Apple today released the much anticipated Final Cut Pro 2 for iPadOS. The major update was announced in May during Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ iPad event. The tentpole feature of this release is the new Live Multicam feature that works in tandem with the Final Cut Camera iOS app, that was also released today. This app enables up to four iOS or iPadOS devices to wirelessly capture and share their footage to the same project in Final Cut 2.

Other new features include:

• External drive support, allowing users to edit directly from external media
• Additional Pro camera controls
• 12 new color grading presets, 6 dynamic glitch backgrounds, 20 soundtracks, and 8 basic text titles.

Oh, and for those who aren’t sure if Apple is taking advantage of the M4 chip in the new iPad Pro, there was a specific mention that this release enables up to 2x faster rendering when compared to the M1.

Initial Impressions

This release was timely, as I had just begun production on a video. Here a shortlist of some of the things I’ve noticed:

• When you create a project, you have to option to move it to a different location, be it an external drive or somewhere else on the filesystem. When I tried to create my project anywhere in iCloud Drive, I received an error. Creating the project in the local storage (On My iPad) section worked fine.

• I don’t have an immediate need for Live Multicam, but I do like the idea of recording some shots using Final Cut Camera and then wirelessly importing them into my project back on the iPad. Connecting the two devices kept failing despite having Bluetooth enabled. It turns out you also need to enable the Local Network Access permission on both devices and that only shows up when you go through the onboarding for the Live Multicam feature. After I enabled that, the feature has been working beautifully.

• While I’d always love more, the refresh of some of the included content looks solid. I don’t know if I’ll make use of a lot of these, but there’s an okay variety in the soundtracks and graphics options that have been added.

• Side note: Third party content has been “coming soon” for over a year now Apple, wtf?
  

More to come on Final Cut 2, as it is my video editor of choice and what I’m solely using to build my YouTube channel.

Final Cut Pro is compatible with devices running iPadOS 17.4 or later with an M-Series chip. Pricing remains at $4.99/month or $50 annually.

Link: Apple Newsroom