With the recent launch of Apple Creator Studio, we saw some significant updates to Apple’s Pro apps on iPadOS. As a pseudo-content creator, the updates to Final Cut Pro, which got bumped to version 3, were of particular interest to me, and I think, other iPad content creators.

Here are the major new features in the update to Final Cut Pro.

Video Version

Background Video Exports

I already wrote an article about this, so I’ll try not to repeat myself. This feature, while pretty basic for laptop video editing software, is a huge quality of life improvement for iPad creators. I tested this on my most recent video by starting the export, then moving over to Pixelmator Pro to work on my thumbnail. It works as advertised. The only downside was that I didn’t get a notification that the export had completed, and had to remember to go back to the app and grab my video.

This specific feature requires an M3 chip or newer. That’s surprising to me because nothing Apple said during WWDC led me to believe this would be restricted to specific chips. To my knowledge, neither LumaFusion nor DaVinci Resolve, both of which have had background export support for months, have this restriction.

A Properly Resizable App

Unlike Logic Pro, which has supported Split View and Slide Over from the beginning, Final Cut Pro has never supported traditional iPad windowing. That changes with this update as the app is now fully resizable. You can scale the app down to the dimensions of an iPhone (maybe for a future iPhone version 🤔), or put it on an external display and let it completely fill the screen.

Preview on an External Monitor

Speaking of external monitors, Final Cut Pro can now let you use your big connected display to preview your video as you’re editing it.

Batch Apply Effects

This improvement has turned out to be more impactful for me than background updates. It’s not uncommon that I get halfway through editing some footage, and realize I’ve forgotten to apply the effects I wanted. Up until now, this has meant going to each clip, one by one, and applying the relevant effects.

No more.

You can now….wait for it….select multiple clips and apply multiple effects at once!

Truly marvelous innovation.

AI Powered Search

Thanks to AI-based analysis, Final Cut Pro can help you navigate your footage through two new features, Transcript Search and Visual Search.

Transcript search lets you search for clips by words or phrases that were spoken in your footage.

Visual search lets you search for objects that may appear in your clips.

For existing projects, the app will need to index all of your media for this to work. For new projects, you’ll see this process happening as you add clips. All of this happens in the background, and shouldn’t impede your work.

Beat Detection

Final Cut can now analyze the music/audio tracks in your video and display beat marks that you can align your footage to leveraging the app’s Magnetic Timeline. According to the documentation, it’s recommended you use audio following a 4/4 time signature.

Montage Maker

Montage Maker is a feature that analyzes your footage, and generates a video montage based on what Final Cut, presumably through AI, has determined are the highlights of your footage. I think the idea is to give you a potential starting point if you have a bunch of footage, but aren’t sure where to start.

Pricing

Final Cut Pro for iPad has always been a subscription app on iPadOS, and that continues with the new version. However, it is no longer available as a standalone subscription for new subscribers. If you have an existing subscription, it looks like you can continue using it, but new subscribers can only get Final Cut through the Apple Creator Studio subscription. At least that’s what I’m told. The App Store page still shows the old standalone subscription pricing. Maybe it still has to show because some users still have access to it.

I wouldn’t mind a non-subscription option, but Apple has clearly decided that subscriptions are the way forward for Pro apps on iPadOS.

Conclusion

I’ve never had a good sense of what the uptake has been of Final Cut Pro on iPadOS. Some users swore it off immediately because of some big missing features, and the fact that it wasn’t a copy/paste of the macOS version. But as someone that started my video editing journey with Final Cut Pro, version 3 continues to knock out those big missing features like background exports and applying batch effects, making the editing experience more efficient and productive.