- So I've been using my iPad for a lot
of my photography work and the ability to edit photos
with an Apple pencil just feels right.
But I have not been able to replicate the setup
for video editing.
Today, Apple is releasing Final Cut Pro for iPad
and I wanna see if I'm ready to make iPad
my main editing machine.
Let's get into it.
The iPad that I personally own is a 2018 12.9 iPad Pro
with a 12x bionic chip,
and Final Cut Pro will not work on that iPad.
You will need an iPad with an M1 or an M2 processor.
Apple sent me this latest iPad right here
with two terabytes of storage and 16 gigabytes of RAM.
Why am I mentioning storage?
Well, turns out you can't directly edit videos
off of external drive.
All your media needs to live on your iPad,
which basically means that
if you want to be using an iPad for video editing
you'll want to spend extra money on buying extra storage.
It's an odd limitation
but there will be a few more as we go on.
Okay, let's start with the simple stuff.
Let's import some media.
So I haven't had any issues with any
of my various file types except for 360 videos.
Those are not supported.
We can just ignore that folder for now.
You also cannot import entire folders.
You have to open each one
and select the clips that you need.
I don't love that, I like to organize my stuff in folders.
But this also means that there are no folders or events
inside of Final Cut Pro either.
You can add keywords, you can sort files
and you can favorite or reject files, but that is about it.
It can get messy if you have larger projects.
The setup looks fairly similar
to what you'd see on a desktop Final Cut Pro.
The timeline at the bottom over here, source
and preview window in top left and the media on the right.
What's new here are all these buttons
at the bottom of your user interface.
So the first one is the inspect button.
So tapping that brings up the sidebar on the left hand side
and I think it makes a lot of sense
especially if you're holding your iPad with both hands.
You can kinda do your editing with your right hand
and then do the adjustments with your left hand.
So usually the first thing that you would see
in the inspect window on the desktop is options
for stabilization and rolling shutter speed correction.
But there's no stabilizer in the iPad version of Final Cut.
So the three other icons next to the inspect
are volume, animate and multicam.
Okay, so clicking on the animate button here
brings up this key frame editing graph,
sort of similar to show video animation on desktop
but it's sort of not as intuitive.
So here's the list of all the adjustments you can key frame
and it's limited to transform and color adjustment.
It's very easy to add key frames but what I've realized is
that you cannot tap on each key frame
to move your play head there.
You have to tap on these buttons in the corner.
I just wish you can do both.
Aside from that, the bigger problem that I see here is
that you cannot edit on a graph,
meaning you cannot ease in or ease out of your transitions.
All your key frame movements will be linear by default
and you cannot change that.
There are some new features exclusive
to the Final Cut Pro on iPad.
So if you have an Apple pencil, the second gen
you can freely draw or write
on top of your footage and then animate it.
It's called live drawing, and I think it's fantastic.
Okay, so tapping on this icon right here
opens up a new window, and here's a clip of Becca
in the river during our Apple Watch shoot.
Hey Becca.
So let's add an arrow and write Becca
so we don't forget who that is.
I'm super creative, I promise.
Hit done, and that is it.
Live drawing just shows up as a new layer here.
It's fun to use, it makes my handwriting look better
than it actually is,
but I'm also worried that this type
of an effect could get repetitive over time.
All of them kind of end up looking similar.
You can cut out animation if you want
and add effects on top of it.
And you know, I'm sure that more creative people
will find ways to utilize this feature.
I think it's really fun.
But let's say you want to put some of the text
behind an object like this Apple Watch right here.
So there's this new effect called Scene Removal Mask.
In theory, it should separate the main subject
from the background.
It's like rotoscoping in After Effects
but without the need to manually mask it yourself.
So I tried it on this clip and just doesn't look good.
I tried it on many other ones and it's just not great.
Apple does recommend using a more stable clip
and using it in an area of high contrast
which is why I tried it here,
but it's not great and you can't even adjust the mask.
You sort of have to just plop in the effect,
see if it works and if it doesn't,
well you just have to move on.
Okay, next up is volume.
So tapping on the volume icon here
brings up audio metering on your right hand side.
Tapping on the Inspect opens up more options
for your audio edit.
There's an offset, there's a pan, there's a fade in.
There are also these new super good
voice enhancement tool that Apple recently added
to the desktop version of Final Cut Pro.
So there's voice isolation, loudness and noise removal.
Apple also added about 40 songs, which you can use here.
