Twenty-five years since its first introduction to the video editing world, Apple’s famous (or infamous depending on how you’ve viewed it over the years) video editing platform is getting a major facelift. Apple unveiled Final Cut Pro 11 which sees the NLE get many supercharged intelligent new features and tools including a Magnetic Mask, a transcribe-to-captions feature, and several timesaving updates.
Let’s take a look at this latest version of Final Cut Pro and explore how these new tools and features could make Final Cut Pro a fiercer contender in today’s crowded video editing space.
Apple Final Cut Pro 11
Designed to take full advantage of Apple’s M-series, this new version of Final Cut Pro is set to introduce some AI-enhanced features that should up the overall intelligence of Apple’s flagship NLE.
“Our creative apps give artists, producers, directors, and editors around the world the tools they need to express themselves and realize their artistic vision. With the power of Apple silicon and state-of-the-art machine learning capabilities, Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are faster and more intelligent than ever. These latest updates give creative professionals more stylistic interpretations to explore — whether that’s with fine-tuned masking for color grading or amazing sound processing — and greater versatility and efficiency in their workflows.” — Brent Chiu-Watson, Apple’s senior director of Worldwide Product Marketing for Apps.
Along with these new intelligence features, which we’ll focus on below, Final Cut Pro is also set to get spatial video editing and some other overall workflow optimizations.
Final Cut Pro Gets Smarter
The biggest highlights of this new Final Cut Pro 11 to most video editors are going to be these two all-new AI-powered tools: Magnetic Mask and Transcribe to Captions. With the former users will be able to effortlessly isolate people and objects in a video clip without the need for a green screen or more time-consuming rotoscoping. Editors can further combine Magnetic Mask with color correction and video effects, allowing them to precisely control and stylize each project.
With the new Transcribe to Captions, FCP can now automatically generate closed captions in the timeline using an Apple-trained large language model that transcribes spoken audio. Here are the rest of the new AI-enhanced features set to come to Final Cut Pro 11:
- Smart Conform easily makes social media-friendly versions of projects in square or vertical formats.
- Enhance Light and Color to automatically improve the color, color balance, contrast, and brightness of video or still images.
- Smooth Slo-Mo to generate and blend together frames of video — including footage captured on iPhone 16 Pro in 4K120 fps — for the highest-quality movement.
- Voice Isolation to enhance speech and optimize sound levels while reducing background noise from audio captured in the field.
More New and Optimized Features
The other big headline here is the addition of spatial video editing in Final Cut Pro 11. Designed to partner with Apple Vision Pro, FCP 11 users can now import their spatial video footage and add effects, make color corrections, and enhance their projects with titles and other assets.
The depth position of titles and captured footage can also be adjusted during this new editing process. These spatial video clips can be captured directly with Vision Pro, or on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, or even Canon’s new RF-S7.8mm F4 STM DUAL lens paired with Canon R7.
Apple has also unveiled many new timesaving and optimization-minded features set to come to Final Cut Pro 11, which include:
- Magnetic Timeline, a trackless approach to editing footage, offers a fluid way to trim and edit a project. Editors can add and rearrange clips seamlessly, making adjustments while keeping video and audio perfectly in sync.
- With multicam editing, users can instantly sync multiple angles of a project and switch between shots during playback. And new keyboard shortcut options allow users to adjust the view of their timeline and reposition clips.
- Optimizations for Apple silicon allow editors to play back more streams of 4K and 8K ProRes video at full quality, add playback effects, and share their work with others at blazing speeds.
- Editors can create a lightweight copy of their library with enhanced proxy tools, decreasing file sizes to make transfer times even shorter.
- Using Compressor, editors can create custom export settings to deliver their work in a wide range of file formats and import previous stereoscopic footage to reformat and pair with spatial video footage for an integrated editing experience.
- Using Motion, users can create stunning 2D and 3D titles, generators, and advanced visual effects that are accessible within Final Cut Pro.
More Updates and Pricing
We’ll explore more on these other announcements from Apple soon but expect to learn more about Apple’s new Final Cut Pro for iPad 2.1, Final Cut Camera, and Logic Pro for Mac 11.1, and Logic Pro for iPad 2.1 which all feature some notable upgrades and improvements as well.
The new Final Cut Pro 11 is available today as a free update for existing users and for $299.99 for new users on the Mac App Store. New users can download a free 90-day trial of Final Cut Pro.
Author: Jourdan Aldredge
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
