UPDATE: The new versions of Final Cut Pro for iPad and Mac — and the new Final Cut Camera app — launched Thursday on the App Store.
Apple updated its video editing application Final Cut Pro with live multi-camera recording on iPad and powerful new AI color correction on Mac. Plus, Final Cut Camera, a free new app for iPad and iPhone, allows for professional video capture in multicam mode or on its own. These updates “take creativity to the next level,” said Will Hui, project manager for creative applications at Apple when they were announced in May.
The wait for them is now over.
Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 is now a multi-cam recording studio
Photo: Apple
Last year, Apple released Final Cut Pro for iPad — letting users record, professionally edit and export videos all from its thin-and-light tablet. The entire interface was rebuilt from the ground up around multitouch input. Just a year later, the app is getting powerful new features that push the iPad version of the app forward.
Live Multicam lets directors switch between the live camera feeds of up to four iPhones or iPads, while recording directly into the Final Cut timeline. This “opens up entirely new video workflows,” says Hui.
On an iPhone- and iPad-based production, this significantly reduces the friction between independently recording video on four separate devices, importing footage and editing hours later.
Image: Apple
Powering Live Multicam is a new app for iPad and iPhone called Final Cut Camera. From the director’s iPad, you can remotely control focus, exposure, white balance and more. It can also be used as a standalone video recording app with more precise manual controls than what Apple can fit in the regular Camera app.
Other improvements to Final Cut Pro 2 for iPad include storing project files on an external drive, thanks to the iPad Pro’s Thunderbolt port. Final rendering is “up to two times faster than M1” on the iPad Pro with M4 that launched in May, according to Hui. The M4 also enables “up to four times more streams of ProRes RAW” video footage, a huge increase in bandwidth for editing high-quality video.
Final Cut Pro for Mac gets powerful AI color correction
Image: Apple
The Mac gets some love with these updates, too. Color correction is made easier with a new “Enhance Light and Color” button. Clicking it is a shortcut to getting improved “color, color balance, contrast, and brightness in one simple step, and is optimized for SDR, HDR, RAW and Log-encoded media,” according to Apple. Professional color correction takes years of skill and a great eye — this feature offers an easy starting point for those with less experience.
You can easily drag-and-drop the color correction made to one clip to other clips in the timeline, too. To make edits easily identifiable, you can give each tweak a different name — like Sepia, High Contrast, Desaturated Reds, etc.
AI now fills in the gaps when you slow down a clip from its original speed, too. “With Smooth Slo-Mo, frames of video are intelligently generated and blended together,” promised Apple. That means that slowing down a segment of video to 80% of its original speed will look more natural and less choppy.
The new features require a Mac with Apple silicon.
The wait is over
Get Final Cut Pro for iPad 2, Final Cut Camera and Final Cut Pro for Mac are all now ready to download and install. They are free updates for existing users.
Final Cut Pro for iPad costs $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year; Final Cut Pro for Mac is available as a one-time purchase for $299.99. Final Cut Camera is free.
This article originally ran May 7, 2024. It was updated June 20 by Ed Hardy with Apple’s release of the software.
D. Griffin Jones is a writer, podcaster and video producer for Cult of Mac. Griffin has been a passionate computer enthusiast since 2002, when he got his first PC — but since getting a Mac in 2008, he hasn’t turned back. His skills in graphic and web design, along with video and podcast editing, are self-taught over 20+ years. Griffin has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and has written several (unpublished) apps for Mac and iOS. His collection of old computers is made up of 40+ desktops, laptops, PDAs and devices, dating back to the early ’80s. He brings all of these creative and technical skills, along with a deep knowledge of Apple history, into his work for Cult of Mac.
