Posted on by Updated March 11, 2018, to improve the references to my iMac Pro configuration report. At their WWDC, in June, 2017, Apple announced and released new iMac computers, designed to meet the needs of professionals. These new systems sport a variety of very exciting features. However, if you are on a budget, how do you determine where to spend your money? This article is designed to help you make more informed choices when you don’t have a lot of money to spend.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro can handle demanding tasks well, too, such as transcoding a 4K video to 1080p using the Handbrake app. Apple's system took 14 minutes and 47 seconds to complete the task.
NOTE: I have not purchased any of these systems. My recommendations are based on past experience, current system specs and talking with informed individuals. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY If money is no object, buy the top of the line iMac. It will work great and you’ll have bragging rights over all the other systems. But, if money IS an object, then you need to make trade-offs, balancing the performance you need with the money you have. However, you don’t need to spend a fortune to get a system today that can meet your editing needs for the next several years. ALSO: Here are two other configuration articles you may find useful:.
for video editing. for video editing YES, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE IMAC PRO? What a system.
This review covers the iMac. To read about the iMac Pro. YES, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MAC PRO? Given the latest iMac releases, there are very, very few reasons to purchase a Mac Pro right now; especially given its price. Keep in mind, however, that Apple has already announced they are working on a new, top-of-the-line Mac Pro which will ship sometime after 2017. Given what Apple has announced for the iMac Pro, however, that upcoming Mac Pro will need to be a true screamer to compete. I’m looking forward to seeing what Apple creates – but, as I mentioned earlier, I still need to pay my bills today.
And that leads us directly to the latest updates to the iMac. WHAT SIZE SCREEN? Both Final Cut Pro X and Premiere interfaces work best on larger screens. This is not to say they work poorly on smaller screens, but both of these display a LOT of elements on screen. More screen room is MUCH better. I recommend a 27″ display. Plus, all the new 27″ iMacs now share the same 5K Retina Display.
NOTE: One of my iMacs is an older 5K iMac. I’ve discovered, that while seeing a 5K image is nice, the on-screen text is often very hard to read. So I’ve lowered the screen resolution using System Preferences to make the text larger. I prefer to easily read the text to seeing every pixel in my image. However, if the purpose of the new system is video compression, you don’t need the bigger screen size.
In which case, you can save money and improve performance with a 21″ system. NOTE: Both H.264 and the up-coming H.265 video codecs are hardware-accelerated in all the new hardware. While this won’t help when transcoding into ProRes, hardware-acceleration will significantly speed compressing files for the web. WHAT SPEED CPU? All new iMacs have moved up to Kaby Lake processors from Intel. Based upon the reviews I’m reading, these new processors are at least 20% faster than the older systems. Also, don’t worry that these processors are i5 as opposed to the older i7. These are from two different families, so the numbers won’t match.
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While CPU speed is important, it is not critical for video editing; remember, iMacs that were current as recently as last month, were easily able to edit almost all forms of SD, HD, and 4K media. Any of the processors in any of the new iMacs will be fine for video or audio editing. HOW MUCH STORAGE? I really like that Apple has put Fusion drives into all but two of their iMacs. I own two iMacs with Fusion drives and I remain very impressed with these systems. They are an excellent balance between the speed of an SSD with the storage capacity of spinning media.
Keep in mind that the SSD portion of a Fusion drive is only a part of the total storage. For example, the 1 TB Fusion uses a 32 GB SSD, while the 2 and 3 TB Fusion drives use a 128 GB SSD.
The OS watches what you do and moves files onto the SSD based upon what you are using most. Which means that a Fusion drive works fastest with files you access over and over.
NOTE: Here is an on storage speeds and media requirements that explains the load your storage system needs to carry. If you want maximum performance AND you plan to store media on an external drive, get the 512 GB SSD. All the files in macOS will take less than 30 GB, leaving plenty of room for working files and immediate storage.
If you want an excellent balance between performance, price and capacity, stay with the 1 TB Fusion drive. Again, store media externally.
If you don’t plan to purchase external storage – and you will, you just don’t know it yet – get the 3 TB Fusion drive. (An extra TB for $100 makes this a better value than the 2 TB Fusion drive.) One of my systems has a 3 TB Fusion drive. Currently, I’m using 600 GB of it.
