Video editing

If your video editing needs go beyond home movies and the odd You Tube upload, you need Final Cut Pro

Naturally, Final Cut Pro makes great use of the hardware advances in the mac

Final Cut Pro

£299.99 From apple.com/uk + mac App Store Features magnetic timeline + audio roles + multi-camera editing

Final Cut Pro has come a long way since its redesign and the addition of ‘X’ to its name left many professional users cold. It’s now the go-to video editor for thousands of Mac-using video professionals.

Features like Magnetic Timeline, which automatically adjusts clips when you move or remove other clips, and Audio Roles, which displays audio content visually in the timeline and allows you to assign ‘roles’ such as sound effects, voiceover and soundtrack, are a boon. The app supports 360˚ video, multicamera editing, and closed captions.

You can combine clips in a Compound Clip to reduce clutter, and cycle through different shots, graphics and effects using the Auditions feature. There are lots of other media organisation tools, too. You can organise work in libraries, let Final Cut pro create Smart Collections and auto-analyse camera metadata in clips, and create and apply custom keywords.

Build and edit

When it comes to adding titles and effects, Final Cut Pro has you covered, whether you want to build animated 3D tiles that look amazing, edit transitions and effects, or add third-party plugins to provide more options.

As well as assigning roles, Final Cut Pro’s audio features enable you to expand and edit multichannel audio files in the timeline, sync DSLR video with separate audio with waveform matching, and

repair problems such as hum and background noise.

Naturally, Final Cut Pro makes great use of the hardware advances in the Mac. It’s 64-bit, makes optimal use of GPUs, and does the hard grunt work in the background. It also supports a wide range of camera formats such as ProRes and RED, and there are lots of third-party plugins available for it.

There are extensive colourgrading and export options, with the ability to export multiple versions of a video using roles metadata.