Video editors demand Apple be more proactive about Final Cut Pro

A collection of video editors have written an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, accusing Apple of letting Final Cut Pro fall behind rival editing tools, and demanding the company puts more effort to promote it as a professional filmmaking application.

Apple's video production tools, including Final Cut Pro, received updates in April at around the same time as other more major changes to Adobe's tools and Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve. However, in a letter to Apple, editors suggest that Apple isn't pulling its weight to keep Final Cut Pro relevant for professional productions.

The open letter, published on Tuesday and addressed to Cook, is said to be from "professionals working in Hollywood and other high-profile movie and TV markets around the world."

Opening with praise about Final Cut Pro as the "biggest leap forward in editing technology since the move to digital," the letter then complaints some of its signees cannot use it for their work. "Work that could easily include productions for your very own Apple TV+ service," it states.

While admitting Final Cut Pro is successful with a high number of users, the letter insists "unfortunately in professional film and TV, editors who use Final Cut Pro are a tiny minority." Therefore, the editors ask Apple "to promote Final Cut Pro publicly and add the few remaining features that our industry has consistently stated are needed."

This includes public support and certifying suppliers of third-party products and services editors use so that Final Cut Pro can be integrated "into industry-standard workflows." There is also an urging to improve Pro Apps support and for Final Cut Pro to be bought through existing industry suppliers, as "this is essential for big productions to accept Final Cut Pro as legitimate."

The writers believe a renewed public commitment to the professional film industry and Final Cut Pro will increase the number of editors who "would discover the joys of using Final Cut Pro."

"We hope you will encourage our industry to see Final Cut Pro as a professional choice for editors of future award-winning TV shows and movies, and for millions more editors all over the world."

The letter is jointly signed by 112 editors,, directors, and visual effects artists, who worked on projects including "Drive My Car," "War of the Worlds S3," "Bridgerton," and "BBC News."

Among the improvements, signers suggested that it could benefit from a public Beta program, improved collaboration tools, and how it teaches people to edit in the first place. There is also aa call to make it easier to "get permission to edit TV" with the tool, as "you can't use it without fighting producers, directors, post-production supervisors, sound editors, etc."

April 12's updates to Final Cut Pro brought the tool to version 10.6.2, with the main changes revolving around finding duplicated media, machine learning background noise reduction, M1 Max and M1 Ultra optimizations, support for importing Magic Movie and Storyboard projects from iMovie for iOS 3.0, and the addition of Korean language support.

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26 Comments

indieshack 336 comments · 9 Years

About 2 years ago

I’m not sure what this letter seeks to do. I have Final Cut Pro but rarely use it, most of my work uses Resolve, which has become what FCP7 used to be before Apple totally abandoned it. I wouldn’t bet the farm that Apple won’t sell it off to a third party.

ravnorodom 720 comments · 8 Years

"Industry-standard workflows" means totally cross-platform. Final Cut Pro is not a cross-platform and it remains a niche for Mac users only.... forever. I used to love Final Cut Pro but the interface changes back then threw me off the curve and hindered production. Now I am using Adobe Premiere where FCP is used to be. Matter of fact, Apple, thank you for that

because the tight integration and the awesome workflow between Adobe applications saves me tons of hours.

dewme 5737 comments · 10 Years

This is all very good feedback for Apple to hear, but the vehicle they've used to gain Apple's attention seems a bit scattershot and amateurish. I don't see many, if any, actionable first steps identified for this sizeable group to suggest ways that they are willing to work in partnership with Apple to improve the situation. I can clearly see where having some elected (in very loose terms) representatives of this group meet with key members of Apple's FCP team, ideally face-face, to make sure Apple clearly understands exactly what they are asking for would be more productive than publishing an open letter with a bunch of grievances.

