What Features Does Apple Final Cut Pro Still Need?

Posted on May 21, 2022 by Larry

Last week, Apple released a statement responding to a petition from hundreds of Final Cut Pro editors that Apple recommit to continued, active development of Final Cut. Apple answered, in part:

“While we believe we have plans in place to help address your important feature requests, we also recognize the need to build on those efforts and work alongside you to help support your film and TV projects and keep you posted on important updates.”

NOTE: Read their entire statement here.
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For many years, Apple offered editors the ability to suggest features using the “Provide Feedback to Apple” form in Final Cut Pro. However, this form presents several problems:

Apple never responds to suggestions made using this form. So we have no idea whether anyone in decision-making authority at Apple actually reads these.

NOTE: Apple has told me on several occasions that these are read. However, “read” and “act upon” are not the same.

When we provide feedback to Apple, we have no idea what anyone else is suggesting. We can neither agree nor disagree with the need for a specific feature.
There’s no way to reinforce how important – or unimportant – a feature is because we don’t know what’s suggested.
Apple has a long tradition of “not invented here.” If Apple engineers decide something is a good idea, it gets developed. If a user suggests a good idea, it is frequently ignored.

I created this article to begin an active and open discussion of missing features in Final Cut. If you think something needs to be added, suggest it in the comments. It’s not as good as a web-centered, multi-user database with instant vote totals. But it’s available today and gets us started.

If you have a feature, suggest it.
If you think a suggestion is good, reinforce it.
If you think a suggestion could be better, improve it.
If you think a suggestion is misguided, comment.

NOTE: All comments are moderated – so be polite. Inflammatory or off-topic comments will be removed.

My hope is to inform the Final Cut community, Apple and the advisory panel they hope to create so that the features Apple adds are actually those desired by editors.

Share this link with your friends on social media. Spread the word. Because, if there’s no interest in adding new features, that tell’s Apple something, as well.

Don’t wait for Apple to convene an advisory panel – let your voice be heard now.

LARRY’S TOP FIVE FEATURES

To get the discussion started, here are my top five feature requests for Final Cut Pro:

Scrolling timeline. As a project plays, the timeline should scroll to keep the playhead in view.
Effective speech-to-text creation, integration and editing.
Either develop an audio application specifically for mixing audio to picture or provide tighter round-trip integration with Logic Pro for audio mixing. The current audio mixing capability in Final Cut is limited and clunky. Audio mixing should be as easy in Final Cut as it is in Premiere to Audition.
Better, smoother collaboration features when editors are not on the same network. Adobe was so convinced this is an essential feature, they bought Frame.io. Perhaps include better media management and review tools.
Fix all the bugs in creating both DVD and Blu-ray Discs. The future may be downloads, but thousands of editors make their living creating physical media for clients. Burning DVDs/Blu-ray Discs in Final Cut has not worked properly since FCP X was first released. Support burning multiple movies to disk. Support custom menus. Support stories. Support multiple languages in both audio and captions.

I’m sure you have your own list. Share it in the comments and let’s get the conversation started. Spread the word.

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151 Responses to What Features Does Apple Final Cut Pro Still Need?

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Zé Tex says:

May 24, 2022 at 6:50 am

I would like to have a page dedicated to colour grading as in Davince Resolve and more tools to due that.
Robert Moran says:

May 24, 2022 at 8:55 am

The ability to do playback at quarter resolution like After Effects as this will eliminate the need to do proxies.
Alex ‘4D’ Gollner says:

May 24, 2022 at 9:09 am

It would be interesting to develop a guide as to how hard a feature would be to implement. Imagine if we could assign a percentage of a year’s worth of work for the whole Final Cut team to each feature.