What's cool about those is that Final Cut Pro
will automatically re-time the song
so it fits your timeline, meaning that any
of these songs can be 10 seconds long or 10 minutes long.
But it only works for these 40 songs.
This is something I used to do in Audition
but Adobe also added this specific feature
to Premier not too long ago
and it works for any song that you want.
In Final Cut, you're kind of stuck with these 40 songs.
They're good songs.
So let's see how that song ends.
(light music)
That's pretty good.
All right, moving on.
Color.
Final Cut Pro comes with some common LUTs built in
like the Arri, Black Magic, Cannon and Sony LUTs.
So if you film with one of those cameras,
then you're in luck.
If not, well bad news is
that you can't add any of your own LUTs.
For me, that means no DGI LUTs or Fuji LUTs.
Similar to LUTs, you also cannot add third party plugins
but Apple says those are coming.
So maybe LUTs will be part of that in the future
but there's no timeline on when that'll happen.
The other coloring adjustments are also limited.
Apple decided to go with sliders here.
Here's where you can adjust exposure and saturation
including your highs, mids, lows and black point.
And as far as color manipulation goes,
you get warmth for white balance and tint,
levels for highs, mids, and lows.
And that is about it.
There are no curves, no color board, no color wheels
like the ones you'd find on a Mac version of Final Cut Pro.
The one thing that I use a lot
are hue and saturation curves,
but those are also missing.
You can still get a lot done with these,
but I wish the interface
was a little bit more consistent there.
And if you want to send this project to DaVinci Resolve
because you prefer coloring there, I know a lot of you do,
tough luck, you won't be able to do so.
Final Cut cannot transfer projects onto that.
It also cannot export or import XML files,
which you usually use to copy your timelines
into those other apps.
In fact, you can only transfer Final Cut Pro libraries
from iPad to the Mac and not the other way around.
Which means you sort of have to make a decision
before you start editing
which machine you're gonna start editing on
and hopefully finish on as well.
Apple also made sure that you can use Final Cut Pro
with just your hands, and to make things even easier,
there's a new little feature called the Jog Wheel
which you can tap over here.
You can use it in your timeline
to move your play head back and forth,
or you can also nudge the clip.
You can also place it anywhere on the screen
which is super helpful if you're left-handed.
And I think it's even more helpful,
maybe even mandatory if you're using your hands to edit.
I love it, I think it's great.
It's really nice,
but I still prefer editing with a keyboard and a mouse
or a track pad, in this case.
And that is one big reason, which is shortcut
which also means speed.
INO for in and out works.
E or Q to insert into the timeline works.
JKL for playback, all work, zoom in, zoom out, work.
Pretty much all the basic ones work here
but there are a few obvious ones that are missing, too.
V for enabling and disabling a clip, gone.
Turning snapping on and off doesn't work, which is N.
Adding gaps or blank spaces, it's command W,
but it's gone here.
Compounding clips doesn't work.
You can't get markers so M for markers is gone.
Command plus E for exporting is also gone.
And the last one that I'm missing is the tilde key.
That one is also gone.
All right, lastly, let's talk
about battery life and performance.
So when it comes to performance
I have almost no complaints.
But one thing that I did notice is
that the battery life is depleting pretty quickly.
First time editing, I was down
to like 43% after about two hours
which is sort of like steam deck territory here.
Editing on an iPad was genuinely fun and exciting.
The digital jog wheel is a nice little addition
to the software and the live drawings is a clever use
of an Apple pencil.
The experience of it all, I have zero issues with.
But I'm still surprised at how many features are missing
and that's just not gonna work for me.
It seems like this version of Final Cloud Pro
is a good place to start a project.
Maybe you just want to take a first pass
or assemble the timeline, check the clips,
check audio or whatever.
For me, I eventually have to turn
over to my desktop or my laptop
for any finishing touches, like coloring and animation.
But if you're starting out
and you're looking for a video editing software,
I'd give this a try.
It's $5 a month, which is really not that bad of a deal
and you can still get a lot of stuff done here.
Yeah, Apple nailed the experience
but left some crucial features on the cutting floor
which is exactly what I'd expect Apple to do.
Hey, thank you so much for watching.
I haven't been on video in a while
so hope everyone is well.
This was almost an hour long video
that I had to cut down to like 10 minutes.
So if I missed anything, please let me know in the comments
and I can try to answer any questions down below, all right.