Final Cut Pro 11 is out, and it's underwhelming to say the least

 Alright, FCP11 is out, and it's seriously underwhelming. Apple has been asleep at the wheel for a number of years / releases and that's really a pity.

Adobe Premiere and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve are on fast update cycles and are now feeling more advanced than FCP. That's a real shame.

What's new? Not much really: Magnetic mask, basically AI powered automatic masking,  and AI powered transcription.

That's it? Yep.

Note that DVR's Magic Mask was introduced 4 years ago, and it got AI powered transcription for at least a full year. PP has had it for even longer. And we already had third party tools and plug-ins doing these two things very well for many years as well.

So FCP is sadly LAGGING behind.

Well there is also Smart AR conform, Auto Enhance Light and Color, Smooth SloMo, Voice Isolation. I hope Apple is way better at implementing these features than the concurrence, because let me tell you, I am not in a rush to try them out. And if they are not substantially better than PP or DVR, I will feel even more let down by Apple. 

Oh yeah there is also spacial editing and export to Vision Pro. Vision Pro is a lame, dead product. No one likes it. So unless you specialize in outputting programs for VP, this FCP "feature" is going direct to the graveyard, and it feels to me it's pulling FCP with it. Bad feeling.

So yes, that's really it, and it feels like nothing new and ground breaking. Still Apple calls it version 11. Really? 10.9 would have suffice. That's one more nail in the coffin of FCP. What's planned for v12, a new logo?

FCPX came out in 2011, we are now heading toward 2025, FCP will be 14 years old, and to me it has stalled. It is more stable, it is still more enjoyable to use than Premiere and Resolve, but the long list of improvements the community has identified and is craving for is not being implemented. Apple does not care. Apple is drinking the cool aid. 

Both Adobe and Blackmagic are listening to their communities and implementing features that are useful to their users. In turn they feel recognized and appreciated. It's also making the apps more enjoyable to use and more powerful. And to me it feels like they are taking over FCP.

At this time I don't even feel I want to upgrade. Why bother? Everybody and his brother are doing AI transcription these days. Will Apple do it any better? It looks very limited at the moment. 

Until I need to do some difficult moving mask in FCP, I think I'll stay on 10.8. 

Apple Final Cut Pro 10.8 Update June 20, 2024

 Yoohoo! The day before summer apple releases FCP 10.8! Let's see what's in store.

Final Cut Pro release notes

Learn about current and previous updates for Final Cut Pro on Mac.

Before installing a Final Cut Pro update, verify that your system still meets Final Cut Pro system requirements. Then make sure to back up your current version of the Final Cut Pro application and your Final Cut Pro libraries.

New in Final Cut Pro 10.8

Released June 20, 2024

Final Cut Pro 10.8 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Automatically improve the color, color balance, contrast, and brightness of video or still images using the new Enhance Light and Color effect, powered by machine learning.

• Enable Smooth Slo-Mo to create amazing slow-motion visuals with an AI-enhanced algorithm on Mac models with Apple silicon.

• Stay organized by renaming color corrections and video effects in the inspector.

• Drag effects right from the inspector to other clips in the timeline or viewer.

• Use new filters in the timeline index to quickly identify clips with audio effects, video effects, retiming changes, missing media, or missing effects.

• Search in the timeline index by reel, scene, camera angle, camera name, custom metadata, or effect name.

• Search in the timeline index for user-created roles.

• Search for clips in the browser using new “Starts With” and “Ends With” search criteria.

• Enable or disable timeline scrolling using a new toolbar button.

• Improves timeline scrolling behavior during reverse playback.

• Fixes an issue where captions would sometimes flicker when timeline scrolling is enabled.

• Fixes an issue where browser items would be appear to be renamed when naming a folder.

• Fixes an issue that caused disabling the audio roles of a clip to make the video roles appear disabled.

• Accurately tone-maps HDR video content in 360° view for 360° projects.

• Fixes an issue that could cause ProRes RAW clips to be displayed incorrectly in the viewer on Intel-based Mac models.

• Fixes an issue that caused a freeze frame from a log-encoded clip to appear too bright in an HLG timeline.

• Fixes an issue that caused a disabled Color Board effect to be incorrectly enabled after exporting and reimporting an FCPXML of the timeline.

• Fixes an issue that caused the Space Designer audio effect to show presets as missing.

• Fixes an issue that could cause Final Cut Pro to stop responding when rendering with another app active.

• Fixes an issue that caused switching between the angle viewer and the video scopes to change the angle viewer selection back to “Enable video and audio switching.”

• Fixes an issue that caused Final Cut Pro to stop responding when both a folder and an enclosed item were selected in the browser.