– Implementing collaboration at the Avid/Premiere-style bin locking level: 30%
– Implementing ‘post 20th Century metaphor collaboration: 140%
– A new set of titles templates updated to the design standards of the 2020s: 1%
– Scrolling timeline: 1%
– Fix DVD/BluRay creation bugs: 1%
– New DVD/BluRay features for making fully-featured discs: 5%
– Speech to text for captioning, titling, script synchronisation, organisation: 5%
– New Audio application (‘Soundtrack Pro X’) or audio mode for most features needed for video production: 15-60%
– Full Motion 5 round-tripping: 10%

This would help us with priorities. One request is not like another. Also the work to implement some of these features may have already been started.

I suggest we discuss
1. how much resource a feature may take
2. what proportion of the Final Cut market would directly benefit
3. how inspirational a feature might be for folks who do not need it yet

Alex4D
Larry says:

May 24, 2022 at 9:11 am

Robert:

Not completely true. Changing the playback resolution in Premiere or After Effects, decreases the load on the CPU, but does not decrease the bandwidth needed between storage and the computer. In other words, this doesn’t prevent dropped frames or stuttering. Proxies, on the other hand, decrease the load on both CPU and storage.

Larry
Larry says:

May 24, 2022 at 9:16 am

Alex:

These are all excellent ideas – EXCEPT, as end users, it is impossible for us to estimate the resources Apple can bring to development. Perhaps you, as a developer, know how hard a specific task might be, but we, as editors, are clueless. (It would be like asking a client to estimate how long it will take to edit a movie. They don’t have the expertise to accurately answer.)

While it would be useful for end users to suggest priorities for features – as well as their usefulness – the missing essential element is how able or interested Apple is in addressing these. Until Apple shares more of their intent, the best we can do is to wave the flag, suggest essential bug fixes (DVDs) or features (audio mixing) that we need to do our jobs better and hope to get Apple’s attention.

Larry
Alex ‘4D’ Gollner says:

May 24, 2022 at 9:23 am

Feedback on…
2. If Compound Clips (and Multicam clips) can be opened ‘in context’ in the timeline, it would be helpful to be able to switch to other places where these complex clips are used. For example, if a CC is being used to animate a logo, it would be helpful to see where else that logo is being used and to see places where the CC is trimmed.

4. We can currently drop an new title template on top of an old one, keeping the entered text. It would be useful to do ‘Find and Replace’ for titles, effects, generators and transitions. With the option to choose which parameter values from the original templates are pasted into which parameters in the replacing template.

Alex4D
Alex ‘4D’ Gollner says:

May 24, 2022 at 9:33 am

‘Event’ may not be right, but if we are designing a video editor for tens of millions of people to use, ‘bin’ doesn’t make much sense.

The number of future editors vastly outnumbers current editors, so current editors’ attachment to the word ‘bin’ doesn’t convince me that it is a good name for what they are used for (even ‘Bag’ would be better, because that’s what celluloid clips used to hang down into).

I think media should be gathered in something called a ‘Root,’ ‘Seed’ or ‘Source’

Alex4D
Alex ‘4D’ Gollner says:

May 24, 2022 at 9:39 am

Pity that all some ask for is the ability to export to an interchange format. Ideally Final Cut Pro should export ProTools projects and be able to import them so the audio elements autoreconform to changes in the video timeline.

Also applies to DaVinci Resolve, Media Composer and Premiere projects.

And Motion 5 projects!

Motion 5 should also be able to open Keynote files, so as to improve and add to animations.
Alex ‘4D’ Gollner says:

May 24, 2022 at 9:42 am

Pity that all some ask for is the ability to export to an interchange format. Ideally Final Cut Pro should export ProTools projects and be able to import them so the audio elements autoreconform to changes in the video timeline.

Also applies to DaVinci Resolve, Media Composer and Premiere projects.

And Motion 5 projects!

Motion 5 should also be able to open Keynote files, so as to improve and add to animations.
Larry says:

May 24, 2022 at 9:47 am

Alex:

I would vote for “Folder,” because it is what we deal with every day in the Finder. Folders hold stuff.

Larry