The rest is sitting around idle. When using external storage, you really don’t need lots of internal storage. If you just want maximum performance from your storage, get the 1 TB SSD. It’s pricey, but it’s speed will make you giggle. Apple notes: “For the best performance, iMac systems with 32GB or more of memory should be configured with a 2TB or larger Fusion Drive or all-SSD storage.” NOTE: Apple’s marketing materials now define a terabyte as one trillion bytes. This means that when a disk is formatted, its storage capacity will be less than 1 TB because of the differences between how marketing and engineering calculate disk sizes.
Configuring the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is now done when you pick the initial iMac, rather than as a build-to-order option within each iMac family. So, much though I would like to pick the mid-range system and add a high-end GPU into it, we no longer have that option. Which is a shame. Because we don’t need the high-end CPU system for most video editing, but we would significantly benefit from the high-end 580 GPU in any system. Both Final Cut and Premiere are increasingly using the GPU for most editing tasks, because the GPU is much faster than the CPU at rendering bitmapped images. Therefore, the best choice is the high-end GPU. The high-end GPU also includes 8 GB of video memory (VRAM).
However, the mid-range system with the Radeon Pro 575 is a perfectly adequate choice. NOTE: The difference between the 575 and 580 is performance. The 575 has a peak performance of 4.5 Teraflops, while the 580 supports up to 5.5 Tflops. Both will handle video just fine. All of the Radeon chips support OpenCL and Apple’s Metal and up-coming Metal 2 GPU computing API. To learn more about Radeon’s GPU chips.
NOTE: Again, if you are principally doing video compression, the GPU speed is less important than the CPU speed. So, compressionists don’t need as high-performance a GPU as an editor. HOW MUCH RAM? Both Final Cut and Premiere will use as much RAM as you can afford. Based on my tests with the 2016 MacBook Pro, I recommend a minimum of 16 GB of RAM, though, all my systems here have 32 GB. Again, if you have the money, max out the RAM.
However, you probably won’t notice a performance difference in most projects running 32 GB of RAM. HOW MUCH SHOULD I SPEND? You are going to be using this computer for four years. Spend what you can afford, but don’t be stingy in areas that matter: GPU and RAM. All the base systems are fine, But, depending upon your needs, you can tweak the configurations to better match what you want the systems to do. All systems feature wireless mice and keyboards; though, in my office, I prefer my mice and keyboards wired.
NOTE: Apple has not yet delivered the Touch Bar on any stand-alone keyboards. If it were my money and I was doing video editing on a budget, here’s what I would get:. 27″ Retina 5K Display. 3.5 GHz i5 processor (Includes the Radeon 575 GPU). 32 GB of RAM (custom upgrade). 1 TB Fusion drive.
Keyboard and mouse to suit Total: $2,599 However, I wish that Apple made the Radeon 580 available on the mid-range unit. If it were my money and I was doing video compression, here’s what I would get. Keep in mind that the GPU is slower than those in the 27″ iMac. 21.5″ Retina 4K Display. 3.6 GHz i5 processor (this is a custom upgrade) (Includes the Radeon 560 GPU).
32 GB of RAM (custom upgrade). 1 TB Fusion drive.
Keyboard and mouse to suit Total: $2,099 As always, I’m interested in your opinions. This was very helpful. I like that I can always come to your page for valuable and consistent answers and tips for my problems. It’s like visiting an old (and very knowledgeable) friend! I’ve had my 2017 27″ 5k iMac for a year now and I’ve been pretty satisfied. However, I’m starting to work on bigger and longer projects, sometimes running multiple apps at once (AE, Premiere Pro, Encoder.etc).
I’m thinking about upgrading my 32gb RAM to 64gb. Do you think this upgrade will be of any significance in terms of speed or performance? Is it worth the $500 upgrade? Thanks for all your valuable insights!
. Pros Magnetic, trackless timeline. Superior organization tools, including libraries, ratings, tagging, auto analysis for faces, scenes. Support for 360-degree footage and HDR. Multicam support. Fast performance.
MacBook Touch Bar support. Cons Nontraditional timeline-editing may turn off longtime editors. Can't import projects from previous versions without a third-party plug-in. No stabilization or motion tracking for 360-degree video.
Bottom Line Apple's professional-level video editing software, Final Cut Pro X, brings a wealth of power in an interface simple for pros and consumers alike. Recent highlights include rich support for 360-degree content and improved stability.