• Adds support for sharing 8K ProRes MXF files.

• Improves support for Canon C2 AVC media.

• Adds support for Canon XF-AVC 1920x1080 59.94i/50i H.264 25Mbps.

• Removes support for disc burning.

• Updates FCPXML to version 1.12.

Get complete step-by-step how-to instructions and information on all features in Final Cut Pro. For a list of recent enhancements in Final Cut Pro, refer to What's New in Final Cut Pro.

OK, so a bunch of interesting things here. Notable to me are these three:

In YELLOW we have machine learning enabled Light and Color Enhancement, and Smooth Slow Motion. I'm very curious about these two, and I will test asap what kind of features and results we can get.

In ORANGE, search expansion, including audio and video effects, missing media, missing effects! Yes! finally Apple! It only took 9 years.

I have a 5 parts rant saga about missing effects in FCP and how extremely difficult it is to track them here: Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5. So much so that I had to report this to Apple, and likely many of you did as well, maybe, just maybe, Apple listened? But come on, 9 years?... I will be reporting how useful these improvements really are. Fingers crossed.

In RED, here goes the disc burning share option. Oh well, no one burns disks anymore, and when I did I used Toast anyway. I actually never used this once. But I understand it makes some people upset, not fun to loose a tool when you rely on it in your workflow.

Apple is yet again giving us crumbles when we are hungry for a full meal. No improvements on role based mixing or anything of the sort, which to me, and to many advanced users would be the feature to propel FCP to another level. Maybe in 2033.

My Final Cut Pro Vertical Videos Exports Look Blurry! Why?? It Has To Do With Custom Destinations

 I was using a previously created custom settings preset to export a vertical video in FCP and my export was really blurry.

 I just updated to Monterey 12.6.7 and immediately thought the update broke my custom presets/destinations.

It only happened with vertical / portrait videos, in this case 1080x1920. Horizontal / landscape videos were unaffected.

See for yourself:

On the left, blurry export using previously created destination/custom preset. On the right, export using Export File (default) and how it should look: crisp. (Click on the photo to see it properly.)

This shit happened on FCP Share/any previously created custom presets/destinations, and in Compressor as well if I used any of the previously created custom presets.

Creating a new custom preset worked just fine in Compressor and in FCP as well after adding the presets as destination. Exporting to File, using h264 or ProRes was not affected, just custom presets, and only the ones that I created before (or so I thought) 12.6.7 update.

And it was not just the custom h264 presets, previously created custom ProRes presets were blurry as well, less so, but still visibly blurred.

And it was not a case of a corrupted Project. I created a brand new vertical 1080x1920 Project and the same thing happened.

Horizontal / portrait videos, ex. 1920x1080 below, were not affected:

On the left, export using previously created destination/custom preset. On the right, export using Export File (default.) They both look fine. (Click on the photo to see it properly.)

So to me it looked like all custom presets created in Compressor prior to Monterey 12.6.7 were now screwed when exporting vertical videos... 🤬

Or were they?

Not so fast grasshopper!! I was quick to blame Apple on this one, in fact I was the one to blame!

What was the cause of my torments then?

Simple: I created and saved custom presets that LIMITED THE RESOLUTION TO 1920x1080. 

You see the problem? My vertical video that's 1920 pixels tall was resized to 1080 pixels tall, of course it was blurred! On top of this I had modified the Quality settings of my saved presets which COMPOUNDED THE BLUR problem.

And actually, if I had looked at the Inspector within Quicktime Player, I would have seen that the video had a resolution of 608x1080... Way smaller than the Project's 1080x1920 resolution.

And so, that's why horizontal 1920x1080 videos exported just fine with the old presets still. And why creating a new preset, leaving the resolution to the default 4K, exported just fine as well.

That's it, a small thing indeed. So next time your export looks blurry, maybe it's just a setting somewhere in your custom presets.

By the way, last tip on this topic, after it's imported as a destination inside FCP, no matter how you modify the custom preset into Compressor, it will not update as a destination in FCP. You have to go to Add Destination, select the preset you want to update, click Change, and point at/select the updated preset within Compressor's list.

Modifying the preset in Compressor does not update automatically inside FCP. To update a destination, click Change. Select the modified preset and click OK.

That's it. Happy Exports!

Final Cut Pro Error RequestCVPixelBufferForFrame returned: 3 for absolute frame xxx

I'm getting "Error RequestCVPixelBufferForFrame returned: 3 for absolute frame xxx" on a project involving a mix of XAVC Sony A1, and AVC iPhone footage.

Impossible to export the Projects without getting errors. Duplicating doesn't work, XML round trip doesn't work.

