Final Cut is a creative editorial company, working across advertising, film and television. Our offices in London, New York and LA are home to many of the industry's most celebrated editors. On’s Shape of Dreams, edited by Jeff Buchanan, and Instacart’s Choose Your Bananas, edited by Jeff Buchanan and Crispin Struthers, both get a well-deserved spot. Congrats to all who made the list! Also recognized this year, Partizan received an Honorable Mention in Production Company of the Year.
Take That are serving up a Sweet July. For Adriana Legay, every cut begins with a feeling. David Webb, Managing Director at Final Cut, says: “We’re thrilled to welcome Adam back to the Final Cut family and tellingly - straight to the cutting room. In pursuit of the best birthday ever. Bday Private Dick, edited by Jasmine 'Mac' McCullough and directed by Dante Ariola. A Vimeo Staff Pick!
Starring: Nick Thune, John C. NEW YORK CITY - At creative editorial house Final Cut (www.finalcut-edit.com), five senior editors - Jeff Buchanan, Ashley Kreamer, JD Smyth, Crispin Struthers and Jim Helton - have become partners in the studio’s US business. “I’m excited to see this team lead,” says Justin Brukman, managing director/head of global new business for Final Cut. “I view all of them as the next generation spearheading change and continuity of purpose. “I’ve had the honor of working alongside this talented group, watching them lead and mentor our editors for many years,” adds Final Cut founding editor/CEO Rick Russell.
As a creative editorial and post production studio, Final Cut collaborates with leading directors and agencies on prominent commercials, feature films and music videos. The company has offices in London, New York and Los Angeles. Ashley Kreamer joined Final Cut in 2001 and honed her craft within the walls of its US offices, working alongside founding editors from both the US and UK. She has been a mentor for the next-generation of talent, helping them expand their skills and become editors in their own right. JD Smyth has worked as an editor for 20 years, with over a decade at Final Cut. His work has been honored with Emmys, Cannes Lions and One Show Pencils. In addition to work for GE, the NFL, AT&T and HBO, he has longer-form content credits for Unilever, GQ and Sandy Hook Promise. His music video work includes projects for Beyonce, Radiohead and Justin Timberlake. Crispin Struthers is a two-time Oscar-nominated editor who joined Final Cut’s Los Angeles office in 2014. Struthers was nominated for his work on the David O. Russell features Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, which both won ACE Eddie Awards. Jim Helton is an award-winning editor of feature films, television and commercials. A long time collaborator of director Derek Cianfrance, Helton edited Cianfrance’s Academy Award-nominated film Blue Valentine, as well as The Place Beyond the Pines, and the Emmy-winning HBO series I Know This Much is True.
No wonder Apple's Final Cut Pro is such a hit with desktop filmmakers: It combines powerful video-editing and special-effects software with an affordable price tag. If you have the software, learn to use it like a pro. Film editors, production professionals, and students alike will find Editing Techniques with Final Cut Pro an invaluable resource, thanks to its practical and efficient cinematic strategies for working with Final Cut Pro and other tools. Author Michael Wohl is a professional film editor and was one of the original designers of Final Cut Pro. In Editing Techniques with Final Cut Pro, he takes a unique approach, blending hands-on production tips with professional strategy and artistic techniques. Wohl talked to an all-star lineup of top film editors (see the list below) while writing the book; each chapter ends with an interview with a seasoned industry insider.
From guidelines on editing to suggestions for improving work flow, Editing Techniques with Final Cut Pro ventures beyond the basics and teaches you how to edit like a pro. Editors interviewed in Editing Techniques with Final Cut Pro: Brian Berden (Blue Velvet, Natural Born Killers); Curtiss Clayton (Drugstore Cowboy, Made); Herv Schneid (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children); Steven Mirrione (Swingers, Traffic); Valds skarsdttir (The Celebration, Finding Forrester); Chris Tellefsen (The People vs. FCP X or in the more unforgiving circles iMovie Pro has divided opinion. It has alienated many people who were die hard FCP 7 users, like me, due to the lack of key features and no backward compatibility with the older system.