Apple's professional and prosumer-level, Final Cut Pro X, treads a fine line between consumers who want more power for their video-editing projects than iMovie offers and professionals who create content for movies and TV. It does a remarkable job of bridging these two worlds, and though professionals may complain about its nontraditional trackless timeline and amateurs may scratch their heads over its wealth of sophisticated options, it turns out to be a magnificent tool for both. Final Cut Pro X is an Editors' Choice for professional video editing software. What's New in This Version?
The application has long since regained initially missing pro-level features—including multicam editing, XML importing, and external monitor support. Those have been joined by many new capabilities, including powerful 3D titling and an impressive Flow transition to smooth out jump cuts. New for Version 10.4 are rich support for 360-degree VR content, updated color grading tools, and support for HDR and HEVC ( High Efficiency Video Codec, aka H.265).
Those are the big ones, but there's also a slew of smaller tweaks and added capabilities. Despite rumors of the pro video-editing industry moving away from Final Cut Pro X to Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut now has over 2 million users, making it more popular than ever, and some top-level editors have adopted the new Final Cut, too.
The beautiful video for Bieber-assisted Latin blockbuster Despacito (the most watched music video of all time, with over 4.5 billion views) was cut in, you guessed it, Final Cut Pro X. Jan Kovac, the editor of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot has put out a explaining why he loves it. An impressive example of work cut in the editor is Vimeo Best of the Year short video, Leonardo Dalessandri's. These and other editors have noted how innovations like Magnetic Timeline, Clip Connections, and Auditions (not to mention faster performance that takes advantage of modern CPUs) can make their jobs easier. Pricing and Setup As with any modern Mac app, Final Cut Pro X is obtainable only through the Apple App Store.
You can install it on multiple Macs for $299, and you receive updates automatically. There's no updgrade pricing, but really, compared with the old Final Cut's $999 price, $299 is basically upgrade pricing.
By comparison, you can only get Adobe's competing with a Creative Cloud subscription for $19.99 per month. Once you've bought Final Cut Pro X, you're entitled to all updates, including to the present version, 10.4. At over 3GB, Final Cut Pro X is a hefty download, so make sure you've got enough local storage. The program requires at least a Core 2 Duo-based machine running macOS Sierra 10.12.4 or later, an OpenCL-capable video processor, 4.15GB free disk space, and a minimum of 4GB RAM (8GB is the recommended amount).
I tested Final Cut on a 27-inch iMac with a 4.2GHz Core i7 CPU, 32GB RAM and a 5K Retina display and on a 13-inch MacBook Pro with at 3.1 GHz Core i5 CPU and 8GB RAM and Touch Bar. As you might expect with the iMac's specs, performance was responsive whether I was importing, scrubbing, previewing compound picture-in-picture montages, or adding effects. Libraries, Import, Organize Final Cut Pro X Libraries let you keep assets together for use in multiple projects. They combine the previously discrete Events and Projects panels.
Libraries are similar to the Catalogs in in that they are databases that can be backed up to a separate drive, and they receive automatic backups. Luckily, you don't have to worry about projects you created before this Library arrangement: Final Cut offers a simple update option to get them with the program. Libraries are a big part of organizing your assets, but before you use them you have to import media.
In fact, at import, you can tell Final Cut to copy the media to a specified Library. Within the Library, the import is an Event. At import you can specify creating proxy and optimized media, and also analyze video for balance color and fix audio problems on import. Helpfully, clicking on a filename shows a large preview of its contents in the import dialog. The program supports expanded color spaces like those approaching, such as the color space supported by current iPhones and iMacs. And with the latest version, it now supports the H.265 codec, designed to reduce files size of 4K and 360-degree footage. Apple recently developed a format called ProRes Raw, which is analgous to Adobe's DNG raw still camera file format.
It gives you access to all sensor data, meaning far more leeway in adjusting lighting and colors. Atomos recorders already support the new format, as does the pro-level DJI Inspire 2 drone At import, you can have Final Cut Pro X create optimized media (in Apple ProRes format) and analyze it for stabilization issues, as well as color balance and the presence of people. If you've chosen to analyze the clips, the program can create Smart Collections based on type of shot (long, close, or medium) or whether the shot is stable or unstable.
In my quick test, it created a People folder, with Group, Medium Shot, and Wide Shot Smart Collections below it, and a Stabilization folder with Excessive Shake and Steady Shot groups. Final Cut Pro X can now import (and export) both projects and events in XML format. This means professional video editors can round-trip their work between video editing software and tools like Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve, a standard in pro video color correction. The same holds for organizing projects in Square Box System's CatDV, which lets teams of professionals organize clips.
