For the past two weeks, I've been editing in the latest version of Final Cut Pro for iPad. For many professionals, the original release of this app last year missed the mark. Their tools have been too limited to use on a daily basis. The new version doesn't necessarily change that, but despite my many frustrations, I'm finally discovering the joy of using it.
The new version of the app, confusingly called “Final Cut Pro for iPad 2” (it's for all current iPads, not the iPad 2), came out this week. And perhaps the biggest new feature in this year's release isn't entirely a Final Cut Pro feature: it's an entirely new app that integrates with it.
The new Final Cut Camera is a standalone app for your iPhone that offers advanced camera controls. If you've seen the Blackmagic app or the recently released Kino app, you'll know what to expect: peaking, manual focus, and audio metering. You just won't be able to add custom LUTs like you can on the other two.
The Final Cut Camera app can be used in conjunction with Final Cut Pro on iPad to record Live Multicam sessions with footage streamed from up to four iPhones or iPads. In Final Cut for iPad, you take on the role of director. You can monitor images coming from iPhones, zoom and change white balance, focus mode and more on the fly. I see this new feature being particularly popular for video podcasts.
The previews you're seeing are compressed, but they still look great. Once you stop the recording session, the high-quality files are transferred to the iPad with Final Cut Pro and processed. The whole process is much faster than I expected. My 10-minute session with three iPhones was available for editing minutes later. A new transfer indicator window at the top of the user interface shows you the progress.
There is one update I would love to see for this feature in the future: live editing. Currently, you'll still need to finish recording before syncing all the files and moving on to editing.
Multicam support is a great new feature, but it contrasts with how little Apple has done to improve the Final Cut Pro for iPad experience. The standout feature of this year's update is support for external hard drives. That's important: this feature was strangely absent last year. But its addition instantly reminded me how poorly Final Cut Pro for iPad (and iPadOS) handles file management.
All of your media files should reside within the FCP library files, and that same library file should be stored on the internal or external drive. That means you can't split your media across multiple drives or cloud storage. A side effect of this method is that it means you are constantly duplicating files from one place to another.
And there are other issues that have not changed compared to last year. For example, you still can't import entire folders into Final Cut Pro, only individual files. And once imported, you still can't organize the files into separate folders or containers like “A-roll”, “B-roll”, “Music” or “Graphics”.
Another new feature exclusive to the iPad version of Final Cut Pro is live drawings. With an Apple Pencil, you can draw animations directly on your clips. The latest Apple Pencil Pro tricks are supported here, but other than that, there's not much to do with the Pencil Pro itself. I wish there was a way to program haptic compression to do something else on the editing front, maybe select multiple clips while hovering or just right-click. I feel like it would be useful and speed up pencil work.
There are still a lot of important video editing features that I'm waiting for Apple to add: composite clips, folders, adjustment layers, post-stabilization, coloring tools like curves, sharing projects between machines, the ability to add new LUTs, 360 video support, object tracking, linear keyframes – the list goes on and on. If you read my review from last year, you'll find the exact same list there.
All those missing things really take you by surprise when you're in the flow. In the end, I found myself making creative decisions based on limitations of bad software.
Meanwhile, the market for mobile video editing apps is more competitive than ever. CapCut has been extremely popular among TikTokers. “Why I'm Switching to DaVinci” videos are all over my YouTube posts. And people still support the OG Lumafusion iPad app. In fact, three of the features I desperately need are already in the DaVinci iPad app.
But even after trying all the other apps I just listed and even with all my frustration over missing features, I keep coming back to Final Cut on the iPad. Because there is one thing Apple is doing here and that is the overall experience.
Apple calls this a “touch first” app and I finally understand what that means. Once you get over the learning curve, once you master the controls and are aware of their limitations, you will start to enjoy it and have fun. Apple isn't trying to replicate Final Cut's desktop experience, but rather building a new one. And you can see it in the way you interact with the selection wheel and in the way the sidebar appears so you can edit with your left hand.
I found that using Final Cut Pro with my hands is by far the most immersive way to edit. Everything is at your fingertips, literally. There's something about this more tangible approach that I'm starting to find charming, even if it's not as efficient as a mouse and keyboard.
If Apple can pull off those easy wins, then its vision of a capable and tactile Final Cut Pro could really come to fruition.
Photography by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
