.10.

Because Capacitor ensures it outputs FCPXML following Apple's strict DTD rules, you can also use Capacitor to "clean" FCPXMLs.

You can learn more here.

You can find on the Mac App Store here.

• Critical bug fix for a crash caused by making thumbnails on macOS Sonoma
• Bug fix for chapter markers on a transition

You can find on the Mac App Store here.

You can find on the Mac App Store here.

This is of relevance to Final Cut Pro users, because Michael Cioni is a long-time hardcore Final Cut Pro user, with a huge amount of knowledge and experience.

He's also the king of Apple's Keynote - and creates beautiful videos seamlessly mixing Keynote and Final Cut Pro.

No doubt, Strada will be highly integrated with Final Cut Pro, as that's what Michael uses to edit all of Strada's video.

Cook 'incredibly excited' about generative AI coming to Apple gear later in 2024

You can read the full article here.

Hopefully at WWDC we see lots of AI announcements, and we'll see some of those technologies added to Final Cut Pro towards October/November in the next major Final Cut Pro update!

• Why Tim Cook Is Going All In on the Apple Vision Pro
• iFixIt: Vision Pro Teardown—Why Those Fake Eyes Look So Weird
• Marques Brownlee: Apple Vision Pro Review: Tomorrow's Ideas... Today's Tech!
• Casey Neistat: The thing no one will say about Apple Vision Pro

• 32-bit floating point audio is converted to 32-bit linear audio to allow Pro Tools to import generated AAFs
• Fixed missing audio data in AAF
• Correctly using proxy audio rather than try to find the original audio
• Corrected display of channel names within certain versions of ProTools

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

Here's a YouTube video which explains the product:

You can learn more and buy here.

• Critical bug fix for a potential crash caused by decoding media security-scoped bookmarks when making thumbnails on macOS Sonoma

You can find on the Mac App Store here.

The developers write:

Unlock unparalleled speed and efficiency in your color grading workflow with the latest Colourlab Ai 3 integration for Final Cut Pro! This breakthrough update introduces the fastest grading capabilities yet, seamlessly blending Colourlab Ai’s powerful features with FCP’s intuitive interface.

Eager to see it in action? Watch our quick tutorial video to learn how this integration can transform your editing process, and then download Beta 21 to experience the future of color grading for yourself.

The future of fast, intuitive grading is here. Test it out now and make your projects shine like never before!

You can watch a demo video on YouTube here:

You can learn more here.

What's New in ChronoX 2:

• Enhanced Time Precision: Experience unparalleled accuracy with ChronoX's ability to measure export times down to hundredths of seconds.
• Expanded File Format Support: With support for a variety of file formats including .mov, .m4v, .mp4, and .mxf, ChronoX empowers users to master, publish, and broadcast their content with ease.
• Flexible Export Options: Set the Action: Open With... to your preferred video player, whether it be QuickTime Player or another compatible application.
• Simplified Installation: ChronoX now offers a streamlined installation process, eliminating the need for external dependencies like Python 3.

You can learn more here.

• Removed issue causing audio sync problems.

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

It includes the following changes:

• New feature: Preferences checkbox to keep thumbnail images (instead of having them automatically deleted)
• Bug fix to alert for fcpxmld bundles exported incorrectly as a "Final Cut Pro Document" instead of "Final Cut Pro XML Bundle"

You can find on the Mac App Store here.

Capacitor allows you to easily convert between FCPXML versions.

For example, if you're working on Final Cut Pro 10.7, but you have an online artist on an older Autodesk Flame, you can convert from FCPXML v1.11 to v1.9.

Or if you have an old FCPXML in your archives, you can upgrade from v1.8 to v1.10.

If there are differences between FCPXML versions, Capacitor will offer a list of warnings that you can also export.

Because Capacitor ensures it outputs FCPXML following Apple's strict DTD rules, you can also use Capacitor to "clean" FCPXMLs - for example, it corrects this bug in Final Cut Pro's output.

It support both .fcpxml files and FCPXML Bundles (.fcpxmld).

Capacitor was coded and created by David Peterson.

The Capacitor icon was designed by the amazing Matthew Skiles.

The Capacitor icon animation was animated by Mike Greaney.

You can learn more and download here.

Until 31st March it's USD$29.99 (before it increases to USD$34.99).

The official App Store description explains:

Embiggen automatically uprezes still images from Final Cut Pro Events or Projects and returns them back to your Event or Project.

The new higher resolution images will have the same scale, position and rotation animations as the originals and appear the same size in Final Cut Pro.

Using AI to make higher resolution images, Embiggen creates in-between detail you can zoom right into.

Simply drag your Event or Project from Final Cut Pro to Embiggen's floating interface and click Go!

Original and Embiggened images will returned to Final Cut Pro in Auditions.

Works with Apple silicon Macs running Final Cut Pro 10.5 or later.

Supports a wide range of images including: TIFF, PNG, JPEG, flattened PSD, GIF, BMP.

It does not support layered PSD files.

For images with alpha channels the alpha channel is removed.

You can read the official support documentation here.

They're already released v1.0.2 which adds an additional AI model, to ensure an optimal choice in upscaled image, taking advantage of different optimisations in each model.

It's a standalone application, not a Final Cut Pro Workflow Extension, however it has a handy Keep on Top toggle, to keep it above the Final Cut Pro interface.

You could use CommandPost to trigger the opening of the application via a shortcut key or control surface panel.

After you drag a Event or Project to Embiggen, it will prompt you for confirmation:

...and then ask you where you want to save the high resolution images:

It will then process the images:

...and you will be prompted as to which library you want to import the generated FCPXML file into.

I would love to personally see a few of these steps removed - however it's tricky to do in a sandboxed App Store environment, because when drag an Project from the Browser, the FCPXML that gets dragged has no metadata about the Library it came from (time for another Final Cut Pro feature request!).

If you dragged in a Project, you'll get a new Event back with a new project, which contains a Audition for every image that was Embiggen'd - so you can easily compare the new version to the original.

Under the hood it uses Core ML to do it's magic - so it's all on device.

Overall, it's a simple app that does one thing really well - it's certainly a very handy tool to have in your toolkit!

You can find the official website here.

You can purchase on the Mac App Store here.

You can read it here.

They write:

Apple has recently released the macOS 14.4 Sonoma update, which has resulted in compatibility issues for plug-ins protected by PACE / iLok with Audio Units host DAWs, such as Logic Pro, on Apple silicon Macs. Users have reported encountering problems with these plug-ins following the installation of the update, including DAW crashes.

If you are using Audio Units on an Apple silicon computer, it is advisable to postpone the macOS update until further information becomes available. We will keep you informed as soon as a resolution is found.

You can learn more here.

• Extended Highlight clips always decode in IPP2
• Improved IPP2 out of gamut color mapping
• Improved IPP2 high ISO black level consistency
• Fixed: Monochrome decodes
• Fixed: early firmware KOMODO footage being green
• Fixed: Metal Texture + Legacy decodes

You can learn more and download here.

• Bug fix for missing colorSpace attribute when using the "Alternate frame size" option for Synchronised or Multicam clips.

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

• New feature: Help button to access the online help
• Bug fix for markers on transitions in some cases
• Bug fix for calculating marker positions in cases where the clip's frame rate differs from the timeline's frame rate

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

Sidus TC Sync works with all footage and files. It doesn’t matter if you’re camera supports external timecode or if you’ve had to record it as an audio track. Sidus TC Sync’s automation feature detects and decodes the timecode signal.

• Supports SMPTE saved to the file’s metadata
• Supports Audio LTC records on a camera’s audio track
• Supports High Frame TC
• Supports Audio LTC recorded in WAV file or PolyWave file

Sidus TC Sync can export an XML for:

• Premiere Pro CC
• DaVinci Resolve 17 & Newer
• Final Cut Pro 7
• Final Cut Pro X 10.4.x
• Final Cut Pro X 10.3.x
• Final Cut Pro X 10.2.x

You can download the beta and learn more here.

• Bug fix for drag-and-drop of clips from Final Cut Pro to Builder NLE
• Bug fix for text block highlighting in the Clip Logging view after merging text blocks

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

• New feature: Total progress is now shown in the Dock icon
• Revamp of the app's Help menu

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

• Select one or multiple clips or ranges and drag directly to an event in FCP
• Download an entire Project to FCP
• Addresses issues that could cause the workflow extension to crash
• Improved error handling while navigating files and media

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

After a decade of hard work and lots of updates (amazingly, they were up to version v3.98!) Vincent Zorzi & Timothy Arms have decided to step away from their epic creation, and hand over development to Hedge to keep the application alive for the Final Cut Pro community.

Hedge have renamed the application to Arctic, and it has an awesome new icon.

You can read more about this in great detail on the Hedge blog.

If you already own Final Cut Library Manager, the application will continue to work indefinitely, but it will no longer be updated or supported.

Final Cut Library Manager customers will have already received a discounted upgrade for Arctic in their email inbox. Please contact Hedge if you didn't get it.

