The new update to Final Cut Pro X video editing software has apple entering into the 360-degree VR video world. The new update also adds support for HDR, wide color spaces, HEVC, and powerful new ways to do color grading. Plus, there’s a new way to import edited projects from iMovie on iOS devices.
Final Cut’s new 360-degree footage support includes the ability to set the viewer’s viewpoint, true 360-degree titles, and support for the HTC Vive and export with the necessary metadata for viewing on Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo. The software includes truly 360 VR-compatible text titles, and other effects such as blur and glow.
To deal with an major issue of 360 video—the fact that you can see the camera when you pan down—the app has two great features: You can either place an image such as a logo over the gear, or use a patch tool to simulate the texture right around the camera—often the ground or grass. There’s also a tool for straightening the horizon, which can be problematically warped in 360 footage.
Updated color controls—wheels and curves—make adjustments clearer than ever, showing you exactly how you’ve pushed the video’s look towards red, green, or blue, and even letting you use a dropper to select and modify a specific color value. Another nifty new color capability is to use custom LUTs (lookup tables) to get color settings just right across clips, and to use pro LUTs from camera makers like Red, Arri, and Canon.
Final Cut Pro’s HDR support lets you produce video for the standard HDR10 format as well as HLG, which is mostly intended for broadcast. You can hook up an HDR-capable display to view your results, or check the raw brightness values on a standard monitor.
Final Cut Pro 10.4 also includes extra features like the ability to import projects from the iOS version of iMovie, HEVC format export, and audio effects plug-ins from Logic Pro. Many of these features have already been available with competitors like Adobe Premiere Pro.
