Final Cut Pro X 10.3

Apple’s professional video-editing app gets an update

$299 Developer Apple, apple.com Requirements OS X 10.11.4 or later

Apple has made key changes to the form and function of Final Cut Pro in this release. Indeed, it recommends you back up your old Final Cut Pro Library before you upgrade it to be compatible with version 10.3, due to the new “roles” feature. All components of a project are assigned roles (titles, sound, video, and effects). When an old projects’s multi-channel audio clips are given a role in 10.3 it may change the way that they are mixed. For this reason it’s a wise move to export a major project before upgrading.

The new roles feature makes a complex project more manageable. Every component in the timeline can be assigned a color-coded role so it’s easier to see where assets such as sound effects and cutaway clips appear. You can create custom roles and subroles (such as ambient sound) and assign them a unique color. You can group assets in the browser together according their roles, so it’s easier to find particular assets. The enhanced Timeline Index lets you focus on clips that have a specific role while collapsing other assets into color-coded bars. This way of simplifying the timeline makes it easier to work with on a MacBook Pro. Indeed, you can view the color-coded timeline on the Touch Bar of a new MacBook Pro and jump to a specific part of your project in a tap.

The new Flow transition, which morphs between two cuts instead of dissolving, can make a jump cut in an interview look less jarring, alleviating the need to hide the edit point with a cutaway.

There are interface tweaks, too. For example, the Titles panel used to be near Transitions, but it has now been promoted to a Titles browser, top left of the workspace. This positions the Titles browser as it is in iMovie. Indeed, with the new sharp lines and black panels, Final Cut Pro X and iMovie look more similar, which should help iMovie users make the transition. A welcome addition is the option to create layouts for tasks (such as grading) and save these as custom workspaces. You can also now expand the Inspector to the full height of the workspace, which reduces the need to scroll to adjust a clip’s particular properties.

the bottom line. Workspace tweaks combined with color-coded roles help you manage complex editing projects more effectively.

You can jump to taskbased workspaces to find useful tools more quickly.

Create and assign custom color-coded roles to various assets to help organize them more effectively.