Arctic and Final Cut Library Manager are completely separate applications - each with their own unique licensing and updating systems - which means you can still run them side-by-side, or run Final Cut Pro Library Manager on your old machine, and Arctic on your new machine, etc.

You can learn more, and download a free 10-day trial on the Hedge website.

Emojisplosion is the easiest way to add hundreds of emoji-based particles to your videos. You can make them sit behind a title, enhance a background or make a magic wand sparkle.

Emojisplosion gives you all the flexibility you need, without the complexity of a full particle system. It's perfect for educational, social media and sports videos, and ready for portrait or landscape videos. Most of the particles here are packaged as titles, but emoji-based transitions are included too.

It's currently on sale for USD$39 for a limited time (before increasing to USD$59). There is also a free trial.

You can learn more on FxFactory here.

You can download on the Mac App Store here.

Notably, they've removed the BorisFX Mocha planar tracking engine from their products, and have replaced it with their own proprietary tracking engine.

• mCallouts Simple 3.0: Replaced Mocha with a proprietary tracking engine, various improvements and bug fixes
• mMessage 3.0: Replaced Mocha with a proprietary tracking engine, various improvements and bug fixes
• mCallouts Simple 2 3.0: Replaced Mocha with a proprietary tracking engine, various improvements and bug fixes
• mPointer 3.0: Replaced Mocha with a proprietary tracking engine, various improvements and bug fixes
• mFlare 2 3.1.1: Fixed a rare crash when refreshing the inspector interface
• mFilmLook 2.1.2: Support for diacritics in preset names, fixed a rare crash that might prevent the plugin from launching
• mMockup 1.2: Fixed display of 3D models on macOS Sonoma, various improvements and minor fixes
• mMessage 2 3.0: Replaced Mocha with a proprietary tracking engine, various improvements and bug fixes
• mHUD 2 3.0: Replaced Mocha with a proprietary tracking engine, various improvements and bug fixes
• mHUD 3 3.0: Replaced Mocha with a proprietary tracking engine, various improvements and bug fixes
• mTracker Surface 1.1: Improved planar tracking speed and accuracy

You can learn more here.

Every aspect of Frame.‍io has been redesigned with new features that give you all the power, flexibility, and control you need to manage your team's creative work.

You can watch the Keynote video here.

You can learn more and join the beta here.

You can read more about the new version over at fxguide.

MASSIVE Congratulations to Emery & the Frame.io team for the massive re-write! We can't wait to test it out!

You can use the discount code: NAB2024.

You can learn more here.

You can read more about their last 12 years on their blog here.

You can get 33% off FilmConvert Nitrate and CineMatch plugins.

Sale lasts until 22nd of April and excludes add-on’s and upgrades.

You can learn more here.

🔨 Improvements:

• Added support for Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K LF.
• Updated from Blackmagic RAW SDK v3.6.1 to v4.0.

🐞 Bug Fix:

• When clicking "Prepare BRAW Files", you'll now get an error message if the Audio Folder is currently in the Trash. Thanks for reporting Mark Terry!

You can learn more and download here.

🐞 Bug Fix:

• Fixed support for the latest Vimeo CSV format. Thanks for reporting Dave & YevantZ!

You can learn more and download here.

Starting on Sunday 14th April, it took place at it's usual home in the Las Vegas Convention Center, and over the four days it had over 61,000 attendees.

Interestingly, it's been reported that 54% of the registered attendees were first-time visitors.

Whilst there was no Final Cut Pro update, nor any news about Final Cut Pro directly from Apple, there was some interesting news for the Final Cut Pro community.

The highlights being:

• PostLab 2.0 was being demonstrated on the show floor to rave reviews
• Strada was also being demonstrated on the show floor to rave reviews
• Colourlab Ai 3 is out now
• Frame.io Version 4 is now out in beta
• LucidLink 3.0 Preview is out now

The Atomos Ninja Phone also looks quite interesting.

As always, the Blackmagic Design NAB 2024 Update video is worth watching. Blackmagic had a HUGE amount of product announcements as usual.

Steve & Mark from Ripple Training recorded a summary video.

Larry Jordan has a large collection of videos from the show floor that's worth watching.

ProVideo Coalition have also released 27 videos on YouTube.

Richard Taylor, as usual, was live streaming from the event.

Enjoy!

• Improved generation speed by using a new batch scheduler

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

• Critical bug fix for cases where mixed DTD version numbers can create FCPXML that cannot be imported into Final Cut Pro
• Bug fix to support uppercased XML file extensions

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

New Features:

• Added Clip Keywords manifest field
• Added Reel, Scene, Take, Clip In, Clip Out manifest fields
• Added --use-chapter-marker-thumbnails CLI flag to enable chapter marker thumbnail pins

Bug Fixes:

• Added better filename sanitation which can avoid failure to generate image files
• Fixed issue where log file may not be created on disk if its target parent path does not exist

You can download here.

For those Final Cut Pro users using the awesome Frame.io V4 beta, you have most likely noticed that the Frame.io Final Cut Pro Workflow Extension currently doesn't work properly with the beta, and if you try and export a FIOJSON file from the website, it doesn't always work correctly when imported into Final Cut Pro.

For example, if you import a FIOJSON from the website and import it into Final Cut Pro via the Frame.io v2.6.1 Mac App, sometimes Titles will be missing, and there's other inconsistencies between what you see within the Frame.io website, and what gets imported into Final Cut Pro.

Emery Wells writes on ProVideo Coalition:

As a beta, some of the existing Frame.io features may not be initially available, but you can be certain that those features—along with NLE integrations and companion apps—are an element of our forward- looking roadmap.

In the meantime however, Marker Toolbox fills that gap for Final Cut Pro users - as you can export a FIOJSON from the website and import it into Marker Toolbox.

You can learn more about Marker Toolbox here.

• Opening settings now remembers the last panel selected
• Improved handling of offline usage
• Improved activating directly from the license email

You can learn more and download Arctic here.

There's also a new Final Cut Camera app coming to iPhone & iPad.

• You can read the official press release here.
• You can watch the Apple Event on YouTube here.
• You can read Iain Anderson's thoughts on ProVideo Coalition here.
• You can watch Matthew O'Brien's reaction on YouTube here.
• You can watch Richard Taylor's Final Cut TV & Coffee Live Stream here.

The big ticket items for Mac are...

A new Enhance Light and Color effect for the Color Inspector, offering the ability to improve color, color balance, contrast, and brightness in one simple step, and is optimized for SDR, HDR, RAW, and Log-encoded media.

Whilst Final Cut Pro has had a Balance Color tool for a long time, and did a pretty good job at balancing things - it doesn't give you any controls (aside from a White Balance picker), so it's really just a one-click solution where it either works or it doesn't.

It also never really worked well with Log-encoded media.

For me personally, I'm NOT a colourist, I don't enjoy colour grading, and I generally do everything in the Color Board - so this new tool will be HUGELY helpful, and something I've been wanting for many years.

I do a lot of fast-turnaround corporate/advertising edits where there's no time to send to a professional colourist - so this will be a very handy tool to have in the toolbox!

It'll be very interesting to compare to Colourlab AI 3.

Smooth Slo-Mo adds Machine Learning speed effects, which will be very interesting to try out, and see how it compares with Topaz Video AI.

You can now Rename Effects in the Video & Color Inspector! This has something that the Final Cut Pro community have wanted for years - so it's awesome that it's finally coming!

You can also now drag & drop effects from the Inspector to clips on the timeline and the browser! Hopefully this means you'll also be able to drag them into Recall Toolbox or save them using CommandPost's Pasteboard Buffer!

The Timeline Index also got some love and attention, with added columns for Metadata Fields such as Reel, Scene, Camera Angle, etc.

This could be incredibly handy when combined with CommandPost's Timeline Index CSV Export feature!

It also looks like they've finally added a button to toggle the Scrolling Timeline on and off!

Personally, I think this is a really solid update, with some great professional features that I'll be using every day. I'm excited to give it a test run!

The big ticket items for iPad are...

Things are faster on M4:

With M4 on the new iPad Pro, final rendering is up to 2x faster, and editors can take advantage of support for up to 4x more streams of ProRes RAW than with M1.

Live Multicam on Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 allows users to direct and control up to four cameras, providing a director’s view of each live video feed in real time.

Final Cut Pro for iPad now officially supports External Storage - so you can save your Projects & Media on external drives.

There's no information on whether or not you can go from Mac to iPad yet though, so Transfer Toolbox may still be necessary.

There's lots more content:

Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 brings more options to customize projects. Users can dial in their edits with 12 new color-grading presets, choose from eight basic text titles, score with 20 new soundtracks, and add additional dynamic backgrounds to create effect overlays and title sequences.

Interestingly, despite 3rd Party Content being listed as "coming soon" when Final Cut Pro for iPad first launched, there was still no mention of 3rd Party Content coming in this release.

It'll also be interesting to see if any "quality of life" improvements are made in this new version - such as the ability to copy and paste things between Projects.