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On the other end of the spectrum, version 10.4 adds the ability to import on iOS projects, so you can start editing on an iPhone or iPad and continue in the more powerful desktop app. You still can't directly open projects from Final Cut Pro 7 or earlier, but a plug-in called SendToX ($4.99 in the Mac App Store), from Intelligent Assistance lets you do just that—addressing a huge concern of the existing pro user base. Another workflow capability is support for Apple Xsan storage, with file locking so team members don't trip on each other's work. Premiere Pro, on the other hand, offers a bit more in the way of collaboration options with its Team Projects via Adobe Creative Cloud, which offers simultaneous editing with conflict resolution features. In addition to its automatic clip-organization options, Final Cut Pro X includes manual keyword tagging. Much like a good photo workflow app, Final Cut Pro X makes entering frequently used tags simple—you can even use keyboard shortcuts. Tagging in Final Cut Pro X still isn't as sophisticated as the keywording feature in Adobe Lightroom, but Premiere can only use tags through the separate Adobe Bridge manager (though it does offer lots of metadata and face detection).
One very cool keyword tagging option in Final Cut is that you can apply a tag to just part of a clip. You can also star, rate, or reject a clip from icons below the source tray. I'm always surprised at how many video editing apps lack this basic metadata capability.
Interface The interface sports a consistent dark gray that makes the content you're editing the most prominent thing on the screen. Four preset window layouts in Final Cut include Default, Organize, Color & Effects, and Dual Displays (which is grayed out if you don't have dual displays). You can also create your own custom workspace layouts. You can't, however, undock panels to make them float free, as you can in Premiere Pro. While the Final Cut Pro X timeline looks something like that of iMovie, with its free-form, trackless Magnetic Timeline view, the pro program packs vastly more editing power.
As with pretty much every video editing app, Final Cut Pro X presents the standard three-pane view, with source clips on the top left, preview on the top right, and timeline across the bottom. A timecode indicator appears below the preview window, along with an indicator of rendering percent complete. You can full-screen the preview and resize any panel, but you can't pull panels off into separate windows ( and Premiere Pro let you do this). You get Undo and Redo in Final Cut, but Premiere Pro's history window offers more in the way of letting you get back to any point in your editing process. There are no track numbers along the left edge; Final Cut Pro X calls tracks lanes, and you can add as many of these as you like. There's no track limit like you find in other video editors such as.
I should note that Final Cut still makes excellent use of keyboard shortcuts, such as for changing back and forth among the trim, select, blade, and range selection functions. Good old J, K, L, I, and O still work as you'd expect. You can display an on-screen keyboard showing them all, and edit key functions to taste. Adding clips to the Magnetic Timeline is a simple dragging operation, and your dropped clip snaps to neighbor clips or the start (you can use a Position cursor tool). If you're attentive, you'll notice a small hairline connects the clip you enter with the first clip you added. This Clip Connection means that whenever you move the main clip, the one added after will stay in the same relative position on the timeline. But if you drag a clip so that it overlaps another, that second clip scoots out of its way, dropping down to create a new overlapping lane beneath it.
Another concept unique to Final Cut Pro X is that clips are categorized into Roles. Roles define what clips are for—it could be video, titles, dialog, music, and effects. But the power of this comes when you create your own custom sub-roles, such as effects, dialogue, background, or B-roll. Clear color-coding of these roles means you can use the default colors or choose from a tasteful palette of a dozen colors to assign your own. Not only do these colors show up on the on-screen timeline, but also on the Touch Bar's mini timeline view, helping you see what kind of tracks are playing. It's great organizational tool.
Editing 360-Degree Video in Final Cut Pro X. Apple's new support for 360-degree VR video isn't just a gesture. It's deep, well-though-out support with the tools editors in this medium need, including true 360-degree titles, VR headset support, effects, and 360° Patch. The last is very useful for this kind of content: It lets you remove the camera rig from your production with a cloned area (usually the ground).
Because 360 VR captures everything in every direction, the camera itself is not excluded, but often undesired in the final product. After importing 360 content, you can view and navigate through it by dropping down the 360° Viewer option from the View menu. I tested with footage from a Nikon KeyMission 360 and a with no problems and snappy response.
