When the revamped Final Cut Pro X first dropped, it upset many longtime users. There were legitimate issues at the time, with many features missing and an entirely new program to learn for editors that knew FCP like the back of their hands. Add to this the fact that Apple handled the update inelegantly, and it was quite the firestorm. However, that’s not Final Cut Pro X today.Today Final Cut Pro X is an outstanding NLE. I think it’s the best in the business. When it comes to Final Cut, and Apple in general, there is a lot of schadenfreude out there. It can be hard to filter out the legitimate complaints. Try FCPX and see for yourself that it is far, far from “iMovie for prosumers”. It’s a great program for prosumers who want more than iMovie can offer, no doubt, but it’s also a superb tool for pros. Just ask the many that rely on it daily to edit television and film projects.BTW: When you see a review that says “basically iMovie”, “very limited functionality”, or “not for professionals”, you can trust the reivewer either doesn’t know how to use the product (likely) or has an agenda in favor of Adobe (also likely). Given the number of commercials, documentaries, and feature films that have been edited using FCPX in just the last few months, it’s safe to say it’s neither iMovie or very limited. Just check with some of Hollywood’s best filmmakers to see if it’s “not for pros”.

The less you know about editing, the easier to learn this software is. Those who have edited in track-based software for years and years will find this jarring. Some will outright dislike it at first. But they really need to power through the paradigm shift to reach the point where the speed is really felt. One month after switching from a track-based workflow to FCPX, I was shocked to find myself going home on-time for a change. I quickly noticed a 40% speed increase over track-based editors where everything you want to do is a deep dive down a rabbithole of sliders and checkboxes and dials. Most don't really matter to what you're doing. FCPX is intuitive. It does so much for you in the background, and, typical Apple, they've removed unnecessary options by doing them for you automatically, and exclusing ones that are irrelevant. In the early days, editors scorned FCPX because it wasn't fully-featured. Then they added all the features pros wanted over the next 2 years, and not only did they add them, they RE-IMAGINED them to work better and faster. Other NLEs have since copied many of them. If control is your ultimate goal, choose something else, like Premiere. If speed without any sacrifice in quality means anything to you, though, FCPX is your best bet. I don't mean to make it sound perfect. It isn't. But using it is like driving a sports car — way faster and more fun.

I am by no means an expert, but Final Cut Pro makes it easy to learn and edit videos. My one complaint is that even though I was sending events to the trash, it was not removing the data from my hard drive because I had not closed Final Cut Pro. Once I closed and restarted Final Cut Pro, it showed the space available on my hard drive again, but FCP would still not allow me to import media to my new projects because it said I didn’t have enough space on my drive, when I clearly did. After I restarted my MacBook Pro and called tech support because the situation was still not resolved, the tech support told me it was being caused by me copying files into a folder on my desktop from my microSD card instead of “properly” importing them using FCP. That answer made about as much sense to me as if when I went to withdraw money from the ATM it told me my tire pressure was low. In the end, I found I needed to “Delete Generated Library Files” and that finally resolved the issue. To me, it should be a lot simpler than jumping through all those flaming hoops like a circus bear. I don’t understand why it hangs onto those files and thinks there is no room on the hard drive, when the OS shows the space as available. Apparently it must not be too concerning to Apple though because I found multiple threads online as far back as 2019 discussing the same problems. Besides that, Final Cut Pro has worked well for me.

I started editing over 15 years ago using tape to tape and then made the switch to non-linear shortly after. I've used most all the professional software on the market. I was an Adobe Premiere user for about 5 years and before that FCP7. FCPX is so amazing. It's definetly a different editing experience, but wow. My editing sped up instantly once I got the gist of it. I increased my productivity, and editing became a joy once more after leaving Adobe behind. The people commenting giving it low ratings might have genuine issues, but I've had nothing but success using this software the last 5 years. I'm not sure why someone would rate their Beta software on here. As a beta tester, you're taking a risk that could reduce your productivity and obviously you will be faced with bugs. I use this every day. I chose an iMac 2017 and it's fast with FCPX. There are a few bugs, but have you tried Adobe on a Mac? One of the best things about this program, is if it crashes, you don't lose your progress. You pick up exactly where you left off. It does have Timecode capablility and if you want to work with it, you can. I think some negative comments I've seen are from people who either don't have the right computer setup to run it properly, or they do not educate themselves enough to find the features they are looking for. who cares if you can't post directly to Facebook. Export and upload it on the website. These low ratings are ridiculous. I look forward to using this program probably the rest of my carreer. It keeps getting better and I'm a happy camper.