I have more or less moved over to Premiere due to increasingly impressive features (I am also eyeing the new Avid MC6 which has taken a giant leap forward with the new release, but more on that in a future post) but I am still checking out FCP X. I have asked 7 professional editors (yes seven!) who are using FCP X why they are using it and to share their thoughts about it and the recent update which gave us, finally, multicam and various other features. Sit back with coffee in hand and see what these guys think! Insert. Trim. Lift. We’ve enjoyed incremental software improvements year to year, but rarely a giant leap forward. If anything, the trend was steadily towards ever more features, at lower prices.
As recently as the Spring of 2010, I was asked to edit a primetime television show on an Avid Meridian editing system from the 90’s. It was more of an ‘edit box’ that a full-service modern computer, but it worked perfectly. As television editors, we just make choices about picture, music and story. When the choices are complete, our assistant editors make EDLs for online and coloring and export OMFs for the audio mix. But editing the ‘television way’, with teams of assistants and days lounging at the audio mix with a steady stream of fresh baked cookies, is a niche workflow and, in my opinion, an ever decreasing method for creating great content. Since you are reading this on Philip Bloom’s blog, you are likely one of these media ‘master of all trades.’
Shooter, editor, mixer, colorist. You also likely know that last summer there was an earthquake in the non-linear editing world. What many had expected to be a long overdue update to Final Cut Pro, ended up being a full-scale application rewrite with a completely new interface - and many missing features. The feedback from editors was overwhelmingly negative. When FCP X came along, the grumpy and resistant editor was… me. While the new approach and interface intrigued me, I felt totally disoriented and was unable to perform even the most basic editing tasks. Mind you, I beta-tested version 1.0 of Final Cut in 1999 and loved it. In the 90’s, I was an aspiring editor, but now I am a grizzled veteran.
So, with version X, I said “why should I bother to learn yet another interface? Where’s my FCP 8? What can X do that I can’t do now? However, having witnessed the waves of resistance to change in the past, thinking ‘I may be missing the next big thing’, I’ve forced myself to work through the discomfort and learn Final Cut Pro X. We have seen an escalating arms race of buttons and widgets and dials at the head of our timelines. In an effort to allow us to mute and solo and patch our tracks and view waveforms, all at a single click, Avid went off the deep end in version 5.5
Check out the interface widgets at the head of the AVID timeline in this review. On a laptop screen, these controls can obscure a significant portion of timeline real estate. FCP X has gone to the opposite extreme. No widgets, no tracks, and the timeline just emerges from the dark, left edge of the interface. This is a monumental change. Those widgets are there for a functional reason, so removing them means you must weave that functionality throughout the timeline interface.
In my experience, Apple has pulled this part off. But those widgets are also there to identify tracks. Which leads to the fact that there are no ‘tracks’ in FCP X! At first, editing without conventional timeline tracks felt unnerving. I did not like it. Like driving on a busy highway with no lane markers. As my first FCP X deadline approached, it was as if that unmarked highway was now rain-soaked and lit only by moonlight. It induced waves of panic. I typically organize my audio tracks by content. Natural sound on tracks 1 and 2. Interviews on 3 and 4. Music and FX on 5 through 8. In FCP X, that’s gone. No track numbers. Just metadata. There are automated solutions for identifying music and dialogue, but the tracks are gone. Instead, there are storylines and clips that tack on to storylines. It’s a departure from every major editing platform currently available. It’s very hard to break sync with the default settings in FCP X. But, as much as Apple is trying to prevent us from losing sync, my editing habits are formed around breaking sync constantly, and then repairing it. That’s how I edit.
After months of editing with FCP X, I am still aware of the ‘missing tracks’ but now, instead of driving a car, it feels more like skiing or surfing. There’s a freedom, a flexibility. If you think this sounds like flowery hyperbole, you may be right. It’s hard to think of ways to convey feelings about software. So, I am merely trying to express the small sense of elation that I felt when I realized the upside of losing my trusted track framework. I felt encouraged to experiment more. I felt slightly liberated in my timeline edits. For someone who grinds away in editing interfaces day after day, year after year, for more than a decade, this was a notable change. Another source of uneasy tension was the removal of the traditional ‘source’ widow from the interface. Three point editing has been synonymous with the professional non-linear interface since day one. With FCP X, it’s still there, just not as obvious.