We're excited to check it out, when it ships later this year:

Pricing and Availability

• Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 will be available later this spring as a free update for existing users, and available on the App Store for $4.99 (U.S.) per month or $49 (U.S.) per year, with a one-month free trial for new users.
• Final Cut Camera will be available for free later this spring as a standalone app.
• Final Cut Pro for Mac 10.8 will be available as a free update for existing users and for $299.99 (U.S.) for new users on the Mac App Store. All new users can download a free 90-day trial of Final Cut Pro.

• FIXED: Issue causing person mask crashes on older Intel-based Macs with multiple GPUs.

For those that haven't yet updated to v2.8, the big new feature is a Person Masking Tool:

We have introduced a new machine learning-based Person Masking functionality. This advanced tool automatically identifies and isolates human figures within your footage, enabling precise adjustments and effects to be applied directly to people within your scenes without manual roto-scoping. This feature enhances workflow efficiency and precision in post-production editing tasks.

You can learn more here.

• Critical bug fix for cases where certain media file paths can create FCPXML that cannot be imported into Final Cut Pro

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

You can read the full release notes here.

You can read Apple's Press Release here.

The same animated maps from iMovie, right in Final Cut Pro! With iMovie Maps for Final Cut Pro. This sorely missed iMovie feature is now directly accessible in the titles browser in Final Cut Pro. Display a route across the country, across a continent or around the globe.

You can watch a video explaining here:

You can download and learn more here.

• Login error is now handled where you have no name entered into your account. This was blocking the sign in previously. If that was the case for you, please enter your name in the account portal too. Most ADD 1.0 users were missing their name in the account migration to 2.0.
• Can now check for updates from the login window
• Adding stems with element markers to triggers from the right click menu can now offer to split into elements. This previously only worked by dragging in files into the triggers table.
• Trigger clips made from stems with multiple elements could have incorrect sync point when triggered
• Stems in triggers will now use their first sync marker as a trigger sync point rather than the start of the file

You can download and learn more here.

RX 11 takes audio repair and background noise removal to the next level. With cutting-edge machine learning algorithms, new Streaming Preview and Loudness Optimize tools, a completely revamped Dialogue Isolate and Music Rebalance, and an improved Repair Assistant as well as additional ARA support, cleaning up your audio with precision has never been easier.

Unfortunately RX 11 isn't officially supported in Final Cut Pro (although the Audio Units will appear in Final Cut Pro) - however you can use their standalone RX Audio Editor application.

RX 11 does however work in Logic Pro 10.7, Pro Tools 2024, Ableton Live 11-12, Cubase 13, Nuendo 13, Studio One 6, Reaper 7, FL Studio 21, Adobe Audition 2024, Adobe Premiere Pro 2024 and DaVinci Resolve 19.

You can learn more about what's new in this YouTube video:

You can learn more here.

There's a great new article to read over at The Film Stage titled Jia Zhangke’s Editor Matthieu Laclau on Shaping Decades of Footage and His Trio of Cannes 2024 Premieres.

You can read it here.

Not mentioned in the article is that Matthieu uses Final Cut Pro. He writes:

Our studio is called CUTTING EDGE FILMS and we collaborate on most of our films. Technically, we setup a very sophisticated collaboration workflow using Hedge Postlab and Apple Final Cut Pro. I know that most feature film editor are cutting with Avid or Premiere, and I used both of them in the past, but we’re not going back... Thanks to FCP, we are really more efficient, faster and even better editors, because we spend more time on the creative part instead of the technical aspect of the job.

Congratulations Matthieu on all your success at Cannes 2024!

Thomas cuts incredible television commercials and music videos in Final Cut Pro.

You can read more about Thomas on our Periodsomnia Case Study here.

Both Felipe and Isaac are very well known within the Final Cut Pro Community, and have both previously presented at the Final Cut Pro Creative Summit.

Felipe Baez is currently free and available for new projects.

He offers:

• Consulting for Video Posproduction for Film and TV, workflow architecture, assistant editing, editing services and photography.
• High performance, high speed cloud storage for those who need to transfer a lot of heavy files. No data limits, no extra charges for traffic.
• IT Services for SMBs: Proactive system monitoring, network management, hardware-software troubleshooting, cybersecurity, data backup. No IT team? We've got you covered 24/7

You can learn more about Felipe on his website here.

You can follow Felipe on LinkedIn here.

Isaac T. has also just finished up his contract with Hedge, and is open to work as a:

• Workflow Architect / Strategist
• Solutions Consultant
• Technical Writer

You can learn more about Isaac on his website here.

You can follow Isaac on LinkedIn here.

• Adds cleanup of stabilization data, grouped with the Optical Flow under the new Data header
• Simplified accessing the list of missing files
• Improved behaviour of the updates-available ribbon
• The External Media popover behaves more nicely now

You can learn more and download Arctic here.

This new update will support Nikon N-RAW and RAW still images.

To quote the website, here’s a closer look at the full feature set:

• Browse and Select Raw Media: easily navigate your disks to select raw media.
• Keep Full Metadata: carry over camera metadata for use within the Final Cut Pro.
• Essential Adjustments: adjust exposure, white balance, and other critical settings for raw media.
• Waveform Monitoring: verify your adjustments against waveforms for accuracy.
• Integration with FCP Libraries: add transcoded media directly into FCP libraries—metadata fully preserved.
• Job Queue Management: efficiently handle multiple transcoding jobs.
• Preview LUTs: use display LUTs for non-destructive preview of raw footage.
• Handle Anamorphic Footage: preview anamorphic footage the way it’s meant to be seen.
• Timeline Playback Without Transcoding: cut BRAW and N-RAW footage directly on the FCP timeline without the need for transcoding.
• Process Raw Images from Stills: gather sequences of raw frames and export them as videos.
• Flexible Export: save transcoded files anywhere on local and network disks.
• Explode Raw Video Files: break raw video files down into individual frames and save them as stills sequences
• Standalone or Workflow Extension: use Color Finale Transcoder 2.0 independently as a standalone app or as a workflow extension within Final Cut Pro.
• N-RAW and BRAW Plugins: Transcoder 2.0 comes with two Final Cut Pro plugins that enable N-RAW and BRAW editing without the need for prior transcoding.

There's currently no release date, however if you're an existing user, you can apply to become an early adopter here.

You can read more on the blog post here.

You can read more about the beta here.

You can read more about how to use AudioSwift with Final Cut Pro here.

• Bug fix for calculating marker positions in cases where the clip's frame rate differs from the timeline's frame rate

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

• Critical bug fix to alert for .fcpxmld bundles exported incorrectly as a "Final Cut Pro Document" instead of "Final Cut Pro XML Bundle"
• Bug fix for chapter markers on a transition
• Bug fix for calculating marker positions in cases where the clip's frame rate differs from the timeline's frame rate

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

• Automatically analyse and generate captions for images using Hugging Face's open-source AI/ML models
• Added --hugging-face-token: Hugging Face token to use image captioning model online
• Added --hf-model: Provide the model used for generating caption <vit-gpt2 | blip-image | git-large> (defaults: vit-gpt2)
• Added --caption-column: Provide both image column and column where caption would be written

CSV2Notion is an advance method to upload & merge *.csv or *.json files with images to Notion database.

It's used under-the-hood to power the Shot Data Toolbox in CommandPost, and MarkersExtractor.

You can learn more here.

You can watch on YouTube here.

The conversation delves into the challenges and opportunities surrounding the promotion and development of Final Cut Pro, as well as the broader strategic direction of Apple. It explores the issues of trust, marketing, and collaboration within the industry, and the potential impact of AI on editing workflows. The discussion also touches on the concept of a Worldwide Creator Conference and the role of Apple in shaping the future of media creation. The conversation covers a wide range of topics, including 3D animation, AI, technology, corporate ethics, and the impact of AI on human behavior. It delves into the role of AI in individual and corporate settings, as well as the ethical implications of AI usage. The discussion also explores the concept of pleasure and the influence of technology on human behavior and society.

You can watch on YouTube here.

Meet the future: collaborate on any creative app, no more subscription, and bring your own storage - whether it's a NAS or a cloud drive!

The successor to PostLab Classic is finally here, after Hedge's massive announcement at the Final Cut Pro Creative Summit last year (you can read my reaction from the Summit here).

You can read all about this groundbreaking software here.

It allows you to automatically apply Camera LUTs with matching filenames.

When working on big long-form projects, such as feature films and television shows, DITs on-set create unique Camera LUTs for each shot.

For example, the production might be shooting on an ARRI Alexa and when they hand over the rushes, they also hand over LUTs for each camera file.

LUT Robot automatically applies Camera LUTs with matching filenames, saving hours of work for Assistant Editors, who until now, had to manually set the Camera LUT for each clip.

You can select a specific sub-folder within your Camera LUTs folder to scan.

This is a simple niche app, that saves high-end professional assistant editors using Final Cut Pro hours of time.

The LUT Robot icon was designed by the amazing Matthew Skiles.

The FCPXML Processing Engine used under-the-hood was created by David Peterson.

You can learn more here.

