Final Cut Pro App Reviews

Import is still slow on 10.9. Even when it’s copying to the same drive, any way to speed this up? Lots of beach balling when dragging clips in rather than traditional import. Drag & drop is a staple of Apple! Can a man get some curves action that doesn’t feel clunky when switching between effects and such? Just want curves. RGB and Luma. PLEASE. Also, there seems to be a bug in El Capitan in the Dashboard. The minutes, seconds, frames, subframe numbers aren’t lined up with the labels below in the dashboard. It’s confusing! In addition, I’d love a chance to custom % my viewer. Thanks!

I really love Final Cut, but I do a lot of filming with my Samsung NX1 which encodes it’s files with H.265. I really wish Final Cut would update to support H.265, like Adobe Premiere has.

Seems like Apple doesn’t care about Final Cut users anymore. There are a lot of problems with the current Final Cut X. Sometimes when you import video, the video goes black. You can see anything, even though you can go back o the orginal file and it works perfectly. Get Adobe Premiere instead!

Final Cut X is a disaster. The interface is crippling and is swarming with bugs.

I have been trying to get this program to open for weeks now and it keeps shutting down and giving me error codes its so frustrating

I had a few issues with previous versions of FCPX, but this new version appears to be working just as well as I’d expect it to. It does what I need without holding me back with long wait times or bugs.

I can’t update this app!! I delete it to try to install again, but it does not let me do it!!!!

I have used Final Cut Pro X on and off for a few years and I never had an issue with the app it was jsut always the rendering times. I finally got around to putting an external graphics card on my iMac and man does this thing fly through rendering effects now. It is literally night and day, I have a GTX980Ti over Thunderbolt2 and my render times are much, much quicker now. The app just works great for me now.

I am glad I made the switch to Final cut pro from IMovie, There is so much more I can do with Final cut pro like add plug-ins and pre-keyed footage and all my video edditing is so much better, App works perfect no problems just awesome films!

This is not bad update actually as you think.But certainly need more features though. I wish that the roles based mixer in FCPX was already available in 10.2.3.But sadly to say, it wasn’t ready yet. Other than that, this app is back to normal again, fixed all the bugs include the timecode display for EL Capitan. It has made new improvements and added new couple features specially for tv broadcasters. And the most important thing, FCPX still can create story any type of films whether it’s an home video, indie,hollywood and bollywood style rather than pressing many buttons. I’m hoping that the next update (BIG ONE) will be added on this amazing nle app by the middle of this year 2016. I can’t wait when that happen. Definitely need more patience for FCPX pro editors and to its new users. Thank you APPLE for this update.

Dont listen to the detractors if you are on the fence. I am very familiar with all of the big NLEs in the industry. I have access to all of them and I am a longtime power user of AVID and FCP7 (fine softwares in their own right)… yet I choose FCPX to edit with. X is far and away my favorite NLE. Why? Too many reasons to list, but here’s a few: FCPX is elegant and forward thinking and it is entirely capable of handling any kind of project from shorts, promos and music videos, to longer format TV and film. X is such a dynamic new paradigm with so many unique and powerful ways to work, that it allows editors to employ a staggering variety of workflows. It is exciting to be on the cusp of a whole new world of ways in which media can be created. The magnetic timeline is a brilliant advancement that admittadly was baffling at first, but now makes the standard track-based timelines feel archaic to me. Thanks to the magnetic timeline, and the lack of collision-prone dedicated tracks, and no time-wasting patch bay, I can A-Roll an episode of one of our TV shows in almost half the time vs. a standard track-based NLE. It is really worth wrapping your head around the magnetic timeline, even if it initially feels very alien for longtime editors. The price and availability of 3rd party fx, transitions, etc., is staggering. Rigging and publishing with Motion has allowed me to develop many specific tools that are available to me in X, making for tons of flexibility. I’ve built many custom generators that allow me to get graphic intensive projects out of my compositing software, and into my NLE while preserving the ability to adjust parameters and drop in video without ever returning to Motion. The graphics capability in X means that for projects involving basic compositing I can get great results without needing a compositing software at all. Audio is brilliant, with endless flexibility and very robust Logic-based filters and compressors, and each audio clip already has a responsive 31 band equalizer built in. Re-timing video clips and building speed ramps is insanely easy and fun to do. The much maligned color board is actually excellent, as are the color masking and power windows. Also, X has probably the BEST scopes of any NLE/Color software, fast, beautiful and responsive. FCPX also plays nicely with all kinds of 3rd party options for curves, LUTs, LOG/RAW, etc. FCPX works brilliantly with RED footage, and is immediately on top of new codecs as they appear. Our production facility has several Avids connected to an ISIS. It’s a great setup, and guess what, X plays nicely with ISIS too… Oh yeah, the entire X suite, including the very impressive Motion, is only $400…. Mind-blowing in my opinion. Bottom line: I’m doing the best work of my career on FCPX. I’ve been winning regional Emmy’s® every year, and I’m faster than ever. The FCPX work I do includes national commercial accounts, messaging/product work for some of the biggest companies in the country, and 8 different regional or national TV programs in a variety of genres. X is a joy to use and has reinvigorated my love of editing. I’ve experienced almost none of the issues that other users mention in their reviews, and one of the Macs I still use is a late 2008 model! The latest versions of X have been as stable and predictable as any of our other NLEs, often more stable. After a few hiccups in it’s infancy, now FCPX just works. As for people saying it’s a worthless software, well…. they just seem really confused to me. All the vitriol is pointless IMO. Find the tools you love, learn to use them properly, and then use them. Railing against a tool you can’t figure out is a waste of time, and tends to reflect on the reviewer more than the software. But to each their own… I hope X keeps growing its’ user base and acceptance in the industry. It was built for us editors to unlock and speed up our creativity, and that’s what it has done for me. Happy editing!

