Surprise Final Cut Pro X update delivers big performance gains

Apple has today published the latest macOS Catalina and also introduced an updated version of award-winning video production suite, Final Cut Pro X.

Faster performance with Metal

Final Cut Pro X also includes a new Metal engine that delivers performance gains across a wide range of Mac systems. It has also been updated to make use of the power of its soon to ship Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR.

Apple is also releasing updates to Motion and Compressor, both boosted by the same Metal engine with performance optimizations for Mac Pro and support for Pro Display XDR.

Apple says the new Metal-based engine improves playback and accelerates graphics tasks including rendering, real-time effects and exporting on Metal-compatible Mac computers.

To put this into perspective, the company also says video editors that use a 15-inch MacBook Pro (the most popular system for Final Cut Pro users), will benefit from performance up to 20 percent faster, while editors using iMac Pro will see gains of up to 35 percent.

Final Cut gets a Sidecar

Apple also confirmed that Final Cut Pro will work with the new Sidecar feature in macOS Catalina that lets you use your iPad as a second display. That’s very useful for people working on projects on 15-inch models of the MacBook Pro, who gain additional screen space to use while they work.

The Mac Pro

The big business is Mac Pro support.

Apple says that on these systems, Final Cut Pro rendering is up to 2.9 times faster and transcoding is up to 3.2 times faster than on the previous-generation 12-core Mac Pro.

Final Cut Pro can use the new Afterburner card for unparalleled performance when working with ProRes and ProRes RAW.

The latter is a new Apple format that combines the image quality and flexibility of RAW video with the performance of ProRes. In use this means editors can play up to 16 streams of 4K ProRes 422 video or work in 8K resolution with support for up to three streams of 8K ProRes RAW video.

The Pro Display XDR also adds a whole bunch of love. The 32-inch Retina 6K display, P3 wide color and extreme dynamic range is something to see – I can only say that this is the best reference monitor around at a fraction of the price others charge.

Final Cut Pro users can view, edit, grade and deliver high dynamic range video with 1,000 nits of full screen sustained brightness, 1,600 nits peak brightness and a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

Apple also told us the 15-inch MacBook Pro is the most popular system for editing.

Final Cut Pro 10.4.7 also delivers these features:

• Grade high dynamic range video with enhanced color mask and range isolation tools.
• View high dynamic range video tone-mapped to compatible standard dynamic range displays when using Final Cut Pro, Motion or Compressor on macOS Catalina.
• Select which internal or external GPU is used to accelerate graphics processing.

Final Cut Pro 10.4.7 is available today as a free update for existing users, and for $299.99 for new users on the Mac App Store. Motion 5.4.4 and Compressor 4.4.5 are also available today as free updates for existing users, and for$49.99 each for new users on the Mac App Store.

Education customers can purchase the Pro Apps Bundle for Education for $199.99.

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