New! Apple Releases Final Cut Pro X 10.3

Posted on by Larry

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Today, Apple released the latest major upgrade to Final Cut Pro X – version 10.3.

There are lots of new features in this version. Let me share what I’ve learned.

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KEY NEW FEATURES

Apple’s marquee features for the software include:

Within those three categories are literally dozens of changes.

From my point of view, the interface changes are the most visible, the changes to Roles and the Magnetic Timeline are the most significant and its support for Rec. 2020 video the most future-oriented.

NOTE: At their announcement this morning, Apple highlighted the new Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro. While this feature looks interesting, I haven’t used it, so I haven’t included it in this article.

THOUGHTS ON HDR

HDR (High-Dynamic Range) media is video with an extended gray-scale and color saturation. We are in a transition phase now – both in technology and terminology.

First, the terms. Wide color gamut video is the color space portion of HDR, which is defined by a new video spec called “Rec. 2020.” This is similar to Rec. 601, which referenced standard-definition video, and Rec. 709, which applied to HD.

Rec. 2020 covers UHD, 4K, and HDR media. It describes pixels with a larger image size (“more pixels”), an extended range of gray-scales (“brighter pixels”), and great color saturation (“richer pixels”). Not all video formats contain all three. Some, for instance, just support bigger frame sizes. In general, moving forward, we will probably refer to video as Rec. 2020, which is a more inclusive term.

The new 10.3 version of Final Cut and ProRes both support 16-bit video. However, our computer monitors can’t yet display it. While all current Macs CAN display a more limited representation of this extended video called “P3,” to see the full glory of Rec. 2020 media requires an external video monitor.

Final Cut 10.3 fully supports Rec. 2020 video displayed on an external monitor. In fact, the system automatically senses the correct color space – 601, 709, 2020 – and configures appropriately. Yes, you can override this. Color space can be set for the Library or the Project.

NOTE: Here’s a graph comparing color spaces (scroll down about halfway). And here’s a brand-new white paper on color space from Apple with much more detail.

THE NEW INTERFACE

In short, the interface is darker, video looks better and everything has moved somewhere else.

The Final Cut interface, which was already dark, has gotten darker. This makes video seem to “pop” off the screen, both for normal HD footage as well as a demo I saw using 12-bit video.

As I was editing with it, I realized that I needed to make my edit suite darker in order to see the screen better. The interface has become a series of medium gray shapes on a dark gray background. This had the advantage of improving the look of my video on screen, but but the dimness made it harder to read my paper notes.

Apple has moved all the clutter from the middle of the screen to the edges:

However, there are a number of very welcome changes:

The new workspaces are REALLY neat! The ability to hide the Timeline makes logging so much easier, especially on smaller screens. And seeing the entire Inspector at a glance is extremely useful. I’ve become a huge fan of these changes.

ROLES HAVE A NEW ROLE

Roles have moved from “nice to know,” to essential; especially for audio. Roles are now color-coded so you can see your audio layout at a glance, grouped by dialog, effects and music.

You can now shuffle audio layers by group – move all sound effects to the top of the Timeline to help with syncing, for example. In fact, Roles will automatically move similar clips into similar locations in the Timeline.

You can group similar audio into “lanes” in the Timeline, automatically, without dragging.

Clicking the Focus button highlights specific audio and collapses everything else.

We can instantly group similar Roles – say all dialog – into a compound clip and apply an audio filter to the compound clip. This is a very innovative way to achieve what amounts to a submix bus, without the work.

Roles can be color-coded and you have a palette of colors to choose from for a role.

Roles can be managed at the Library or Project level, you can create as many Roles as you need, and Roles can have sub-roles. For example, a Title Role, can have sub-roles of “English,” “Spanish,” “French,” allowing you to enable each language with a single mouse click, even if dozens of titles are involved.

The features Roles provide are deep and sophisticated. It’s going to take me a couple of weeks to really understand these. I’ll have more on Roles in future articles.

SMALL THINGS I LOVE

Yes, I agree. Changing the interface is always risky. (Especially when it forces me to re-do all my training because everything now looks different.) But there are lots of small touches that I really like.

In the center of the screen, on a line about half the height of the old Toolbar, Final Cut displays the name of your project, the total duration of your project, AND (in yellow) the duration of any selected clip or clips.

This is SO MUCH easier than selecting a clip and typing Control + D just to see a duration; though Control + D still works.

The Inspector goes full-screen! So nice!! (Here’s the secret tip: Double-click the Inspector title bar. Poof!)

There’s a new effect that displays source timecode on clips in the Timeline. (And I say again: !!!) This makes creating client review movies dead easy and practical again.

NOTE: You can apply this effect easily using an “adjustment layer.” This article explains how to create one in Final Cut.

[ By the way, thanks to the folks at EditStock for the use of these images: EditStock.com.]

We can copy and paste timecode!

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The logging workspace (called “Organize”) is optimized for small laptop screens. It hides the Timeline, while enlarging the Inspector. I now find this layout indispensable.

Custom Motion projects can now be stored in the Library. This greatly simplifies moving Libraries from one system to another without having to remember to include all those custom files from your Home directory.

We can now trim adjacent connected clips without first converting them into a connected storyline. Faster.

Custom metadata is now searchable.

The Overwrite edit now has its own icon.

There’s a new “Flow” transition, very similar to Morph in Premiere Pro, that blends two clips to hide a jump cut. While I have ethical issues about using this in news or documentary projects, the same as I do with Morph in Premiere, this can solve problems with dialog where you didn’t get enough coverage.

NOTE: Unlike Morph, which pulls frames from elsewhere in a clip, Flow uses optical flow to create all new frames.

Hundreds of sound effects now ship with Final Cut.

NOTE: All the “Content Browsers” are now located in the top left corner:

You can get back to the default workspace (window layout) with a single keyboard shortcut: Cmd + 0. The Effects and Transitions Browsers are located in the middle bar, immediately below the Inspector.

And the render bar has transitioned from orange to gray dots.

THINGS I WISH WERE THERE

Every update leaves you amazed with what’s there and, like Christmas, always wanting “just one more present.” There are three things that I wish Apple had included.

Transferring logged media from one system to another via XML makes collaboration between editors easier, but Final Cut still limits us to only one editor in a Library at a time, even if one editor could log in as read-only.

There still is no internal support for closed captioning or loudness metering – both of which are now required in many countries. (Apple would respond saying that both these features are supported by third-parties, which is true but I don’t think this is a sufficient answer.)

I’m reserving judgement on Roles. They have been significantly enhanced and I don’t understand them well enough yet. My hope is that they allow us to mix audio in Final Cut much more effectively than we’ve been able to do in the past, because the audio filters in Final Cut are just outstanding; there just hasn’t been a way to use them properly.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The new update is a big deal. There is a lot here with a lot of new features and capability to wrap our brains around.

However, my usual caution holds: Don’t upgrade in the middle of a project. All Libraries will need to upgrade to the new version, which means they can no longer be opened in FCP X 10.2 or earlier. Fortunately, the upgrade process is fast and painless, unlike the conversion from 10.0 to 10.1.

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I’m excited about this new version of Final Cut. So much so that I’ve created all new training to show you how it works.

141 new movies – more than 12 hours of training – covering Final Cut Workflow and Editing. It will release the first week of November and you can order it today for a pre-release price of $49. (If you are a Video Training Library subscriber, you can view the initial 35 movies in my Library today. This is a great reason to to become a member.)

This will be fun.


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138 Responses to New! Apple Releases Final Cut Pro X 10.3

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  1. Paul says:

    I am having a hard time sorting through my titles. Does 10.3 not allow you to sort through categories anymore? I can still save a Motion title into a category but I cannot seem to find the titles categories in FCP.

  2. Andrew Griffiths says:

    Still no scrolling timeline! Next time please Apple.

  3. Chris says:

    I really like that the audio enhancements exist as a dropdown (“Show/Hide”), rather than clicking into deeper levels, then having to click out of those levels. It will make things much faster!

  4. Joel Slabaugh says:

    Wonder when we’ll get the touch bar interface for the desktops?

    • Jason Solan says:

      I know, right?! I was thinking the same thing.

      My guess if Apple is really serious about the usefulness of the touchbar and it is more than a gimmick to get people to buy a new MBPro, we can only hope they’ll add it to desktop keyboards as well.

      I think that accessories like the touchbar can be very useful if implemented well.

      I worked at a television station that edited on a system created by Sony called XPRI, which is part of their media backbone package. It was a Windows based proxy editing system and each PC had what Sony calls the Mediabar. The Mediabar is a little gadget with eight control knobs. Each knob is color coded to an effect parameter. Whenever you open an effect in the software to make an adjustment (Horizontal/Vertical position, scale size, Z-Space, blur amount, etc) you just dialed it in on the control bar. It was super easy and super fast, made editing and altering effects so quick and effortless.

      If Apple can look into the future and make the Touchbar even more useful than it already might be (I haven’t used it), I think Adobe and the others will be scurrying to come up with a similar solution.

      Ever hear of or seen this Larry? I am surprised nobody else has adopted this or worked on a similar option for other NLE’s.

  5. Michael says:

    Back at NAB in April, a select few under NDA were given a preview of some exciting things to come. After that presentation some of those people disclosed that we would all be very impressed.