I have no doubt that Apple would be very receptive to establishing a working relationship and feedback loop with an organized group of their key customers who have a very valid set of concerns and who have identified themselves as stakeholders in the future success and acceptance of a product that Apple puts a great deal of investment into. Working with Apple as shared stakeholders may actually be more productive than trying to publicly shame Apple in social media with this type of letter. That said, even though the letter is out there and cannot be rolled back, there's no reason why the next steps cannot be done in a more productive and actionable context. Despite the clumsy approach, there's definitely a problem that needs some follow-up by Apple.

It's actually quite common that companies like Apple have internal teams that are highly focused on addressing the needs of specific industry verticals, e.g., health care, life sciences, food & beverage, entertainment, etc. These teams work with user groups and industry representatives who help providers (Apple) better understand the detailed needs of their customers in these industries and verticals so their products can better fit the needs of their customers and ensure the health of the provider's products. It sure sounds like Apple and these FCP customers need to find a way to connect and move forward.

Marvin 15335 comments · 18 Years

ravnorodom said:

"Industry-standard workflows" means totally cross-platform.

The letter notes some of the requests, the original FCP wasn't cross-platform and isn't expected. The only way this could feasibly be done is by open sourcing it but this would show how much active work is being done on it.

The requests include a beta program for 3rd party tools to test them before updates come out. There's also a request for collaboration features, FCPX has a single-user library and they'd like to have shared libraries.

There's no reason that editing apps can't all have a shared timeline description format. If 3D apps can use complex formats like FBX, USD etc, there can be a standard timeline format in JSON or XML that FCP can save and Da Vinci, Premiere can open/sync the same timeline directly. This would save file paths relative to a library root and each machine would set the root, which can be a shared library or local.

It shouldn't be an exchange format like EDL, AAF but a project format. A program's specific settings could be stored in an auxiliary data portion but probably wouldn't be needed. The quickest way to design a format would be for each major NLE developer to have an ascii project format and a group can find a way to express everything that's needed in an open timeline format.

There can be a master edit stored in this format and there can be a version control system where multiple people can branch and commit changes into the master edit. If someone wants to check out an alternative edit, they can switch to that branch and play the timeline. They'd be able to cherry pick parts into the master and there can be a notation system for suggestions.

It wouldn't matter if every machine supported every part of the master edit as long as they were preserved on making changes. For example non-destructive color corrections and filters won't be the same in every app but where they aren't supported, this would be flagged as a native portion and there can be a requirement to store a proxy render in collaborative workflows for previewing.

This would make it much easier to integrate FCPX into a different workflow because a project could be started on FCPX for planning and putting ideas together and the edit can be switched transparently to Da Vinci or Premiere later in the process for refinement.

Apple has said they have over 2.5 million FCPX users and the vast majority of users will be sole editors so the product will be designed around the most users. The original FCP creator Randy Ubillos left Apple a few years ago. It sounds like he had a major role in the direction of Final Cut and every product he worked on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8sWj2TSHiE

This has happened with a few products at Apple like Aperture and some they purchased. When the driving forces behind the projects move on, the project eventually goes into maintenance mode for a few years. If it's a niche product, it is usually EOL'd. With FCPX having 2.5 million+ users, it's pretty mainstream so I doubt it will get abandoned like the others but I could see it being a low-priority project for Apple.

I imagine some of the lack of interoperability is due to other niche NLE makers wanting some proprietary lock-in. It's a very low volume industry and some companies are very vulnerable. Avid could easily have gone bankrupt over the past few years. Their net income has been under $50m for the past 3 years:

https://ir.avid.com/static-files/954d3944-c78c-4807-a09c-4a8094bf8d9a

Maybe they could merge with BlackMagic or become part of Adobe similar to how Substance products have been taken on. They only have 1400 employees and $1.6b market cap. Adobe could easily buy them out and they'd probably make it back from Pro Tools subscriptions.

Ok - I reread this reading between the lines I’m guessing they want workflow support for apps like adobe after effects - they might not want to hold their breath on that - the last request is bizarre:
There is also aa call to make it easier to "get permission to edit TV" with the tool, as "you can't use it without fighting producers, directors, post-production supervisors, sound editors, etc."