Is Final Cut Pro finally better on the M4 iPad Pro?

For the past two weeks, I’ve been editing in the newest version of Final Cut Pro for iPad. For many professionals, the original release of this app last year missed the mark. Its tools have simply been too limited to use on a daily basis. The new version doesn’t necessarily change that – but despite my many frustrations, I’m finally discovering the joy of using it.

The new version of the app, confusingly named “Final Cut Pro for iPad 2” (it’s for all current iPads, not the iPad 2), came out this week. And perhaps the biggest new feature in this year’s release isn’t quite a Final Cut Pro feature: it’s a brand new app that integrates with it.

The new Final Cut Camera is a standalone app for your iPhone that offers advanced camera controls. If you’ve seen the recently released Blackmagic app or Kino app, you’ll know what to expect: peaking, manual focus, and audio metering. You just won’t be able to add custom LUTs like you can on the other two.

The Final Cut Camera app can be used in unison with Final Cut Pro on iPad to record Live Multicam sessions with video streaming to up to four iPhones or iPads. In Final Cut on iPad, you take on the role of director. You can monitor footage coming from your iPhone, zoom and change white balance, focus mode and more on the fly. I can see this new feature being especially popular for video podcasts.

The previews you’re seeing are compressed, but still look great. After you stop the recording session, the full-quality files are transferred to the iPad running Final Cut Pro and rendered. The whole process is much faster than I had anticipated. My 10-minute session with three iPhones was available for editing minutes later. A new transfer indicator window at the top of the user interface shows you the progress.

There is one improvement I’d like to see for this feature in the future: live editing. Currently, you’ll need to complete registration first before syncing all files and moving on to editing.

Multicam support is a great new feature, but it contrasts with how little Apple has done to improve the Final Cut Pro experience for iPad. The standout feature in this year’s update is external hard drive support. This is important – this feature was strangely missing last year. But adding it immediately reminded me how badly Final Cut Pro for iPad (and iPadOS) handles file management.

All of your media files must live within FCP Library files and the same library file must be stored on the internal or external drive. This means you can’t share your media across multiple drives or cloud storage. A side effect of this method is that it means you’re just constantly duplicating files from one place to another.

And there are other issues that have not changed from last year. For example, you still can’t import entire folders into Final Cut Pro, only individual files. And once they’re imported, you still can’t organize files into separate folders or bins like A-roll, B-roll, Music, or Graphics.

Another new feature that is unique to the iPad version of Final Cut Pro is Live Drawings. Using an Apple Pencil, you can draw animations directly on your clips. The latest Apple Pencil Pro tricks are supported here, but other than that, there’s not much to do with the Pencil Pro itself. I wish there was a way to program the haptic squeeze to do something more on the editing front – perhaps selecting multiple clips while hovering, or just making it a right-click. I think this would be useful and speed up the pencil work.

There are still a lot of serious video editing features that I expect Apple to add: composite clips, folders, adjustment layers, post stabilization, coloring tools like curves, sharing projects between machines, the ability to add new LUTs, video 360 support, object tracking, linear keyframes — the list goes on and on. If you read my review from last year, you will find the exact same list there.

All those missing things that really catch you off guard when you’re on the go. Ultimately, I found myself making creative decisions based on bad software limitations.

Meanwhile, the market for mobile video editing apps is more competitive than ever. CapCut has been extremely popular among TikTokers. “Why I’m Switching to DaVinci” videos are all over my YouTube feed. And people still use the OG iPad app Lumafusion. In fact, three of the features I desperately need are already in DaVinci’s iPad app.

But even after trying all the other apps I just listed, and even with all my frustration with the missing features, I keep coming back to Final Cut on the iPad. Because there’s one thing Apple is doing right here, and that’s the overall experience.

Apple calls this a “first touch” app, and I finally understand what that means. Once you get over the learning curve and once you get the hang of the controls and once you’re aware of its limitations, you start enjoying it and having fun. Apple isn’t trying to copy the Final Cut desktop experience — it’s building toward a new one. And you can see how you interact with the scroll wheel and how the sidebar comes in so you can edit with your left hand.

I’ve found that using Final Cut Pro with my hands is by far the most comprehensive way to edit. It’s everything at your fingertips, literally. There’s something about this more tactile approach that I’m starting to find charming, even if it’s not quite as efficient as a mouse and keyboard.

If Apple can control those easy wins, then its vision of a capable, touch-first Final Cut Pro can really flourish.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge