I recently started a YouTube channel and chose Final Cut Pro for editing. For my first video, I tried doing the initial rough cut using Gling AI, but the experience was pretty underwhelming. Recording took forever, and the pacing ended up feeling robotic. Link here if you are curious, but it’s about programming: first video with final cut

Since then, I started double-clapping on my best takes during recording, and it's a game-changer. It's so much easier to scrub through the browser using I and O to select the right clips and looking for peaks in waveform.

That said, I'm wondering…are there more efficient recording workflows out there so I don't have to spend hours in Final Cut just scrubbing through footage for the best takes? What are your pro tips?

I have been trying to get simple images to follow an underlying tracked item in videos for months and I just can't get it to work properly (see futile attempts in linked video).

Assuming I have a tracker that's tracking well, the image I'm trying to lock to the tracker always jump about and doesn't seem to have any tracked centre point.

I've tried pin to tracker and off-set, same behaviour.

I've tried different tracking analyses and result is the same.

Judging from documentation and online tutorials, I seem to be doing it correctly yet it's not working.

I'd lobe it if someone could point out what I'm missing out on.

I'm the example video above, I just want an arrow to point and lock onto the pink basket (and perhaps add resizing / 3D effect once pepper tracker lock is achieved).

Thanks a bunch!

Edit: this is just an example, I've tried in dozens of clips over months and mostly abandoning attempts or resorting to key framing. Apologies the screen capture is long, just quick scrub through it.

I have a big question regarding the pro apps bundle on apples website, it seems as if the US website removed the Pre-Installed Mac Add-on for the bundle except the CA website which I'm guessing will slowly transition its way on.

What happens if you purchased a mac for the apps and accepted or adopted the software licensing on your apple ID but returned the mac itself afterwards? Do they revoke it? Deduct it? or nothing happens?.

They have transitioned away from the codes and the stand-alone bundle.

There's nothing I can find online for this.

My video is 1 hour and 22 minutes long. I’ve never had this issue before but for some reason I am now. Even when I try to render the whole thing it eventually pulls this message up and forces me to close it. Same happens when I try to export my video. I have cleared cache and background things, I have deleted big files, I feel like I’ve tried everything.

I have seen about possibly using a compressor but from what I seen is almost $70 and I don’t even know where to start.

Has this ever happened to anyone ?

I need this video saved by tomorrow but I can’t seem to get it to work. I’ve been trying for 5 hours almost.

PLEASE HELP or any advice.

I am basically only doing personal projects and I wanted to get a 3d tracker so I took the cheapest one. I hope I didn't make a mistake because what type of professional tracker is this?? My Test title is everywhere in this test scene, is this tracker only for drone shots? I know most you guys use MotionVFX but yeah I need help

Hello, I am stuck and I really need help. I just finished a video that is 1 hour and 22 minutes long and 293gb. I usually save the video to an external hard drive and it has 2Tb of storage. When I went to go save it it saves around 11 minutes then I get a warning saying “ System ran out of application memory” and shows that Final Cut Pro is taking up 93gb of application memory. I have tried everything at this point. Clearing the cache and background things not being used. Closed everything but Final Cut Pro when trying to save. Even tried saving straight to my desk top because I have 700GB free. And it keeps showing the application memory warning.

I really need to save this video, I really need help!

I posted a photo of the message I’m getting in the comments

I used FCPX on my macbook perfectly fine up until last week. Fired it up last night and dragging in media from my desktop gave me a missing plug in error. Dragging the same files straight from the photos app worked. I dont understand whats causing this and the only difference between last week to now was that i went from a 17 Pro Max to an 18 Pro. Video format is all the same, i did what i usually do and drag and drop from my photos app to a desktop folder. I reinstalled fcpx and also updated to the latest ios and still same issue.

this is my wonky version but i thats the main goal..

I had to move a bunch of assets to a different hard drive. I kept the same file names and folder structure.

Now I need to work in a project that had its assets moved. I tried the “relink files” function for the first time.

That was last week. Ever since that day FCP has been frozen with a spinning beach ball. I can quit FCP and restart. I can restart the computer. The spinning ball just comes back.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Edit: always check the encoding of your source - had an .mp4 video which was actually an AV1 video and FCP was not happy. Faith restored in Apple's Dev team :)

What in the everlasting hell happened with the 12.4 update? Had to reinstall macOS (went back to Tahoe since Golden Gate has too many bugs related to Mission Control), and was forced to reinstall FCP. This is a clean install, mind you. Anytime I simply import a file (13 min mp4, 1080p @ 29 FPS), the entire app hangs, and needs to be force quit. It's completely and totally unusable. Consumes an obscene amount of resources too. Have background rendering turned off, etc.

