For the past two weeks I’ve been editing in the latest version of Final Cut Pro for the iPad. For many professionals, the original release of this app last year missed the mark. The tools are simply 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 named “Final Cut Pro for iPad 2” (this is for all current iPads, not the iPad 2), was released this week. And perhaps the biggest new feature in this year’s release isn’t quite a Final Cut Pro feature: it’s a brand new app that integrates with it.
The new Final Cut Camera is a standalone app for your iPhone that provides advanced camera controls. If you’ve seen the Blackmagic app or the recently released Kino app, you know what to expect: peaking, manual focus and audio metering. You just can’t add custom LUTs like in the other two.
The Final Cut Camera app can be used with Final Cut Pro on iPad to record Live Multicam sessions, streaming footage from up to four iPhones or iPads. In Final Cut on the iPad you take on the role of director. You can view images from iPhones, zoom in and change white balance, focus mode and more in an instant. I see this new feature being especially popular for video podcasts.
The previews you see are compressed, but still look great. Once you stop the recording session, the full quality files will be transferred to the iPad with Final Cut Pro and displayed. The whole process went a lot 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 UI will show you the progress.
There is one upgrade I would like to see for this feature in the future: live editing. Currently, you still need to finish recording before syncing all files and starting editing.
Multicam support is a great new feature, but it stands in stark contrast to how little else Apple has done to improve the Final Cut Pro for iPad experience. The standout feature of this year’s update is the support for external hard drives. That’s important: this feature was strangely absent last year. But its addition immediately reminded me of how poorly Final Cut Pro for iPad (and iPadOS) handles file management.
All your media files should be in 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 you are constantly duplicating files from one place to another.
And there are other issues that haven’t changed from last year. For example, you still can’t import entire folders into Final Cut Pro, only individual files. And once they’re imported, you still can’t organize the files into separate folders or bins, such as ‘A-roll’, ‘B-roll’, ‘Music’ or ‘Graphics’.
Another new feature unique to the iPad version of Final Cut Pro is Live Drawing. With an Apple Pencil you can draw animations directly on your clips. Apple’s latest Pencil Pro tricks are supported here, but other than that there’s not much to the Pencil Pro itself. I wish there was a way to program the haptic squeeze to do a little more in the way of editing – perhaps selecting multiple clips while hovering, or just right-clicking on them. I think that would be useful and speed up working with a pencil.
There are still a lot of serious video editing features that I’m waiting for Apple to add: composite clips, folders, adjustment layers, post stabilization, color tools like curves, sharing projects between machines, the ability to add new LUTs, 360 video support, object tracking, linear keyframes – the list goes on. If you read my review from last year you will find the exact same list there.
All those missing things really overwhelm you when you’re in the flow. Ultimately, I found myself making creative decisions based on poor software limitations.
Meanwhile, the mobile video editing app market is more competitive than ever. CapCut is extremely popular among TikTokers. “Why I’m Switching to DaVinci” videos are all over my YouTube feed. And people still use the OG iPad app Lumafusion. Three of the features I desperately need are already in DaVinci’s iPad app.
But even after trying all the other apps I just mentioned and despite all my frustration with the missing features, I keep coming back to Final Cut on the iPad. Because there’s one thing Apple does here, and that’s the overall experience.
Apple calls this a touch-first app and I finally understand what that means. Once you get past the learning curve, get the hang of the controls, and become aware of its limitations, you’ll really start to enjoy it and have fun. Apple isn’t trying to copy the Final Cut desktop experience; it is working on a new experience. And you can see it in the way you interact with the jog wheel and 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. It’s all at your fingertips, literally. There’s something about this more tactile approach that I’m starting to find charming, even if it’s not as efficient as a mouse and keyboard.
If Apple can tick off these easy wins, its vision of a capable and highly intuitive Final Cut Pro could really come to fruition.
Photography by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge