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.
– – –

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.

Bookmark the permalink.

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

← Older Comments Newer Comments →

David Crellen says:

May 23, 2022 at 12:10 pm

What happened to consistency. Early-on, Apple insisted on all apps use the same commands and techniques to accomplish a function. I’ve never seen that amongst Apple’s pro-suite. Especially editing methods used in its various audio apps. It seems each one has its own unique operating paradigm.

Can Apple try to make all pro apps look like they are of one subset, operationally speaking?

Reply
Joe Langenfeld says:

May 23, 2022 at 1:46 pm

1. I’d like to use FCP to do color correction, but the missing function for me is sync groups…i.e., changing one shot in a group changes all of them, similar to Color Finale
2. Add back the “reverse match frame” popular in Avid and FCP7.
3. I get a lot of rough cuts from Avid users, so how about being able to import an AAF?
4. I noticed M1 speed tests that indicated 2x faster mpeg encoding in Adobe? WTF? gotta fix that.

Someone previously mentioned improving integration of all of Apple’s post products, similar to what Resolve does…why not?

Reply
- Avtar says:
  
  May 23, 2022 at 10:26 pm
  
  Yes, creating and/or importing an AAF, in my case for checking before sending to a sound mixing facility – now that would be a definite ‘pro’ inclusion.
  
  Reply
Mitch Daniels says:

May 23, 2022 at 3:23 pm

I agree with the comment of about being able burn DVDs again. The cloud may be great; but, my clients want dvds.

Reply
Tony mark says:

May 23, 2022 at 5:12 pm

I’d like to see better hardware support. Mackie motorized mixers in fcpx would be great. I sometime like to mix audio without having to send to logic. Better cataloging of graphics, sound fxs, and music… not having to be rely on iPhoto and iTunes. Better sharing of projects when working with other editors. Scrolling timeline when playing a project.

Reply
Caesar Darias says:

May 23, 2022 at 5:37 pm

Dear Larry:

I second your request for a scrolling timeline. When I started editing, I used iMovie which had a scrolling timeline. They took it away. It also had a very easy to use, functional and precise rubber band audio function. They removed it, as well.

I also want seamless integration/round-tripping with Motion.

Finally, Apple needs to expand their pro font, lower thirds and upper choices with many parameters. Many people use FCP for news reporting, not just for movies.

Reply
- Larry says:
  
  May 23, 2022 at 6:08 pm
  
  Caesar:
  
  I agree with you about the titles. So many of them look amateurish. And there’s no consistency. Compare the left, center and right lower thirds and you see three different designs.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
- Robbie Scott says:
  
  May 23, 2022 at 11:39 pm
  
  I’m small potatoes — a one-man shop that is just getting off the ground. But, when I saw “scrolling timeline”, I just had to jump in. I can’t count the number of times, I’ve had to break my concentration to keep the playhead where I could see it and pause to trim, edit, or whatever. This is a really good idea, and something that should be switchable (or not?).
  
  Reply
Tim Gallagher says:

May 23, 2022 at 9:06 pm

Hi,
1) I would like to see auto closed captioning where the software puts dialog into text, but also, using tagged audio FX (door slams) have the closed caption pick that up as well from the timeline. The auto closed caption could create the caption for a person to review.
2) integrated special FX like Blackmagic does with DiVinci and Fusion – maybe fuse with Blender.

Reply
Jamarvelous says:

May 24, 2022 at 3:21 am

“The operation could not be completed because an error occurred when creating frame 44274 (error -1).”

*I had similar errors, this one was copy-pasta from google. The rogue frame changes even after making corrections sometimes.*

I would love to have the frame or clip highlighted so I can resolve the issue.

Reply
- Larry says:
  
  May 24, 2022 at 3:24 am
  
  Yup, that would be REALLY helpful!
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
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.

Reply
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.

Reply
- 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
  
  Reply
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

Reply
- 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
  
  Reply