This is the biggest day in the calendar for Apple Developers, because Apple showcase the next versions of all their operating systems, and new frameworks and APIs that developers can take advantage of.

• You can watch the quick three minute 18 things from WWDC24 summary video here.
• You can watch a five minute summary video about Apple Intelligence here.
• You can watch a five minute summary video about Apple Intelligence Privacy here.
• You can watch the full Keynote here.
• You can watch the Platforms State of the Union here.

As usual, the Keynote was insanely slick, with some stunning transitions and lots of fun and seamless visual effects.

The top line items from the event were:

Introducing Apple Intelligence, AI for the rest of us. And exciting updates coming with iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, watchOS 11, and visionOS 2.

You can read all about the highlights over on the Apple Newsroom here.

You can read a detailed technical blog post about their new Private Cloud Compute here.

Following Apple's new trend, both the Keynote & Platforms State of the Union were also shot on iPhone and edited on Mac.

It's currently unknown if it was cut in Final Cut Pro, although we do know that their previous Scary Fast event was cut in Adobe Premiere.

However, we also know that all of the WWDC developer session videos last year were cut in Final Cut Pro, and we understand that this is still the case this year.

First up, a great new feature for Vision Pro owners is you'll be able to view your Mac screen in new Wide and Ultrawide windows - giving you more screen real-estate for cutting in Final Cut Pro:

Panoramic productivity with Mac Virtual Display
Using Mac Virtual Display is like having an expandable, ultrawide screen that wraps around you. It’s the equivalent of having two 4K displays sitting side by side — everything looks astoundingly sharp and incredibly detailed.

They also announced:

Now you can connect your Magic Mouse or third‑party Bluetooth mouse to navigate while using Apple Vision Pro.

Another very useful feature for Final Cut Pro editors is Continuity in macOS Sequoia:

Use your iPhone from your Mac
With iPhone Mirroring, you can view what’s on your iPhone and control it too, without having to reach for it.

This will make getting files from your iPhone to your Mac a lot easier, than dealing with AirDrop.

In terms of Final Cut Pro news, it was confirmed in the Keynote that:

Spatial Videos can then be edited in Final Cut Pro for Mac, and shared and viewed in the new Vimeo app for VisionOS. This new professional workflow will be available this fall.

Apple pre-announced that spatial video was coming back in November 2023 - so this wasn't exactly new news.

For those outside of the USA, fall begins on September 22nd and ends on December 21st - so we'll most likely see a preview of this at the Final Cut Pro Creative Summit.

Apple writes in their Vision Pro Press Release:

Capturing spatial videos on Apple Vision Pro and iPhone 15 Pro allows users to bring special moments to life and relive them as though they are back in the moment. Later this year, Canon will offer a brand-new spatial lens for its popular EOS R7 digital camera to capture gorgeous spatial video, even in challenging lighting conditions. An update to Final Cut Pro will enable creators to edit spatial videos on their Mac and add immersive titles and effects to their projects, and with the Vimeo app designed for Vision Pro, users will be able to upload and share spatial videos for others to discover and enjoy.

More interestingly however is that Apple has teamed up with Blackmagic Design to tackle Immersive Video - with no mention or hint as to whether or not Immersive Video will come to Final Cut Pro later down the line.

Here's what Blackmagic announced after the Keynote:

BLACKMAGIC DESIGN ANNOUNCES THE WORLD’S FIRST COMMERCIAL CAMERA SYSTEM AND EDITING SOFTWARE FOR APPLE IMMERSIVE VIDEO ON APPLE VISION PRO

Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive and DaVinci Resolve support 8K stereoscopic 3D capture and editing, empowering filmmakers to create Apple Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro

Cupertino, CA, USA, June 10th, 2024 - Blackmagic Design today announced an end to end workflow for producing cinematic Apple Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro. Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive is the world’s first commercial camera system designed to capture Apple Immersive Video. Apple Immersive Video is a brand-new storytelling format that leverages 8K, 3D video with a 180-degree field of view, and Spatial Audio to transport viewers to the center of the action. Blackmagic Design also announced updates to DaVinci Resolve, the industry-leading post-production software, that will give professional filmmakers the ability to edit Apple Immersive Video for the first time. Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive and a new version of DaVinci Resolve that supports Apple Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro will be released later this year.

“We are thrilled to announce the first-ever commercial camera system and post-production software that supports Apple Immersive Video, giving professional filmmakers the tools to create remarkable stories with this powerful new format pioneered by Apple,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “Built on the new URSA Cine platform, URSA Cine Immersive features a fixed, custom, stereoscopic 3D lens system with dual 8K image sensors that can capture 16 stops of dynamic range. With this innovative system, filmmakers can record remarkable moments like action-packed scenes, unique perspectives, stunning landscapes, intimate performances, and more, all with incredible fidelity, offering viewers an unparalleled sense of realism and immersion.”

THE WORLD’S FIRST COMMERCIAL CAMERA SYSTEM FOR APPLE IMMERSIVE VIDEO:
Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive features a fixed, custom lens system pre-installed on the body, which is designed specifically for Apple Immersive Video. The sensor delivers 8160 x 7200 resolution per eye with pixel level synchronization and an incredible 16 stops of dynamic range, so cinematographers can shoot 90fps stereoscopic 3D immersive cinema content to a single file. The custom lens system is designed specifically for URSA Cine’s large format image sensor with extremely accurate positional data that’s read and stored at time of manufacturing. This immersive lens data — which is mapped, calibrated and stored per eye — then travels through post production in the Blackmagic RAW file itself.

THE WORLD’S FIRST EDITING SOFTWARE FOR APPLE IMMERSIVE VIDEO:
An updated version of DaVinci Resolve will introduce powerful new features to create a comprehensive workflow for immersive video on Apple Vision Pro. Blackmagic customers will be able to edit Apple Immersive Video shot on the URSA Cine Immersive camera. A new immersive video viewer will let editors pan, tilt and roll clips for viewing on 2D monitors or on Apple Vision Pro for an even more immersive editing experience. Transitions rendered by Apple Vision Pro will also be able to be bypassed using FCP XML metadata, giving editors clean master files. Export presets will enable quick output into a package which can be viewed directly on Apple Vision Pro.

URSA CINE IMMERSIVE IS DESIGNED TO MEET THE DEMANDS OF ANY HIGH END PRODUCTION:

The evenly weighted camera body is built with a robust magnesium alloy chassis and lightweight carbon fiber polycarbonate composite skin to help filmmakers move quickly on set. Customers also get 12G‑SDI out, 10G Ethernet, USB-C, XLR audio, and more. The fold out monitor has a large 5″ HDR touchscreen on one side and an external color status LCD on the other. The right side of the camera features a dedicated assist station with a second 5″ HDR touchscreen that allows crew to work around the camera without needing external monitors.

An 8-pin Lemo power connector at the back of the camera works with 24V and 12V power supplies, making it easy to use the camera with existing power supplies, batteries, and accessories. Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive comes with a massive 250W power supply and B mount battery plate, so customers can use a wide range of high voltage batteries from manufacturers such as IDX, Blueshape, Core SWX, BEBOB, and more. Customers will also receive a top handle, antennas for high speed Wi-Fi, baseplate, 24V power supply and high voltage B mount battery plate for quick set up.

Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive comes with 8TB of high performance network storage built in, which records directly to the included Blackmagic Media Module, and can be synced to Blackmagic Cloud and DaVinci Resolve media bins in real time. This means customers can capture over 2 hours of Blackmagic RAW in 8K stereoscopic 3D immersive, and editors can work on shots from remote locations worldwide as the shoot is happening.

The new Blackmagic RAW Immersive file format is designed to make it simple and easy to work with immersive video within the whole post production workflow, and includes support for Blackmagic global media sync. Blackmagic RAW files store camera metadata, lens data, white balance, digital slate information and custom LUTs to ensure consistency of image on set and through post production.

Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive is the first commercial, digital film camera with ultra fast high capability Cloud Store technology built in. The high speed storage lets customers record at the highest resolutions and frame rates for hours and access their files directly over high speed 10G Ethernet. The camera also supports creating a small H.264 proxy file, in addition to the camera original media when recording. This means the small proxy file can be uploaded to Blackmagic Cloud in seconds, so media is available back at the studio in real time.

Blackmagic Media Dock accelerates post production workflow by making it faster and simpler to start editing and performing color correction. Customers can mount up to three Blackmagic Media Modules for high speed access to media from multiple URSA Cine Immersive cameras all at the same time. The four high speed 10G Ethernet ports allow up to four separate edit workstations to connect directly and is extremely fast, even when a lot of users are connected at the same time.

BLACKMAGIC URSA CINE IMMERSIVE FEATURES:

• Dual custom lens system for shooting Apple Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro.
• 8K stereoscopic 3D immersive image capture.
• 8160 x 7200 resolution per eye with pixel level synchronization.
• Massive 16 stops of dynamic range.
• Lightweight, robust camera body with industry standard connections.
• Generation 5 Color Science with new film curve.
• Dual 90 fps capture to a single Blackmagic RAW file.
• Includes high performance Blackmagic Media Module 8TB for recording.
• High speed Wi-Fi, 10G Ethernet or mobile data for network connections.
• Optional Blackmagic URSA Cine EVF.
• Includes DaVinci Resolve Studio for post production.