    As a prospective FCP purchaser, since then I’ve been worried about a FCP purchase ($500 in Australia!!) based on the fear it would be a paid upgrade or indeed a whole new product.

    So IS THIS what was previewed at NAB making FCP a safe purchase today?

    • Larry says:

      Michael:

      What was shown at NAB was a small portion of what Apple released this week. So, yes, feel free to purchase FCP X. Also, you should know that Apple has not charged for any FCP X upgrades since it first shipped.

      Larry

      • Michael says:

        Thanks Larry.
        There was some talk that even though Apple had never charged for an FXP X upgrade, this “new thing” may have been v11 or a completely new product, warranting a fresh purchase.

        Given the scope of the FXP 10.3 upgrade, it looks like there’s legs in the old guy yet!

  6. Pierre says:

    Hi there Larry, do you have any idea how to import personal sound libraries into the audio/sound Effects tab? So far i have not been able to figure out how to get custom folders in there.

  7. jduke@dukehome.com says:

    This is a copy of the questions I posted at “Explaining Wide Color in Final Cut Pro X (10.3)”. It is probably more appropriate here.

    Great article Larry.

    I have a couple of questions with regard to the “as wide as possible” color workflow.

    1. Most of the LUTs provided by the camera manufacturers are for the Log to Rec. 709 conversion. I use Panasonic DVX200 and a LUT called VLog_to_V709_DVX_ver100. Now 10.3 lets us use Rec. 2020 color internally (and we can see as much of it as P3 can display). Within this wide color setting, FCPX has LUTs (for various cameras) to convert the Log clips into what? Is it into Rec. 709 or 2020? Did Apple convert various 709 LUTs into 2020?

    2. For a 10-bit project, when FCPX converts a Log using these LUTs, does it keep 10-bit color or does it chop off the last 2 bits?

    3. I am using El Captain. In this OS version, QuickTime only “shows” 8-bit color. So when I share the clips form FCP, I can only playback 10-bit color by importing the shared clip back into FCPX or by using 5KPlayer or VLC players. As far as I can ascertain, these two software players are not GPU accelerated and are a real pain to use. Do you know weather QT in Sierra handles 10-bit color? If not, Is there another way to play a 10-bit video on a Mac today? And If not again, do you thing Apple erred by not providing a 10-bit color player for video as Preview does for stills.

    4. I am glad you mentioned that “NOTE: P3 video can be displayed on all Macs released since 2015, along with both versions of the iPhone 7, along with the 9.7″ iPad Pro.” I have 27” late 2015 iMac and 10-bit P3 HP Z32z 2160p monitor. When I started with my workflow, I could not find any direct reference to iMac GPU and display handling 10-bit color. I asked Apple about this 10-bit ability of iMac. Does it handle it “straight” or 2 last bits are “dithered.” After several escalations though Apple ranks, I got a direct answer: “Yes, iMac handles 10-bit directly, no dithering.” I also calibrated these two monitors for Rec. 2020 and verified that they do display P3 color. What is your experience with this side of the deal?

    5. As far as I can see, the new Compressor does not support H.265 or VP9 or 10-bit H.264. Do you think Apple is waiting for the YouTubes and Vimeos of the world to announce their support for HDR before including those encoders? This implies that they see their market for Compressor to be the content creators for these types of video hosting. I am saying this because Netflix and Amazon are putting out what they call HDR content right now. In fact, in May of this year trustedreviews.com counted 13 Netflix and 24 Amazon HDR titles available. What are your thoughts on this?

    Thanks.

    James.

    • BenB says:

      H.265 and VP9 are not finalized standards yet. Apple will probably pick them up once they are finalized standards, and broadcasters are putting them into place. Our broadcast station is ready for them, but we can’t do anything because they’re not broadcast ready yet.

  8. Chris Laxamana says:

    Love the custom workspaces but really wish we had the ability to undock and rearrange. I’d love to have the ability to view 2 timelines at once. I’d like to drag and drop from my rough selects timeline to my master timeline.

  9. Thierry says:

    It seems another cool feature unnoticed so far is that you can now exit a compound clip not only with the left arrow (to save the changes) but also by just double clicking on a project in the events library… correct me if I am wrong …

  10. Philip Snyder says:

    Larry,

    Could you please explain how the “copy timecode” feature works?
    Why would you want to copy and paste tc onto to another clip?
    Unless I’m misunderstanding.

    Thanks!

    • Larry says:

      Philip:

      Here’s one example.

      Say you sent a rough cut of your project to the client, with burned in project timecode.

      They sent back notes as an Excel spreadsheet, referencing the timecode in column 1.

      You could copy the timecode reference in the Excel spreadsheet, paste it into FCP X’s Viewer and jumps to that spot in the video instantly.

      Larry

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