A couple things it doesn't do with 360, however, that CyberLink PowerDirector does, are stabilization and motion tracking. Effects you can use on 360-degree content include variations of Blur, Glow, and Sharpen. If you have Apple Motion ($49), you can create custom 3D, 360-degree titles and motion graphics, but the base Final Cut includes a selection as well. When you're done editing, you can directly share to the biggest outlets for VR content these days: Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo. Each of those has specific requirements that the program handles. Editing Video on the Timeline Final Cut offers precise, intuitive, and powerful tools for arranging and trimming clips.
Trimming and splitting can be done in the timeline or right in the clip's iMovie-style source entry. You can easily mark any selections on a clip as Favorite, for later use. Double-clicking a clip brings up the Precision Editor. You can trim either end with a simple click-and-drag, and, if you change your mind, the trimmed-away part of the clip will still be there if you later drag back the other way. A Blade tool does what makes sense for a tool with that name: It splits the clip in two at the edit point.
I also like the Region Selection tool, which lets you mark in and out points to select part of a clip, which you can remove or edit further. I do, however, miss PowerDirector's multi-trim tool, which lets you mark multiple in and out points to remove undesirable bits in the middle of a clip in a simpler process. Still, Final Cut Pro X does let you do this kind of multiple sub-clip selection in the source panel. It also lets you easily make ripple, trim, roll, slip, and slide edits. The edits are nondestructive, and you can always restore a part of a clip after you trim it. One of Final Cut Pro X's key features, Compound Clips, lets you group together clips, audio, and effects so that you can move them as a unit and everything will stay in sync.
This really unclutters the timeline, by showing just a single clip for the compound. You can easily expand the Compound clip at any time for further tweaking, separating it into its component elements—nothing is permanently flattened or joined in the compounding process. It's a handy way to deal with complex combinations of elements.
Another clever innovation that lets you save space on the timeline is Auditions. When you drag a new clip on top of one already in the timeline, you get the option of adding it as an Audition. This puts a little spotlight icon in the clip entry, which, when clicked, opens a viewer/chooser for as many Audition clip options as you've added. Think of it this way: Say you shot five takes for an opening scene for your wedding video. This little Auditions viewer lets you create a simple way to line up comparisons of all your choices. Just open the Audition window, select a track, and then play the overall video with the auditioning clip in place. Change clips and repeat until you see which one works better with your overall production.
It's very cool. Effects Once your clips are all in place, you can fine-tune and bling them with Final Cut's rich collection of color tools, transitions, effects, and text tools. For starters, you get 149 customizable video effects and 109 audio effects.
Quite a few are also now available for Final Cut. I installed Noise Industries' FxFactory Pro in my testing. Once installed, it looks just like part of the program, with its choices appearing in the Effects panel, rather than requiring its own window as some plug-in interfaces in other products do. Final Cut comes with over 100 transitions of its own, and the ability to search by transition name is helpful, given how many choices there are. Adding the most commonly needed type, cross-dissolve—can be done with a keyboard shortcut.
Transitions are easy to add—instead of having to create a secondary story line yourself, there's a one-step transition insertion for connected clips. Both effects and transitions are of high quality. You can set default video and audio effects that you can summon with a single keyboard combo, and save custom effects as presets. The Flow transition is a great tool when your editing jump cuts. This makes those edits for removing slips of the tongue in interviews much smoother. I tested this on footage of an interview with our mobile guru, Sascha Segan, and the result was remarkable.
Even though I cut out several words in the middle of a sentence, the Flow tool made the cut invisible. His head showed no motion at all, even though he had moved slightly in the part I cut out. The Flow tool simply filled in the missing bits, smoothing over the gap. This is an impressive tool.
In my testing, I found it easy to crop, rotate, resize, move, and do 3D skews on clips right in the preview window using handles. Composite picture-in-picture effects didn't slow down playback, as you see in some other video editing software, such as. Color Final Cut does wonders with color correction. You can either have the app automatically balance color, saturation, and exposure, or use the Color Adjustment panel to manually adjust them. The panel has a color picker to set a clip's color values, saturation, and exposure, each of which you can apply separately to shadows, mid-tones, highlights, or everything. New for version 10.4 are the updated Color Wheels. These have a puck in the middle that lets you move an image towards green, blue, or red, showing the result on the side of the wheel.
You can also adjust brightness and saturation with the wheels, and separately control everything (with the Master wheel), or just shadows, midtones, or highlights. It's a remarkably powerful and intuitive set of tools, and more usable than Adobe Premiere Pro's equivalent color wheel tools. If Final Cut's wheels are not to your taste, the Color Board shows a linear view of your color settings.