DAVINCI RESOLVE IMMERSIVE FEATURES:

• Support for monitoring on Apple Vision Pro from the DaVinci Resolve timeline.
• Ability to edit Blackmagic RAW Immersive video shot on Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive.
• Immersive video viewer for pan, tilt and roll.
• Automatic recognition of Apple Immersive Video (left and right eye) for dual file stereo immersive content.
• Option to bypass transitions rendered by Apple Vision Pro.
• Export and deliver native files for viewing on Apple Vision Pro.

AVAILABILITY AND PRICE: Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive and the update to DaVinci Resolve will be available later this year from selected Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide.

This is super interesting for Final Cut Pro professionals, as it shows that Blackmagic is really full steam ahead with Blackmagic RAW, with their new Blackmagic RAW Immersive format.

Interestingly, in Apple's Keynote they did mention that Apple's Compressor will be part of the workflow, although Blackmagic's press release makes it sound like Compressor is not needed (i.e. "Export and deliver native files for viewing on Apple Vision Pro").

Last year Apple announced a new framework called MediaExtension, that provides a means for developers to create format readers and video decoders for media that the system doesn’t natively support - such as Blackmagic RAW and Nikon NRAW.

This was supposed to come in macOS Sonoma, but they silently killed it - but it looks like it's coming back for macOS Sequoia.

This is super interestingly as it means that a third party can finally add codec support for third party codecs that will work system wide (if the host app allows third party codec support) - i.e. Final Cut Pro could potentially finally have native Blackmagic RAW support without the need for BRAW Toolbox!

Once a user installs and runs the host app, embedded format reader extensions become available to any app on the user’s system that opts in to using them by calling MTRegisterProfessionalVideoWorkflowFormatReaders.

MediaExtension will require macOS Sequoia, and is labelled as "beta" - so it's unclear if this will actually come in the public release later this year or not.

Currently the documentation just says:

Building MediaExtension format readers using ExtensionKit requires an entitlement. Updates include information about the entitlement and a link to the entitlement request form.

...so we'll have to see if Apple eventually adds the entitlement request form (as they never did last year).

Currently a lot of the documentation also still says macOS 14.0+, so it's unclear how much attention Apple's put towards this Framework - and it might just be intended for camera manufacturers to use (i.e. for Blackmagic to build their own BRAW support, as opposed to ANY third party developer).

In the Platforms State of the Union video, Final Cut Pro for iPad did get a little nod in the SwiftUI section:

In terms of macOS news, macOS Sonoma has always had issues with various H.264 decoding, but it looks like there's some fixes coming to macOS Sequoia, such as:

Fixed: On Apple Silicon, AVC (H.264) content at level 5.2 or lower can be handled by the hardware decoder. Content that otherwise conforms to level 5.2 but is high frame rate (e.g. 4k at 100 or 120 fps) and labelled level 6, 6.1 or 6.2 is also handled by hardware. However, if width or height is greater than 4096 columns or rows and content uses 4:2:0 chroma subsampling and 8 bit depth, the hardware decoder driver will reject it and a software decoder will be automatically selected to ensure artifact-free decoding. Now, if content is 10 bit, 4:2:2 or 4:4:4, the hardware decoder will be used. (127003443)

For developers, there's a HEAP of exciting new technologies and frameworks - especially in terms of on-device machine learning, such as transcription.

Hopefully we eventually see some of these technologies and frameworks used on a future version of Final Cut Pro, but for now, we wait for Final Cut Pro for Mac 10.8 - Apple previously announced:

Pricing and Availability

• Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 will be available later this spring as a free update for existing users, and available on the App Store for $4.99 (U.S.) per month or $49 (U.S.) per year, with a one-month free trial for new users.
• Final Cut Camera will be available for free later this spring as a standalone app.
• Final Cut Pro for Mac 10.8 will be available as a free update for existing users and for $299.99 (U.S.) for new users on the Mac App Store. All new users can download a free 90-day trial of Final Cut Pro.

So there's a good chance we'll see Final Cut Pro updated later this week or next.

This bundle on the Mac App Store gives you access to:

• BRAW Toolbox
• Gyroflow Toolbox
• Marker Toolbox
• Recall Toolbox
• Fast Collections
• LUT Robot
• Capacitor

The Mac App Store also supports Complete My Bundle - which credits customers for apps they’ve already purchased within a bundle. You only pay the balance for the remaining apps.

You can find the Pro Editor Bundle v2 on the Mac App Store here.

Alternatively, if you don't need LUT Robot or Capacitor, you can buy the original Pro Editor Bundle on the Mac App Store here.

You can watch here:

It seems that MotionVFX paid for a bunch of Final Cut Pro gurus to fly to Poland to hang out - which is super cool!

You can watch here:

You can watch the announcement video here:

Existing Color Finale Transcoder v1.0 users can upgrade at a discounted rate (check your emails).

There's also a fully featured 7-day free trial, so you can try before you buy.

This new version includes:

• Nikon N-RAW support
• Edit BRAW and N-RAW clips on the timeline without transcoding
• Create movies out of raw images from stills cameras
• Use without Final Cut Pro as a standalone app

You can read more about this update in more detail on their blog.

We've been testing out the initial v2.0.0 release, and there's a few things to keep in mind when using the new Use Original Media feature:

• Whatever you set as your Resolution in the Workflow Extension is what is used as your clip's resolution. For example, if your BRAW clip is 6144 x 3456, if you have 1/2 (3072x1728) selected in the Workflow Extension's Inspector prior to importing, the clip that's imported into the Final Cut Pro will be 3072 x 1728. Whilst there is a Resolution dropdown in the BRAWReader effect on the clip, so you can adjust the decode quality - the source clip will always still be 3072 x 1728, which could be a quality issue if you want to access the full image data or want to send a FCPXML to DaVinci Resolve. For now, I'd recommend importing everything at Full Resolution.
• We've found that whilst clips generally play back perfectly in the timeline, on some clips in the Browser it won't play back the images correctly. For example, on a 45min clip, in the Browser the first 30mins is stuck on the first frame - however it plays perfectly in the timeline. This same issue happened when adding these same clips to a Synchronised Clip. This is hopefully just a simple bug that can be fixed in a future update.
• Applying speed effects to clips directly doesn't work. For example, if you a 25fps BRAW clip in a 25fps timeline, if you apply a Fast 2x effect, you just get a freeze frame. However you can workaround this by creating a Compound Clip, or putting the clip into a Synchronised Clip or Multicam first.
• There's currently no way to re-link BRAW/N-RAW files - if the file path has changed, it will just show missing media. As a workaround, you could export a FCPXML and do a find and replace of the file path.

• There was a few times during testing with speed effects that Final Cut Pro reported Cannot perform this operation. The application detected an error that prevents changes from being saved. To avoid losing your work, quit Final Cut Pro.. This is something we've never really come across, and we're not exactly sure what's triggering this, but will keep investigating.

• There was a few times when working with N-RAW that frames would fail to render, and we would get an error like the below. N-RAW seems to require a lot more CPU/GPU strength than BRAW.

• We tested moving projects from Final Cut Pro to DaVinci Resolve, and it works well, however you'll have to manually Replace Selected Clip... to force relink to the original BRAW file.
• We tried working with several BRAW and N-RAW clips in a Multicam and it worked well.

Given that Color Finale Transcoder can already transcode ARRIRAW and CinemaDNG, it'll be interesting to see if we'll be able to Use Original Media for these formats too in a future update.

You can download and learn more here.

It features:

Automatic object detection and tracking Rotomatic simplifies the tedious task of manual rotoscoping by automating it, offering significant control to achieve desired results with convenience and speed. Developed using a contemporary machine learning framework, Rotomatic employs multiple neural networks to enhance object detection and tracking.

Intuitive on-screen configuration Intuitive, on-screen configuration for efficient and practical rotoscoping application. Our "Refine, not Redo" philosophy means that labor-intensive steps like object definition and tracking are seldom repeated. The built-in timeline facilitates management of keyframes and selected objects, especially for extensive clips requiring rotoscoping.

Incremental refinement Keyframes, objects, and their elements can be adjusted and reprocessed without impacting previously computed outcomes. Rotomatic offers a more efficient and user-friendly way to achieve professional rotoscoping results.

You can learn more on FxFactory.

Final Cut Pro v10.8, Final Cut Pro for iPad v2.0, Final Cut Camera v1.0, Motion v5.8, Compressor v4.8 are all out now!

iMovie v10.4.1 is out with stability and performance improvements.

Pro Video Formats v2.3.1 is out now.

For developers, FxPlug v4.3 is also out now, along with FCPXML v1.12.

The new Color Adjustments feature in Final Cut Pro 10.8 is definitely our favourite new addition, although renaming Effects will be pretty handy too.