As it turns out, the default clip view is my least favorite. When I switched to List View for Event browsing, I found that I actually liked it more than any source window I have used. I can easily skim the footage and scan the waveforms for audio indicators. This is a specific feature I miss when I edit on Avid daily. You may have seen me refer to ‘Event browsing’. This is the new alternative to bins, folders and source clip viewing. It’s also tied to how Final Cut X organizes and interacts with media on your hard drive. By default, FCP X wants you to ‘wrap’ all of your project’s media in Events. Basically the iMovie and iPhoto way of managing media. The objective seems to be to ingest media into the program and eliminate the obvious file structure that relates to the original clip. If that’s confusing, let’s call it baby-proofing your media. I don’t like it.
One thing I preferred about the previous versions of FCP was that I could import a clip and it would have a direct relationship to a file on my computer that I could break and relink at will. Avid generally wants to organize your media and have you interface with it through a ‘Media Tool’. FCP X takes this to a whole new level. Whatever the intention, this is the feature I dislike the most about the new Final Cut. I’d like to put files on any drive and move them at will - then, relink them. This ‘baby-proofing’ of media seems so out of place in a professional program. Plus, even with the new relinking option in the 10.0.3 update, you get the dreaded yellow exclamation point with no direct way to fix it. For me, something seems off in an Apple interface when you can’t right-click an alert and have an option to take action. To relink the file above, I have to go to the File menu and choose ‘Relink Event Files.’ When I found that, it felt like Apple saying “Ok! We will let you relink clips, but we don’t like it… and we’re still calling them Events!” I can’t click on that offline file to fix it.
The smallest Aha! I’ve had a roller coaster of emotions with FCP X. Yes, when you are editing, creating, screening, and outputting, it’s an emotional experience. There were so many times I was cursing this software. But there were many small moments where I was loving FCP X as well. One small Aha! moment happened recently, when I was using the ‘precision editing tool’ - aka ‘trim mode’. I was tweaking the A and B sides of an edit. At the same time, it was impacting the titles and graphics on the layers above. In FCP X, you can access all of timeline clips while in ‘trim mode’. In the screen grab above, the red indicator on the top left is me adjusting that clip while in trim mode. I know this is obscure, but it surprised me. When it happened, I actually launched my Avid software as well as FCP 6 to make sure I wasn’t crazy. I’ll be the first to admit that this is the smallest, most insignificant feature, but it was one of the moments that made me stop and look at this new software.
In fourteen years of editing, this was something I had never done. Something that felt off-limits and too demanding for the software. I wasn’t in trim mode. There was no mode. Modes are part of my workflow. Every day I work in edit mode, trim mode, overwrite mode (Avid) and effect mode. If the barrier between modes are gone, and I am free to adjust effects while I am trimming, then perhaps it’s time for me to rethink how I am editing. And that - rethinking how I edit - is the Aha! moment. Suddenly, this new, dynamic timeline made my Avid timeline tracks feel like layers of sediment that buried my clips like fossils. Again, I know this is flowery stuff. Not a compelling argument if you own a post production house with 40 editing stations sharing many terabytes of storage. But for a veteran editor, who has spent tens of thousands of hours editing, it was sort of exciting. Without tracks, without rigid modes, there is something that emerges that is a more freestyle, intuitive, instinctual experience.
With any tool you grow to like; your favorite camera, or trusted software, it comes down to little moments. Small interactions that add up to create a feeling of comfort and familiarity. You can compare features online, but your feeling about any software will emerge from a thousand small interactions. I encourage you to download the demo of FCP X. Try it. Get frustrated. Work through the frustration. Get angry. Be surprised. Keep going. In the end, it may not be a good solution for you. But, if you spend some time with it, you are bound to find some small, new way to approach editing. When editing first became non-linear, it afforded the luxury of experimentation without consequences. New styles of editing emerged. For me, this version of FCP X feels like a peek into the next wave of editing possibilities. Gone are tracks and timecode. Now, there’s metadata and storylines. You can mix frame rates and formats without dire consequences. But don’t expect to figure it out intuitively. It’s a different paradigm. I don’t read manuals but thankfully, there are great training resources available at Lynda.com or from Ripple or Larry Jordan. This is very deep software. It’s really hard to cover much in a guest blog post. In short (I suppose it’s too late for that), I will say there are many things to love, and many things to revile in the new Final Cut. You can’t reasonably make a choice about a professional software platform without considering the path forward.
Whether you are a designer, audio engineer, or a film editor, you need to have faith that you are on a viable platform for the future. So is FCP X the ‘next big thing’? Are you ‘missing out’ if you don’t get on board. That’s where things get very murky. Whereas the editing software platforms were on parallel courses before, it seems like the introduction of FCP X establishes a fork in the road. Adobe’s Production Bundle just got a lot more appealing for editors who utilized wide ranges of the former FCP Studio. Round trips to the very powerful After Effects and Media Encoder can take the place of Motion and Compressor. If I was starting today, building my first editing station, I would likely opt for Adobe’s offerings. (Interestingly, my first editing platform was Premiere 5.1). Also, Adobe software is cross platform - meaning that you can build a lower cost PC tower with all of the hard drives and tricked out video cards you want. Apple has not exactly inspired confidence lately with it’s Mac Pro line, and if you bought a new tower today, you’d be getting a pricey machine that was first released in 2010. However, if you only dabbled in Motion, Color and Soundtrack Pro, there may be enough in FCP X to meet your needs and you can run it on an iMac or MacBook Pro, like I do. And, get this, the Apple option for FCP, Motion and Compressor is the much less expensive option. The full version of Premiere, on it’s own, is $800. If you want the bundle including After Effects and Media Encoder, double that.
Most troubling for an independent or aspiring editor is Apple’s commitment to the professional platform. When I started editing, this ‘Pro page from Apple had amazing stories about people making cool things with Apple pro software. The page has not been updated since 2009. That’s not good. If you are committing thousands of dollars into hardware and software, and thousands of hours of your life into a platform, you don’t want it to be neglected or abandoned. I’ve never owned a PC in my life and the lack of a Pro roadmap from Apple is troubling for me. With FCP X, it would appear that we are headed for an Avid monopoly of Hollywood editing again. FCP had made some inroads into production companies and commercial trailer houses, but it was still an uphill battle. I know several editors who refused to work on certain shows because they didn’t want to work with Final Cut. This new version of FCP X is likely to make their heads explode. It’s just too different. We also get back to the argument of ‘what’s in it for me?’. For studios and production houses, there is little reason to resist the gravitational pull from Avid. In fact, the most notable show I cut on FCP, Project Runway, is now headed back to an Avid workflow as a result of their disappointment with FCP X. When I show up to work tomorrow, I will be sitting in front of an Avid. But for my independent projects, documentaries, DSLR shooting, basically, for everything I am working on in the future, I am sticking with FCP X…for now. It’s fast, flexible and worth the time I am investing. It has all the features I used in Color. I can do light mixing and FX and export using Compressor. Also, outside of television, I don’t intend to ever shoot or deliver on tape again. I do reserve the right to complain about FCP X, or give up on it in the future.
Lifelong Adobe user tries Final Cut Pro
Michael Friedman is a Producer and Emmy Award winning editor who’s credits include The Amazing Race, Project Runway and The Bachelor. The Final Cut generation never had it so good - an unmitigated seven years or so on a solid platform. I’ve been on a graveyard of systems - the Abekas’ Turbocube, Media 100, Abekas’ Stratasphere, Edit*6 and Media 100’s 844/x. The anticipation of a 64 bit Final Cut was exciting for me - especially when I spend a lot of time watching render bars of H...