The color scopes now adapt to HDR editing, as do the color editing tools. Supported formats include Rec. 2020 HLG and Rec. 2020 PQ for HDR10 output. To get even deeper into the weeds of color correction, the new Color Curves tool lets you use multiple control points to adjust each of the three primary colors for very specific points on the brightness scale. Luma, Vectorscope, and RGB Parade monitors give you incredible insight into your movie's color usage. You can even edit a single color value using a dropper.
Final Cut now supports Color LUTs (lookup tables) from camera manufacturers like ARRI, Canon, Red, and Sony, but also custom LUTs for effects. These effects can be combined with others in a stacked arrangement.
The Match Color feature lets you transfer color and exposure characteristics from one clip to the rest to give your project a consistent look and adjust specific areas of the image based on selected color or a mask. The Color Balance tool, according to Apple, can 'increase contrast and remove color casts while making skin tones appear more natural.' I didn't find that either tool made impressive changes in my testing, so I often headed to the Color Correction tools to adjust manually. MacBook Pro Touch Bar Editing Support A feather in Final Cut Pro X's cap is its support for the.
The Touch Bar changes its appearance based on what you're doing in the application. It's nifty to see your timeline tracks or color options on the Touch Bar. Below, you can see three Touch Bar displays, for basic editing, timeline scrubbing, and text customization. These and many other versions of the Touch Bar show up automatically to expose tools that might be otherwise hidden in the menu. It's a great tool for beginners.
It might also be a good tool for higher-end users, too, but I can't help wonder if long-time Final Cut editors might be resistant to it. The biggest issue is that when you're working on a project, your eyes are intensely focused on the screen, not on the keyboard. And most video editors have the basic editing keyboard shortcuts in muscle memory by this point, so moving your gaze from the video content down to the keyboard introduces a disconnect in your workflow. Still, it's a good optional tool.
Titling is also simple and powerful in the latest version of Final Cut. You get lots of control over title overlays, with 183 animation templates. You edit text and position, and size the titles right in the video preview; there's no need for an external title editor. Though Final Cut Pro X has no instant movie feature like those you find in most consumer video editors, it does offer Themes, which are really just pairings of transitions and titles that work well together. Final Cut's 3D Titles are a lot of fun.
There are eight basic 3D templates and four more Cinematic ones, including a cool 3D Earth choice, for your sci-fi projects. There are 20 font presets, but you can use any style and size you like. Materials like concrete, fabric, plastic, and so on can give your titles any texture you desire. You also get a bunch of lighting options, such as Above, Diagonal Right, and so on. Touch Bar controls facilitate changing font settings like size and color, for those editing on a new MacBook Pro. In the, Apple added deep, pro-level captioning capability to Final Cut. You can import standard CEA-608 and iTT caption files, which sync with your movie.
You can also preview them in the video preview window, as well as position and format them with a choice of colors. On export, you can embed the captions into the video file or include them in a separate sidecar file. You can also send captioned projects to Compressor, which can make them iTunes Store–ready. Chroma-Keying Final Cut Pro X's chroma-keying effect works better than that of any Windows video editor I've used, performing admirably in testing, even given some imperfect green-screen lighting in the source. My background was nearly perfectly removed for transparency.
Though Premiere Pro offers more adjustment choices with its Chroma-Key effect, I couldn't tune all its adjustments to get as good a result as Final Cut delivered off the bat. And, in any case, Final Cut offers more control, letting you refine the sample color, edges, strength, spill level, mix, and more. But it's the Color Selection tool that really makes Final Cut state of the art in chroma-key.
This presents a color wheel with the matted color range, letting you visually adjust it to include more or less of a color range. Getting the Sound Right is another strength of Final Cut Pro X. It can automatically fix hum, noise, and peaks, or you can manually adjust these, if you prefer. Over 1,300 royalty-free sound effects are included, and there's lots of plug-in support. One impressive trick is the ability to match separately recorded tracks; for example, if you shoot HD footage with a and record sound simultaneously on another recorder, Match Audio aligns the sound source. New support for Apple Logic Pro plug-ins give you even more powerful sound editing options.