Final Cut Pro v10.8 and Final Cut Pro for iPad v2.0 have a new library database version (now 1110 compared to 1090 in 10.7.1), so you'll need to update older libraries.

We strongly recommend making a backup of all Final Cut Pro Libraries before updating them!

Transfer Toolbox v1.2.0 is also out today, allowing you to move Libraries from Final Cut Pro v10.8 to Final Cut Pro 2.0 (for iPad).

You can learn more and download for free here.

Arctic v24.2.0 is also out today with Final Cut Pro 10.8 support.

You can learn more here.

Sadly, unlike some Final Cut Pro YouTuber's and Trainers, we don't get early access to these Final Cut Pro updates, so we are currently carefully testing and reviewing all these changes, and how they affect our own apps and workflows.

We will post our test results over on our Should I Update? page as we learn new things.

So far we can confirm that CommandPost and BRAW Toolbox both seem to be working great! If you spot any issues, please reach out.

We will aim to add Color Adjustments support to CommandPost in the coming weeks, so that you can control all the parameters with your preferred control surface.

Capacitor will also be updated soon to support FCPXML v1.12.

Matthew O'Brien has already reported some weirdness in Final Cut Pro 10.8 on Twitter, however we haven't been able to reproduce.

As always, before updating, please make sure you make a backup of the Final Cut Pro application, and your existing Final Cut Pro Libraries.

Final Cut Pro 10.8 removes support for DVD & BluRay burning. However, you can always keep a copy of Final Cut Pro 10.7.1 handy or buy Toast 20 Pro at a discounted price for a limited time here.

You can read Iain Anderson's detailed analysis of Final Cut Pro 10.8 over at ProVideo Coalition.

He's also written about Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 on ProVideo Coalition here.

You can watch Steve & Mark at Ripple Training give an in-depth look at Final Cut Pro 10.8 over on YouTube:

You can watch Dylan Bates (a.k.a The Final Cut Bro) explain Final Cut Pro 10.8 over on YouTube:

You can watch Robin S. Kurz at POST-PROfessionals dig deep into Final Cut Pro 10.8 over a series of detailed videos on YouTube:

Final Cut Pro v10.8 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Automatically improve the color, color balance, contrast, and brightness of video or still images using the new Enhance Light and Color effect, powered by machine learning.
• Enable Smooth Slo-Mo to create amazing slow-motion visuals with an AI-enhanced algorithm on Mac models with Apple silicon.
• Stay organized by renaming color corrections and video effects in the inspector.
• Drag effects right from the inspector to other clips in the timeline or viewer.
• Use new filters in the timeline index to quickly identify clips with audio effects, video effects, retiming changes, missing media, or missing effects.
• Search in the timeline index by reel, scene, camera angle, camera name, custom metadata, or effect name.
• Search in the timeline index for user-created roles.
• Search for clips in the browser using new “Starts With” and “Ends With” search criteria.
• Enable or disable timeline scrolling using a new toolbar button.
• Improves timeline scrolling behavior during reverse playback.
• Fixes an issue where captions would sometimes flicker when timeline scrolling is enabled.
• Fixes an issue where browser items would be appear to be renamed when naming a folder.
• Fixes an issue that caused disabling the audio roles of a clip to make the video roles appear disabled.
• Accurately tone-maps HDR video content in 360° view for 360° projects.
• Fixes an issue that could cause ProRes RAW clips to be displayed incorrectly in the viewer on Intel-based Mac models.
• Fixes an issue that caused a freeze frame from a log-encoded clip to appear too bright in an HLG timeline.
• Fixes an issue that caused a disabled Color Board effect to be incorrectly enabled after exporting and reimporting an FCPXML of the timeline.
• Fixes an issue that caused the Space Designer audio effect to show presets as missing.
• Fixes an issue that could cause Final Cut Pro to stop responding when rendering with another app active.
• Fixes an issue that caused switching between the angle viewer and the video scopes to change the angle viewer selection back to “Enable video and audio switching.”
• Fixes an issue that caused Final Cut Pro to stop responding when both a folder and an enclosed item were selected in the browser.
• Adds support for sharing 8K ProRes MXF files.
• Improves support for Canon C2 AVC media.
• Adds support for Canon XF-AVC 1920x1080 59.94i/50i H.264 25Mbps.
• Removes support for disc burning.
• Updates FCPXML to version 1.12.

Final Cut Pro for iPad v2.0 includes the following features, enhancements and bug fixes:

• Connect to Final Cut Camera on iPhone or iPad to record up to four camera angles at once using Live Multicam.
• Easily create and edit projects on a connected external storage device.
• Dial in your exposure with shutter speed and ISO controls in pro camera mode.
• Enable focus peaking to ensure your footage is sharp while recording.
• Polish your videos with 12 new color grading presets, 6 dynamic glitch backgrounds, 20 soundtracks, 8 basic text titles, and more.
• Clip duration in the inspector now appears as timecode.
• Fixes an issue that prevented deleting gap clips in Position mode.
• Fixes an issue that caused Zoom to Fit to stop working when the timeline position was changed.
• Improves playback performance when editing with the Magic Keyboard.
• Fixes an issue that caused the disabled skimmer to become active after a browser clip was dragged into the timeline with a trackpad or Apple Pencil.
• Fixes an issue that caused filmstrip thumbnails to be drawn at incorrect intervals.
• Fixes an issue that caused the volume offset value to remain at 0 when adjusting the volume of multiple clips.
• Improves reliability when importing media into a project.
• Improves reliability when a voiceover recording is interrupted by certain calls and timers.
• Fixes an issue that caused disabling all multicam audio components to show a missing media state.
• Fixes an issue that caused angle name changes made in the angle editor to not appear in the timeline or inspector.
• Fixes an issue that caused the inspector to not update to the active multicam audio component.
• Fixes an issue that caused audio configuration changes made in the angle editor to not appear accurately in the timeline.
• Improves the reliability of Live Drawing in a portrait timeline.
• Fixes an issue that caused adding a clip to the timeline using keyboard shortcuts to sometimes add objects from the content browser as well.
• Fixes an issue that sometimes caused the viewer to dim when Final Cut Pro was reopened.
• Fixes an issue that caused timeline clip thumbnails to not be updated immediately after media was reconnected or missing content was redownloaded.
• Fixes an issue that caused retime video quality settings to be omitted when copying and pasting format settings.
• Includes stability and performance improvements.

Motion v5.8 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Automatically improve the color, color balance, contrast, and brightness of video or still images using the new Enhance Light and Color filter, powered by machine learning.
• Improves stability when exporting a movie with an applied Analyze Motion behavior.
• Improves stability when switching between the Filters and Properties Inspectors in a project with an applied Color Curves filter.
• Improves stability when analyzing in reverse using Point mode tracking in the Analyze Motion behavior.
• Fixes an issue in which Motion may become unresponsive when using a third-party FxPlug plug-in.
• Fixes an issue in which a Keyer filter may render incorrectly when Color Processing is set to Automatic in the Project Properties Inspector.
• Improves stability when creating a particle emitter or replicator from the Media list in a 360° project.

Compressor v4.8 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Preview left or right eye angles of spatial video shot on Apple Vision Pro, iPhone 15 Pro, or iPhone 15 Pro Max
• Create video or image sequences from the left or right eye of spatial video for stereoscopic workflows in other applications.
• Fixes an issue where “This Computer” could not be deselected when setting up a group of shared computers to process Compressor batches.
• Fixes an issue where modifying the audio of a video clip shot in portrait mode would cause the image to rotate 90 degrees.
• Adds support for Canon XF-AVC 1920x1080 59.94i/50i H.264 25Mbps.

FxPlug v4.3 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Improved overall stability.
• Removal of custom view pointer parameter from FxSimpleColorCorrector example code.
• Developers will no longer see console messages about the host trying to load 3rd party bundles.
• When debugging plug-ins with a recent Xcode that use Metal rendering, turn off Metal API Validation. Otherwise, the debugger may stop your plug-in in the -renderDestination: method with a SIGABRT.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the host to crash when attempting to set a value to an incorrect parameter type.
• Fixed an issue where unpublishing an FxPlug parameter with a custom UI causes the inspector to glitch.
• Fixed an incorrect pixel transform so -getOutputWidth:Height:: returns the results in the correct space.
• Fixed a hang that happens when attempting to get currentTime from FxCustomParameterActionAPI while querying it for the analysis range.