Seven years ago I left Final Cut Pro as my preferred editing suite, as many editors did at the time, for Adobe Premiere. I recently revisited Final Cut Pro X when I heard great things about their 10.4 update and….wow! I am honestly speechless at the vast amount of improvements made to this software. The developers really have done a fantastic job with this latest version of FCPX and I am blown away at how much more efficient and optimized the editing process has become, especially when compared to Premiere. I went ahead and jumped into this software after a few short tutorials and found myself saving about an hour of time when compared to a similar video I recently edited in Premiere and this was after just getting started! Further, the export time was a little more than twice as fast as Premiere! I could go on and on here (I may make a video about this) but I am intrigued and exited for the future of my editing process. I’m not ready to jump ship from Premiere just yet but I am definitely making both Premiere and Final Cut Pro a part of my workflow now. HUGE thanks to the developers for making Final Cut Pro X 10.4 easy to navigate, fresh and exciting, streamlined, professional and making the combined performance of FCP and Macs a powerhouse of a editing workstation!

I have been a professional editor for over 20 years. I have been through multiple training classes and certifications on different editing platforms. There has been a lot of blowback against this program since version X hit the market. At first it was not sufficient for true professional editing. There were some glaring omissions. These have been addressed for the most part. Some will complain about this or that but often I have found the complaints are a failure to understand how a function works in X or where it is found. I have managed several post editing facilities over the years. On other platforms I would often estimate a project based on how many minutes a day of editing a polished fast editor could complete. Let's take a commercial quality graphics heavy promo piece. With graphic artist working in conjunction with editors I would typically bid out that project at 30 seconds or a minute of finished video in a 10 hour day. Today on X and only on X I can bid that same project out at 2 or 3 minutes per day. From media management to color correction to an incredible multicam integration this program simply flies through the edit. More precisely the program gets out of the way of the edit and lets you get to your vision. I have found that I can get an editor up and running on Final Cut X and being more productive then ever before in under 2 weeks. It is a truly amazing and powerful program. I really believe that over time the competitors will all be forced to reconsider their editing paradigm and shift to something that is more fluid like FCPX. If you have never tried it you owe it to your bottom line to at least check it out and give it the 30 day test drive. I am pretty certain that you won't regret it and you won't look back.

Apple has failed to address the bug that will not allow you to use custom grid overlays in version 11. These are, in my case, PNG files (nothing fancy) and almost everyone that uses them has reported this issue, so they know about it. It’s been months guys! If FCP 11 didn’t update my projects so FCP X could not open them, I’d consider going back to version 10. What is happening Apple? It’s been radio silence from you. FCP has gotten worse over the years. I never had FCP 7 lock my computer up and restart it all on its own. Let’s actually do some work and put in a full day. How do you get something that’s worked for years messed up this bad and not address it? Be nice if there was backwards compatibility. So, so many other problems, but I digress. It all started when they ditched FCP 7, and some genius turned it into iMovie with a custom wrap and “magnetic” rims. It’s like they wanted to lose money on purpose. If they had kept going the way of FCP 7, they’d be dominating right now. FCP X was a downgrade. Guess that’s what happens when you skip grade 8 and 9 at the same time. FCP X, maybe it should have been FCP 420, cause y’all smoking something. Hey Apple, if you don’t want to make an NLE anymore, don’t. But don’t string us along staying way behind the competition. Did the interns take over? Baffling to me. I’ve used Macs since the third grade and I am now considering leaving them behind for good.

I worked in television production for 50 years, and in that time never ran edit system more aggravating than Final Cut Pro 10. I hate the way it makes the time-line jump allover the place. One is constantly asking. “Now where did that go?” I also do not like how one must nearly acquire a court order to separate audio and video. Also dislikthe way the time line presents such an inaccurate representation of the edit, and that the space allowed for the timeline on hte screen is way too small. The timeline is the most important part f the edit, yet it is squeezed way down as almost an afterthought. When wanting to check material before and after an edit, if those moments are more than a second or so away then checking again makes the edit jump all over the place. Yes, there are way to compensate for these aggravations, but seems that is all one does. When finishing an edit I am ready to go into therapy.I do like Final Cut 10s’ color correction, audio features and titling. Actually it is an upgrade in every way but the editing itself which as been made so awkward and frustrating that it takes all the fun out of it.I loved Final Cut 9. I wish you would upgrade it with some of the features in 10 and re-offer it. The only reason I am using 10 is because upgrading to the new systems made 9 inoperable. I thought not allowing both systems to stand side-by-side was a real disservice.