What works SOMETIMES, is to force render the Timeline (I usually never render anything), not just once, but multiple times, because one rendering leaves non rendered frames scattered all over. And from one time to another, the frames concerned are different, and their count is different as well.

Eventually after several Render Selected AND Render All commands, the entire Timeline is rendered and the export goes through.

But then, it does not always work.. What a pain.

Please Apple, FIX THIS!!

Mini M1, macOS 12.6.6, FCP 10.6.6

Final Cut Pro 10.6.6, Compressor 4.6.4, Motion 5.6.4 Updates

Cheers to FCP 10.6.6. update, release by Apple today. As always out of the blue, although people who follow these kind of things, like Richard Taylor at fcpx.tv, said an update was coming on Tuesday, and there it is.

Like Rich, I wish Apple put more dedication and enthusiasm into developing FCP new features and improvements, instead of branching into a subscription only iPad version. 😩

macOS Monterey 12.6, or more recent. Small update better than no update I suppose. Here is what's new (I'm skipping the iPad blah, because at this point I don't care about it.):

• Automatic HDR/SDR color management with tone mapping. This should be helpful.
• New titles, effects and generators. We'll see how nice they are.
• Color Adjustment effect with presets. Hmmm, kinda like under the previous bullet point isn't it? I hope it's not too gimmicky.
• Again falls under the second bullet point. Scene Removal Mask to remove bkg without green screen. AI powered I assume, we'll see if it's any good.
• ProRes RAW Settings window. That's good. I hope it gives access to all the tweaks available.
• ProRes RAW plug-ins from various camera manufacturers. OK.
• HEVC export up to 8K, hardware accelerated on silicon Macs. I like.
• Export to EXR with Alpha channel. I don't care, but OK.
• Handful of bugs fixed.

Compressor gets updated to v4.6.4. A few improvements: auto center crop, Copy/Paste files now allowed, improved IMF packages, auto surround channels labelling when using command line. What an obscure last entry!

Motion gets updated to v5.6.4. Nothing to get excited about really: auto color processing for better HDR/SDR workflow between Motion and FCP, HDR optimized color processing, no green screen background removal, improved playback/export times on silicon, improved Slice Scale filter, stability improvements.

All right, well I shall update soon as I am in between projects, and I'll report when I get cutting / compressing / motioning on these new versions.

Apple, it's getting boring other here in Pro Apps land... iPad version, who cares? You're getting lazy, imitating Resolve/Blackmagic design, and not leading anymore. Wake up!

RED Raw Files Become Black In Final Cut Pro

 Often when opening an old library, FCP doesn't read or recognize RED raw files properly, and displays black clips instead. Audio plays fine, but there is no image. The RED plugin is properly installed, and the clips are online.

A way to force FCP to read these files properly is to hold Option+Command at launch which will reset FCP preferences. Then as it rebuilds previews and all, magically the RED clips images re-appear.

I wish there was another way to force FCP to read RED files without having to erase the prefs. If it exists I have not find it.

EDIT: Another way :)

 Today I had yet another case of black Red footage in FCP. Going to the clip Settings, even though clicking on Modify RED Raw Settings and changing the values does nothing to help, I noticed a message from FCP saying something like "Cannot modify .RMD file, make sure it is not used by another application", or something like that.

So I thought about permissions. I went and set the entire media drive to Ignore Ownership on this Volume / Apply to enclose items.

Lo and behold, after restarting FCP normally (without resetting preferences), it fixed the problem, R3D files are back to normal.

EDIT: This darned "bug" is still creeping out :/

Again today the R3D files are black, what a pain. This happens on spanned clips by the way. In any case, today the simple solution was to restart FCP. That's it.

Final Cut 10.6.5 Share h264 Video + Audio Settings, Result Is Audio Only ?! It's A🪳

 Final Cut Pro 10.6.5, Monterey 12.6.1 on Mac M1 continues to give me a hard time. Today I'm exporting (Share) a h264 preset, two projects at once.

The first Project exports correctly. The second one does not, I get a notice: Share has failed.

Resulting in a QT file for the second Project has no video in it, only audio... What is going on???

Upon restarting FCP, the Export / Share goes through no problem.

Final Cut Pro 10.6.5 Corrupted Library / Project

 FCP has been pissing me off all day today 😡. After having a problem earlier with a Project Snapshot that I could not move, nor delete; FCP refused to Share on export and nothing happened...

I had to create a brand new Library, import my cuts / Projects, and all Media, while omitting the f$%ck@#p 🤬 Snapshot of course. And here goes a couple of hours.

Then I had to restart the computer because FCP still didn't want to export anything 😤.

Finally after restart it's behaving normally again. It's exporting, and the exported files look good. Pffui!.. 🥵