Finally, you get a surround-sound mixer to locate or animate 5.1 audio, and a 10-band or 31-band equalizer. Multicam Editing Final Cut Pro's multicam support reimagines the standard tool making it both more powerful and simpler. It supports the traditional syncing method using time codes, but it can also automatically sync up multiple clips by analyzing their audio tracks for peaks. You can alternatively use camera time or place a marker on the clips for syncing. Multicam works with sources in different formats, including different resolutions and codecs, and, remarkably, it allows up to 64 camera angles. I mentioned ease of use, and you get this right from the start when working with multicam.
Just select the clips to include (you can add or remove clips later), choose 'New multicam clip' from the right-click or File menu, and choose a syncing method. After placing the multicam clip in your timeline, choosing Open in Angle Editor displays a grid previewing each angle—up to 4-by-4 tiles for 16 total angles at a time. As with many Mac operations, using multicam is simple—as long as you know what you're doing. It took me a while to figure out that I could cut angles only when a multicam clip was in the Timeline, using the Angle Viewer—not the Angle Editor, which lets you add or remove clips (or stills) to and from the multicam clip, resync them, and edit the component clips (trimming and so on). It's actually simpler than Premiere Pro's multicam workflow, but not as easy as purely consumer products like PowerDirector and Pinnacle Studio make it.
Not only does Final Cut's Angle Viewer let you switch angles live, but it also lets you later tweak the cuts in the timeline. This combination of live switching and timeline tweaking lets you turn a three-angle interview into something far more compelling than a single edited clip could be.
Newer options let you edit audio separately and even combine multiple audio channels from the angles. Export Options and Hardware Connections Final Cut Pro X exports to the common output file formats, but pros will probably want the greater transcoding control available in the companion app, Compressor ($49.99). Final Cut can also output for Apple devices, discs, the Web, and email. As of the 10.4.1 update, you can share Roles separately, so, for example, you may only want to export video but not background music. Five DVD and five Blu-ray menu themes are included, though you can change the background and logo—far less customization than you find in most consumer video apps.
With Compressor, you can add chapters and names, something not available in Final Cut Pro X. If your real aim is output to disc, though, you may be better off with Adobe Premiere Elements or a PC app like PowerDirector or Corel VideoStudio. Like consumer apps, however, Final Cut Pro X can share your movie directly to Facebook, Vimeo, and YouTube.
For Vimeo and YouTube, 4K export is supported, too, and there are now 4K presets for exporting to Apple devices. It now also supports 360-degree uploading to all three. When I shared a short video by email, the result played nicely in the inbox. Finally, an HTTP streaming option lets content creators send their creations to Web servers for playback on iOS devices and Web browsers. Bandwidth is automatically adjusted for connection speed. Final Cut Pro X supports external broadcast monitors. In addition to supporting the popular Black Magic and AJA cards connected to a broadcast monitor, Final Cut can connect to any HDMI screen, or to a display using the lightning-fast Thunderbolt interface.
Black Magic, AJA, and Matrox offer Thunderbolt devices, which means you can preview on broadcast monitors in the field using a MacBook Pro as well as an iMac. Another, perhaps even more important, consequence of Thunderbolt is that it drastically reduces the time needed to transfer video from source devices. Performance Under the hood, the program's code base takes full advantage of 64-bit and multi-core processing, which eliminates a lot of waiting. This is a major deal for such a processing- and memory-intensive activity as video manipulation and encoding.
Final Cut Pro 7 was 32-bit, meaning you couldn't take advantage of more than 4GB RAM. Thanks to support for the multiple cores found all recent Macs (particularly the ultrapowerful ), the app processes everything you do in the background, and even displays percent complete in a timer-style indicator, so you can keep working. Indeed, even on the lower-end MacBook, editing response was nearly instantaneous. My stress test of compositing four video tracks has brought many a video app to its knees in the past with stop-and-go playback. But when I tried the test with Final Cut Pro X running on the iMac, it ran smoothly after an initial short delay. The MacBook Pro did everything snappily except for (understandably) a very large import. This version was free of any program crashes I'd experienced in previous versions, a positive development indeed.
The Final Word on Final Cut. For video enthusiasts on the Mac, Final Cut used to be a daunting upgrade from iMovie. Final Cut Pro X changes all that, making for a smooth learning curve. For most pro users, the gains in Final Cut Pro X should outweigh the hurdles to adoption.
Final Cut Pro X offers loads of power, ease of use, and no-wait performance. With rich support for 360 VR content editing and broader color spaces, Final Cut Pro X is ready for the future. Its deep, nimble tools in a fluid, highly usable and precise interface keep Final Cut Pro X our Editors' Choice for high-end video editing on the Mac.