FCPXML v1.12 only have a few new additions:

• Added <!ATTLIST filter-video nameOverride CDATA #IMPLIED>
• Added <!ATTLIST filter-audio nameOverride CDATA #IMPLIED>
• Updated <!ATTLIST conform-rate frameSampling (floor | nearest-neighbor | frame-blending | optical-flow-classic | optical-flow | optical-flow-frc) "floor">
• Updated <!ATTLIST timeMap frameSampling (floor | nearest-neighbor | frame-blending | optical-flow-classic | optical-flow | optical-flow-frc) "floor">
• Updated <!ATTLIST match-text rule (includes | doesNotInclude | is | isNot | startsWith | endsWith) "includes">
• Updated <!ATTLIST match-property rule (includes | doesNotInclude | is | isNot | isSet | isNotSet | startsWith | endsWith) "includes">

Pro Video Formats v2.3.1 provides support for the following codecs that are used in professional video workflows:

• Apple ProRes RAW and ProRes RAW HQ
• Apple Intermediate Codec
• Avid DNxHD® / Avid DNxHR® decoder
• AVC-Intra 50 / 100 / 200 / 4:4:4 / LT
• AVC-LongG
• XAVC
• XF-AVC
• XF-HEVC
• DVCPRO HD
• HDV
• XDCAM EX / HD / HD422
• MPEG IMX
• Uncompressed 4:2:2

If you run into issues with Final Cut Pro, make sure you post in our bug tracker!

Happy cutting!

• Added support for FCPXML v1.12 used by Final Cut Pro 10.8. Thanks for reporting Sam Pluemacher!
• Updated from CSV2Notion v1.2.1 to v1.3.1.

Learn more from CommandPost.

It adds support for Final Cut Pro 10.8 and FCPXML v1.12.

You can learn more here.

It updates from FxPlug v4.2.9 to FxPlug v4.3 to better support Final Cut Pro 10.8.

You can learn more here.

It adds support for Final Cut Pro 10.8 and FCPXML v1.12.

You can learn more here.

It includes the following changes:

Metadata Export:

• Added support for exporting Final Cut Pro FCPXML v1.12.

Master Files Transcoding:

• Added reporting of duplicate file names in the log file.

Offload:

• Fixed an issue with renaming duplicate files without an extension in the destination when their checksums differ from the source file.
• Fixed an issue that prevented logging transfers sequentially in the report file.
• Fixed an issue introduced in evrExpanse 4.3.0 where no proper alert was raised when selecting empty folders to transfer.

You can learn more here.

It's a Final Cut Pro Workflow Extension that allows you to import NewsML-G2 and VPMS metadata into Final Cut Pro.

If you have footage that contains a .newsml.xml and/or .vpms.xml sidecar file, this tools allows you to access this metadata from within a supplied Final Cut Pro Metadata View.

This is useful if you're working with news outlets that use the NewsML-G2 standard or a VPMS system, and you need to reference this metadata for deliverables.

News Import works well alongside other 3rd party applications such as Producers Best Friend.

This is a simple niche app, that saves high-end professional assistant editors using Final Cut Pro hours of time.

You can learn more here.

You can watch here:

He writes in his first video:

In this video I'm breaking down TWO bugs I've heard about with Final Cut Pro 10.8. One bug has to do with audio skimming and playing back audio one frame at a time using the left and right arrow keys. Some users are reporting that you can no longer hear audio when using the arrow keys.

The second bug is one that I'm experiencing. Any time I try to interact with an element in the Viewer to transform it with scale or position or rotation, Final Cut Pro hangs. It doesn't quit, it doesn't crash, I don't get a spinning rainbow wheel... It just hangs. If I try to change my text with the title tool or use a mask effect it hangs. Any time I "touch" an element in the Viewer, Final Cut Pro hangs.

This is happening on my M1 Max Mac Studio, my M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro, but it IS NOT happening with my M2 Pro Mac mini.

You can watch it here:

However, regarding the first bug he mentions in the video Richard Taylor writes on Twitter.

For those experiencing the FCP 10.8 audio frame by frame, skimming bug, place your mouse, cursor over any window, but the timeline!

Matthew followed up with another video, where he writes:

In my last video I broke down a major Final Cut Pro 10.8 bug where trying to adjust elements in the viewer window was causing Final Cut Pro to hang or freeze. Editing text with a title tool, using the Transform Tool to adjust scale or position - these adjustments were freezing Final Cut.

In this video I'm going over what seems to be causing this to happen while, unfortunately, not coming up with a root cause that allows us to resolve the issue. I think this is definitely going to need a software update to fix things since I've already tried every troubleshooting step that I can think of per Apple's support document linked here

You can watch it here:

After posting this video, he's then discovered a workaround/solution:

So it seems the issue is specific to the newer Magic Trackpad and the trackpad on Mac notebooks.

If you disable Tap to click in Settings > Trackpad you can interact with elements in the Viewer window without any issue.

If you disable Use trackpad for dragging in Settings > Accessibility > Pointer Control > Trackpad Options you can drag elements in the Viewer window.

So, yeah. I'm guessing enabling the ability to drag and drop effects from the Inspector onto the Viewer window may have caused this bug? Of course none of this affects FCP if you're using a Magic Mouse, Mighty Mouse or 3rd party mouse.

This also doesn't affect FCP if you're using the older AA battery-powered Magic Trackpad

Hopefully these are both fairly simple bugs that Apple can address in a point update within the next couple of weeks.

You can keep track of all of Final Cut Pro's bugs and issues on the FCP Cafe Bug Tracker.

It includes the following improvements:

• We've updated to the latest Gyroflow Core Renderer. HUGE thank you to the amazing AdrianEddy for all his ongoing help, assistance, genius and support!
• Updated from FxPlug v4.2.9 to v4.3.
• 2491 lens profiles have been added from the hero Gyroflow project. Thanks to EVERYONE who has submitted lens profiles and another HUGE thank you to AdrianEddy for all the work that goes into managing them.

You can learn more here.

Mark Spencer demonstrates how to use Final Cut Pro's comparison viewer to match related shots in a project.

You can watch on YouTube here:

They have also released a new Color Grading in Final Cut Pro 10.8 Tutorial.

It's USD$99, however you can use the discount code START-COLOR to get 30% off.

You can learn more here.

For example:

• mCallouts Simple v3.0.1: Fixed a rare crash preventing the plugin from start
• mMessage v3.0.1: Fixed a rare crash preventing the plugin from start
• mCallouts Simple 2 v3.0.1: Fixed a rare crash preventing the plugin from start
• mPointer v3.0.1: Fixed a rare crash preventing the plugin from start
• mTuber v1.1: Added X logo
• mFlare 2 v3.1.3: Stability improvements
• mStories v1.1: Added X logo
• mFilmLook v2.1.3: Stability improvements
• mTuber 2 v1.1: Added X logo
• mPuppet v2.1.1: Fixed rendering issues in 3D space, Ul improvements, optimised render code for better performance with multiple instances
• mFreezeFrame Movie v2.0.2: Stability update
• mTracker 3D v2.1: Ul stability improvements
• mMessage 2 v3.0.1: Fixed a rare crash preventing the plugin from start
• mKBHD FCP v1.2: Added X logo
• mKeynote FCP v1.1: Added X logo
• mChannel Glitch v1.1: Added X logo
• mHUD 2 v3.0.1: Fixed a rare crash that might prevent the plugin from launching
• mHUD 3 v3.0.1: Fixed a rare crash preventing the plugin from start
• mTracker 3D Social Media Icons Pack v1.1: Added X logo
• mTracker 3D Area v1.1: Fixed a rare crash preventing the plugin from start
• mTracker Surface v1.1.2: Stability improvements

You can use their mInstaller to update all your MotionVFX plugins.

You can learn more here.

It includes the following improvements:

• Added support for Fujifilm GFX100S II Blackmagic RAW clips.
• Added support for Panasonic GH7 Blackmagic RAW clips.
• Updated from Blackmagic RAW SDK v4.0 to v4.1.

You can learn more here.

If you buy today, you can get 30% off with the discount code EVREANNIV24 on checkout.

It includes the following changes:

Metadata Export:

• Support for Blackmagic Camera App: Added comprehensive metadata support for files generated from the Blackmagic Camera App for iOS and Android. This includes shooting, recording, camera settings, color settings (including any applied LUTs), and production (slate) settings. Metadata can be exported for importing into DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Assimilate SCRATCH, and other NLEs.
• Enhanced Metadata View for Final Cut Pro: Improved metadata integration with Final Cut Pro to support new settings such as Camera LUT and Color Space Override, ensuring seamless workflow and accurate metadata representation.

Master Files Transcoding:

• Support for Blackmagic Camera App: Added support to retain all metadata from the Blackmagic Camera App in transcoded files, ensuring that essential information is preserved throughout the workflow.

You can learn more here.

You can learn more here.

It includes the following changes:

• Arctic now ignores "stateless" Libraries, which are Libraries stored but not downloaded locally on cloud drives like iCloud, Amove, Box, and DropBox. This prevents Arctic from beachballing when attempting to process Libraries that don't actually exist locally.

You can learn more here.

You can read it here.

You can learn more here.

Essentially it's a web-browser in a Workflow Extension that allows you fast and easy access to Large Language Model's, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT.

You can watch a video explaining on YouTube here.

You can buy the new application for US$14.99 (introductory price until 31st July).

This app is only available on the Intelligent Assistance, and not on the Mac App Store.

You can learn more and purchase here.