Final Cut Pro makes it easy to create polished, pro-quality videos across Mac and iPad. Search visual moments. With Visual Search, locating clips is effortless. Grab the perfect sound bite. No more sifting through hours of footage. Connect up to four iPhone or iPad devices, control their settings remotely, and automatically sync all your footage. Make frame-accurate edits with just a tap of your finger. Montage Maker automatically selects the best visual highlights from your footage and cuts them to the beat of any song. Final Cut Camera lets you capture in ProRes RAW for maximum flexibility in shaping your video’s look and extending detail in highlights and shadows. Questions? Apple Creator Studio is an all-in-one subscription to a suite of creative apps with powerful AI features that build on Apple Intelligence. Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Compressor give you smarter, faster ways to craft and cut videos. Pixelmator Pro lets you easily edit images and create striking graphics. Logic Pro and MainStage help you produce, perform, and perfect your music. On your Mac or iPad, you can download Apple Creator Studio, which includes Final Cut Pro (Mac and iPad), Motion (Mac only), and Compressor (Mac only), from the App Store. Final Cut Pro is included in your subscription to Apple Creator Studio, which also includes Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage. In addition, Apple Creator Studio comes with enhanced versions of Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform that include premium templates, a library of high-quality, royalty-free photos and graphics, and powerful intelligence features. You can try Apple Creator Studio free for 30 days. $129 per year. $29.99 per year. A one-time purchase will still be available, but access to some of the premium content is available only to Apple Creator Studio subscribers. Yes. For the optimal experience, full functionality is available with macOS 26, iPadOS 26, and iOS 26. Apple Creator Studio requires an Apple Account and an internet connection to subscribe. Final Cut Pro for Mac requires macOS 15.6 or later, 8GB of memory (16GB recommended), a Metal-capable graphics card (Intel-based Mac computers only), and 7.2GB of available disk space. Some features require a Mac with Apple silicon. Compressor requires macOS 15.6 or later, 8GB of memory, and 1.2GB of available disk space. Apple Immersive Video processing requires 32GB of memory (64GB recommended). Storage read speed of 2GB/s or faster is recommended.
Final Cut Pro (often abbreviated FCP or FCPX) is a professional non-linear video-editing application initially developed by Macromedia, and, since 1998, by Apple as part of its pro apps and Creator Studio collection for macOS and iPadOS. Final Cut Pro allows users to import, edit, and process video footage, and output it to a wide variety of formats. In the 2000s, Final Cut Pro developed a large and expanding user base, mainly video hobbyists and independent filmmakers. It also made inroads with film and television editors who have traditionally used Avid Media Composer. According to a 2007 SCRI study, Final Cut Pro made up 49% of the United States professional editing market, with Avid at 22%.
In 2011, Final Cut Pro 7 was replaced with the fully rewritten Final Cut Pro X, which initially lacked many features from previous versions, though frequent updates have brought back many of these features. Final Cut Pro provides non-linear, non-destructive editing of any QuickTime-compatible video format including DV, HDV, P2 MXF (DVCProHD), XDCAM (via plug-in), 2K, 4K, 5K, and 8K film formats and can import projects directly from iMovie for iOS and iPadOS. It supports a number of simultaneously composited video tracks; unlimited audio tracks; multi-camera editing for combining video from multiple camera sources; 360º video editing support; as well as standard editing functions. It comes with transitions and filters; the functionality can be extended with plug-ins. Event browser and Magnetic timeline define the core workflow, with Roles to organize audio types. Content auto-analysis and compound clips further enhance editing, while multicam editing and 3D titles expand capabilities. 360-degree video editing arrived in 10.4, and later updates added HDR support and HEVC formats. Final Cut Pro X is a native 64-bit application leveraging multi-core CPUs and OpenCL for GPU acceleration, with a resolution-independent playback system and enhanced automation for editors.
Version histories include notable milestones: 10.0.3 introduced native multicam, 10.2.0 brought 3D titles, and 10.4 added HDR and 360º editing. Final Cut Pro X’s evolution also reflected shifts in the industry’s tool ecosystem, including debates about open standards, backward compatibility, and the balance between powerful professional features and approachable workflows. The product’s enduring appeal stems from its ability to fuse creative control with practical post-production considerations, making it a staple for editors across commercial, film, and television projects.