This is a program that supports my livlihood and I love it endlessly. I am only rating it three stars in hope of cathing the eye of a developer to say please... please get final cut in 2024. This is a brilliant program that is seemingly stuck in about 2016. There are so many features that could be implimented to make FCX an absolute threat and the ONLY program in the conversation for online creators and editors. My number one hope is that the goold folks at team FCX incorperate some kind of shared editing system. It seems so Apple to do something like this and I have wanted it for almost a decade and the tech has got to be there! Like if a few editors could collaborate on a cloud based project...like basically a library in a cloud, this would be the greatest program in the world. Also, some simple busy-work eliminationg AI features would be brilliant. I.E. the ability to automatically cut "dead spaces" where there is no audio in order to maximilize work flow for conversation based content. That alone would save hours of time and again... seems very obvious. Just please, please team FCX... get this program up to snuff with current tech. I watch every Apple Keynote hoping that some FCX dev will take the stage and have a brilliant FCX showcase showing off incredible new features. Jeez, in fact yall should have a flex moment and get Marquees Brownlee or Mr Beast on stage to talk about the new features ha. But I want FCX to feel current so badly. Almost like a spiritual Final Cut 11 or something. This day is coming... I know it. And when it does it will be a dream come true.

I’ve used Davinci and Premiere. FCP is just flat out better than the other two for my use case. I can see why someone would want to use the other two as there are aspects of both of those programs that have more options than FCP. However, one thing which is tough to deny is that FCP is WAY faster than either Davinci or Premiere. Yes I tried the latest version of Resolve and no the supposed speed increases and GPU optimization didn’t make it anywhere close to as fast as FCP. I suppose if you put together a $10,000+ workstation you may be able to reach some of the speed levels of the $3000 non-Pro iMac but I doubt it. Not to mention the monthly fee being really expensive for Premiere. Overall FCP is the best bang for your buck when it comes to speed. And the functionality has been getting better and better. Yes FCP X was weak when it launched replacing FCP 7 but it’s been improving and it’s caught up in most capacities. 10.3 was great for aesthetics of the program but 10.4 and bringing back color wheels (among other color grading options) to FCP was a great step to bringing it in line with the pro level NLEs. Highly recommended.

I am worried that I might have bought the wrong application. I needed a new app replacement ASAP. About a month ago my new 15-inch MacBook Pro suffered damage to its keypad and inner parts. During the repair, existing data was migrated to my 1-terabyte external disc drive, but in the process my Aperture 3 camera photo management app was deleted. Reason was probably, as I was told by the Mac Genius who had my case that day, that Aperture was no longer supported by Apple and and was to be automatically purged wherever encountered in shop work. Sort of made sense to me but I didn’t like it, because I grew to depend on Aperture for my post-production work. Besides being easy to use, it had many useful capabilities including selected music frame positioning for slide shows, music audio direct from iTunes. It accepted text captioning superimposed on image frames, direct from stored jpeg libraries. The text could be any font, any size, moved anywhere within frames, and any color, best of all to me: opaque bright white text. Slide show could be any length, of course.Before I downloaded First Cut Pro X v10.4.4 yesterday, I was hoping for just a higher powered replacement of Aperture 3. But by preliminary looks of it when pulled up on screen, it seemed to me I was getting a super video editor, impressive but not anything I could use now. Will somebody please tell me I’m wrong, that FCP-X is okay, money well spent? Otherwise, leads on any DSLR camera-editor type apps similar to Aperture, by Apple (or otherwise), would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. AZ.

At CTE Dojo, we use Final Cut Pro as a cornerstone multimedia tool in our Sozosuru curriculum to teach students how to market ideas and products effectively through compelling video storytelling. This professional-grade video editing software is incredibly user-friendly for beginners yet robust enough for advanced creators, making it ideal for our diverse range of learners.Students gain hands-on experience in editing, color grading, and sound design, all within a single intuitive platform. The software’s advanced features, like magnetic timelines and customizable effects, allow students to experiment with creativity while learning essential marketing techniques. Whether it’s producing a promotional video or crafting a digital pitch, Final Cut Pro empowers students to bring their ideas to life in a professional and visually captivating manner.By integrating Final Cut Pro into our curriculum, we ensure that learners not only master technical skills but also develop the storytelling acumen needed to stand out in today’s multimedia-driven business world. This tool is essential for fostering creativity, innovation, and practical application—core values of the CTE Dojo experience.