It includes the following:

New Features:

• Publish Mask: Make masks created for the chosen layer or group available outside of Color Finale. Use a combination of tracked shape masks, selective color masks, and person masks to overlay color-corrected elements over the background layer directly on the FCP timeline.

Use Case Highlight:

• Background replacement
• Object tracking with Color Finale's built-in object tracker
• Person masking without chromakey
• Placing titles behind masked objects or people
• Many more creative effects

You can watch a video explaining the new functionality on YouTube:

You can learn more here.

You can get 20% off by using the offer code 4JUL20 on checkout.

It includes the following changes:

IMPROVEMENTS: – Ai references and showluts are now synced in the cloud – Auto exposure can be made to work using Gamma or Printer lights – Improved Adobe Premiere fetch and push – Improved Davinci Resolve fetch and push – Added support for XAVC MXF playback – Added support for Sony FX6 MP4 – Added support for MXF OP Atom playback – Added project name to Ai references metadata – Ai References view – add option to filter by current project – Project Name visible on top Window – Added in settings Premiere Sync Status – Project settings are now saved for each new project – Added support for previous and next shot preview in full screen preview – Added support for Send to Davinci when timeline is coming from premiere – Enable shortcut for 709/flat view in full screen mode

FIXES: – Fix issue when files with non standard characters would cause Colourlab to crash – Improved handling of unsupported files fetching from Davinci or Premiere – Fixed issue when some Sony camera MP4 files where not playing – Fixed issue when some BMD camera originated H264 files would not play – Fixed Issue When selecting multiple shots (using ctrl/cmd) it would jump to the first selected shot – Fixed issue when selected area outlines stay visible after shot was region matched – Fix issue when reference viewer had gamma shift in comparison with source viewer – Fixed an issue that made in some cases Premiere fetch fail – Improved handling of variable frame rates in premiere – Make frame forward and frame back to switch to next/previous shot – Make Timeline settings default view in Settings – Fixed issue when double clicking Sync Button in ProjectSettings->library caused the application to crash – Fixed when Cancel on PUSH to Premiere was not working – Improved performance of match region & exposure tool – Improved performance of color wheels UI – Fixed issue of FCP Fetch not working mac intel – Fixed issue when Premiere Fetch was not working on intel – Fixed issue that some windows users were not able to fetch and push to DaVinci – Fixed issue that playback stops at the end of clip

You can learn more here.

You can buy it for 18% off until 7th July.

You can learn more here.

It has a new feature:

• A slider in Settings to control the maximum line length of captions and subtitles

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

A unique application meticulously crafted for Final Cut Pro users seeking seamless Marker extraction, conversion, and database creation capabilities.

Marker Data optimises the way professionals manage Marker’s metadata within Final Cut Pro projects. With its intuitive interface and robust feature set, Marker Data simplifies the extraction process while ensuring the utmost accuracy in representing Marker’s metadata.

Marker Data offers a multitude of use cases, including creation of Marker Notes Database, VFX Database, Shot Library, Stock footage Database, Music Cue Sheet Database and many more.

Core Features:

• Precise Marker Extraction: Marker Data ensures precise extraction of markers, maintaining the integrity of metadata throughout the process.

• Batch Extraction and Rendering: Streamline your workflow with functionality for batch extraction and rendering of stills or animated GIFs based on each Marker’s Timecode.

• Batch Burning-in Labels: Marker Data offers versatile features for batch burning-in labels and embedding comprehensive metadata onto stills or animated GIFs, enhancing project organisation and communication.

• Integration with Renowned Databases: Enjoy native integration with leading databases such as Notion and Airtable, streamlining data management tasks.

• Native Integration with Final Cut Pro: With a native Share Destination & Workflow Extension, Marker Data seamlessly integrates with Final Cut Pro, enhancing workflow efficiency.

• Cloud Database Synchronisation: Effortlessly synchronise Final Cut Pro’s Marker metadata with cloud databases in just one click, ensuring seamless collaboration and accessibility.

• Customisable Configurations: Tailor Marker Data to your specific project requirements with the ability to create multiple configurations, ensuring flexibility and adaptability.

• Various Export Profiles: Marker Data is capable of generating spreadsheet-compatible files, including CSV, TSV, and Excel formats, from the Marker metadata in Final Cut Pro including MIDI and YouTube Chapters.

• Automatic Colour Swatch Analysis: Automatically analyses and embeds colour swatches from extracted images, providing valuable shot references for colour grading and Shot Library creation.

• Swift and SwiftUI Integration: Built using Apple’s Swift language and SwiftUI framework, Marker Data offers a seamless user experience and unparalleled performance.

• Free and Open-Source: Marker Data is available as a free and open-source application, empowering the creative community with accessible tools for enhancing Final Cut Pro User’s workflows.

You can download and learn more here.

It is now verified to run under macOS Sonoma and work with Final Cut Pro 10.8 Libraries.

You can download from the Mac App Store here.

It includes the following fixes:

• Critical bug fix to read and process "Final Cut Pro Document" binary files exported from Final Cut Pro
• Bug fix to support for Crop/Ken Burns effect
• Bug fix for Crop/Crop effect

You can download from the Mac App Store here.

It includes:

• Critical bug fix to read and process "Final Cut Pro Document" binary files exported from Final Cut Pro

You can download from the Mac App Store here.

It includes:

• Bug fixes and performance improvements

You can download from the Mac App Store here.

You can read more on Jonny's blog here.

MASSIVE congratulations Jonny!

You can download from the Mac App Store here.

You can get 25% off on Power Tools PRO and select Final Cut Pro Effects, Titles & Transitions.

You can learn more here.

Get up to 70% off selected products, including their Starter Pack & Ultimate Bundle.

You can learn more here.

You can read it here.

• Added support for Blackmagic PYXIS 6K.
• Added support for Fujifilm X-T50 Blackmagic RAW clips.
• Improves support for Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K LF.
• Updated from Blackmagic RAW SDK v4.1 to v4.2.

You can learn more here.

• Added an overlay when FCPXML is being processed. Thanks for suggesting Sam Pluemacher!
• Updated FCPXMLKit from v1.1.1 to v1.2.3.

You can learn more here.

You can learn more on Richard's Final Cut TV & Coffee YouTube Channel here.

• Bug fix to add all Final Cut Pro keywords that are anywhere within a text block's time range to the text block

You can download via the Mac App Store here.

• mFreezeFrame Movie 2.0.4: Fixed an error related to missing LUTs
• mTracker Surface 1.1.3: Improved compatibility with FCP 10.8

You can learn more here.

The trailer for Don’t Turn Out the Lights is out now, a feature film cut in Final Cut Pro, edited by Michael Yanovich.

Learn more here.

It's a big update, with lots of improvements:

• Added support for Adobe Premiere CSVs. Thanks Michael Angelo!
• Wipster CSV support has been improved. We now display replies properly.
• Frame.io FIOJSON support has been improved. The markers on 29.97fps projects should now more accurately match the Frame.io website. Thanks Shih-Cheng Yang!
• All of the timecode processing logic and maths has been completely redesigned and rewritten, so that we can better support all frame rates, and ensure everything is frame accurate. We now use TimecodeKit for timecode handling. HUGE thanks to Steffan Andrews for his incredible work!
• The default ChatGPT prompt has been updated to work in frames, rather than seconds for better accuracy. If you have a custom prompt, you should press the "Reset Prompt" button in the bottom settings to update the prompt to the new format.
• The latest OpenAI ChatGPT models are now supported.

You can learn more here.

PostWatch now connects directly to the Notifications database so it no longer needs to read the Notification Center through the UI. This has major impacts on PostWatch:

• Special Notification Center settings are no longer required.
• Applications no longer need to have Notification Center alerts enabled.
• Intel and Apple Silicon Macs work equally the same.
• The PostWatch Screensaver is no longer needed.
• You can use the macOS System Screensavers, Display Sleep and Screen Lock freely.
• The Optimizer has been re-worked with some sections now optional.

It also includes the following changes:

• Lite (free) and Pro (paid) editions. Many advanced features are now part of the Pro Edition. Pro is a one-time paid non-subscription model.
• Improved: Supports interacting with macOS in any language.
• Improved: Greatly expanded language support for post-production applications, including: Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Dutch and more.
• New: Guided setup walks users through the Pushover signup and Key/Token configuration with PostWatch.
• Improved: Modernized the Settings window as well as many of the modal alerts.
• New: Application Activity Watcher. Observe an applications’ background processes and send an alert when complete. (Pro) Good for applications that aren’t already integrated into PostWatch. (Premiere Pro, Topaz Video AI, etc.)
• New: Toggling between Light and Dark modes.
• New: Manual language selection for menu and interface.
• New: Disable watching of specific applications.
• Updated: Support for ff·Works 4.
• Improved: Reworked code for EditReady. Alerts now contain the number of files completed as well as alerts for failed conversions.
• Improved: Reworked code for Media Encoder. Fixes issues with the reliability of alerts.
• New: Clicking the menu’s Watcher Status shows a list of currently watched applications. Also clicking Recent Problems gives a detailed list of issues.
• …and many other fixes and stability improvements.