This software is different, but in a very good way. It did take a little effort on my part to get used to the magnetic timeline and was well worth it. I can edit much faster, more efficiently, and editing is fun again. Love the keywords and organizing structure of this program. Find it much better than the traditional bins and a better way of doing things. The only thing missing is the “Send To Motion” option which was available in previous versions. On the other hand, custom generators, titles, effects, and transitions can be built in Motion then published for use in Final Cut Pro, which is a big bonus. Do wish to see keyframing available for color correction, but the tools are very good for basic to intermediate color grading. I would love to see roles being assigned on finder tags or keywords. Also, roles for graphics and photos would be helpful. Video and titles are generic and not as specific. Then again, adding roles or subroles is easy. It is annoying to have to place connected clips into a secondary (connected) storyline to get access to all the trimming and other tools available in the primary storyline. Would be a big help with audio. Speaking of audio, I wish there was ways to “marry” the audio to video after synching has been completed rather then resorting to compound clips. Would be nice to decompose compound clips in place, make changes and be done rather then decomposing in a seperate timeline. Prescion editor in a secondary storyline would be nice as well. Would love to see options to apply video and audio transitions separately. Other then a few feature requests, not too much to complain about. So far, no encounters with any major stability issues in the current version.

Everything works fine, except whenever I do one little thing in the timeline, be it split a clip or add an effect, the entire library will backup and will slow the whole program down. I wish we could set certain times for it to backup, because it’s great for it to be done automatically, but not every time we do something.

I’ve been using FCP X for a few years now and I’ve never completely fallen in love with it. FCPX is like that girlfriend or boyfriend you’ve stayed with because most of the time they’re ok, and they mean well. And you’ve just put too much time into the relationship to leave them. The hard truth you’ve been trying to avoid is that they’re just slowing you down. I’m a full time editor that creates sizzle reels containing plenty of quick cuts timed to music. If you do simple straight forward edits like Vlogs, interviews, etc. this is a great tool to fly quickly though your edits. On the other hand for more cut intensive edits with more than 1 layer of video things in the speed department go downhill FAST. Or really rather slowly. Throw a basic text layer in there and all of sudden all hell breaks loose and playback chokes. This is on a fully loaded 2015 5K Retina iMac, with all files transcoded to ProRes on an external thunderbolt RAID drive clocked at over 800 MB/s. And as of the last update, certain tracks of audio will just drop out intermitently during playback. Speed is paramount to me with my work, and too many times the slowness of FCPX gets in the way of creativity. I give FCPX 3 stars because I feel overall it still performs on an average level. I want to love this program so much because I’m an Apple fanboy at heart but FCPX has just left me dissapointed.

Over all I like this product, but it has some issues. If you use OBS you will find some issues, Final Cut Pro will not read the audio coming out of OBS, it requires third party software to work. I find it rather pitiful that so called pro software isn’t capable of working outside the apple box and utilizing a wider spectrum of file types.

Final Cut Pro X is a great video editor! Although not as robust as Adobe Premiere, it does more than I need it to and is SO much easier. It’s very intuitive and reliable and has never crashed on me. I would recommend that anyone who doesn’t need all the crazy advanced features of Premiere highly consider giving this new Final Cut Pro a chance.

Please upgrade to H.265!!!!!!! Having to convert is such a nuisance. Everything else is perfect though, great app.