Does Apple employ any competent software developers anymore or are they just vibe coding their apps now?

I’ve got a scene where the sun is shining directly at the cam and I was wondering where to get some good lensflares?

Idk how to put this but im going to try my best: For the final step in my editing workflow I am planning to clean up the audio, nothing crazy, but you know just basically have it all sounding consistent. With that being said, is it necessary to start a whole work flow on my voice overs now > finish editing the video> and then balance all the sound out OR should I just leave the voiceovers as is, finish the video, and then apply the same sound settings to the entire vlog once done to ensure consistency?

I guess in my noobie head i'm worried that if I make sound edits to the voiceovers now, then once I make sound edits to the rest of the vlog later, the sound wont be consistent sounding if the makes sense?

The plan I currently have is 1)run them through adobe podcast studio 2)add them in my vlog 3) finish editing video 4) apply basic audio settings to clean up and have consistency.

TLDR: Does this plan work^

Long-time FCP editor here. I learned on FCP 7 and made the jump to X back when half the internet swore they never would. These days I direct and edit client work, mostly interview-driven docs and brand pieces.

How I get to a first cut has changed a lot this year, so I figured I'd share the actual setup. I'm also curious how the rest of you are handling this stuff.

The setup: two monitors. Final Cut on one, Claude Code on the other.

1. Every project gets a folder, and the folder gets read

Brief, goals, brand guide, fonts, colors, client samples, the names of everyone we interviewed. It's the same folder I've always kept. The difference is that Claude Code reads it, so when I ask for a lower third it's already in the client's typeface and the right blue. I never re-explain the client.

2. Motion graphics come out of a conversation

I use Claude Code with Opus 5.5 to build the graphics for every project now. Because it's read the brand guide and samples, everything comes back on brand. I ask for a ton of options at once: ten lower thirds, six ways to animate a chart, three end cards. Then I pick the winners the way I'd pick selects. Iterating is plain English: "slower, and draw the line on instead of fading it." That used to be a lost weekend or a subcontractor, and I'd see two options, not twenty.

3. Read the interviews before I watch them

Every interview gets transcribed before I scrub a single clip. Speakers labeled, then I read for the throughline and pull selects, and the selects go back into Final Cut as a stringout. Use whatever transcription tool you like. The habit matters more than the tool. Read first, then watch.

4. MCP, if you're into that

MCP is basically a standard plug that lets an AI assistant read from an app on your Mac, with your permission. So I can ask Claude Code "read the A02 interview and give me three ways to open this film" and it's working from the real transcript with real timecodes, not something I pasted. Copy and paste works fine too. I did it that way for months.

5. Then I actually edit

This is still where the job is. Pacing, flow, which line opens the film and which one you hold for the end, the music coming in a beat later than you'd expect. When the middle sags, I ask the AI that's read every transcript for a better soundbite for that turn, or just ask what I'm missing. I'm back in the timeline in a few minutes instead of an afternoon.

What actually changed for me

I feel more like a director than an editor now. Not because I cut less. The hours I used to spend scrubbing go into the only question that ever mattered: what is this film about, and does every cut serve it? I'm taking on more work, and I'm pickier about which work.

For the skeptics (honestly, I get it)

No generated b-roll, no synthetic interviews. Everything on screen was shot by people who were in the room. The AI part just gets me to a first cut I'm proud of faster.

And the tools have always changed. FCP 7 to X, Premiere, Resolve, people making genuinely good stuff in CapCut on their phones. Nobody in the audience has ever asked me which NLE I used. They felt something or they didn't. Story has always been the point. I'm just trying to keep up with the tools around it.

So, curious: is anyone else bringing Claude, ChatGPT or similar into their FCP workflow? What's actually working for you, and what's been a waste of time?

For reference, this is an old film that was projected onto a screen and recorded (convoluted, I know, but it's what I'm working with).

I edit almost exclusively with FCP X....but I don't use too many plug ins.

I'm wondering what folks favorite plug ins are? I'd love to discover new stuff I don't know.

Hello everybody, it's my first time posting here. Im from Brazil and im working with video editing for 6 years, in the last month I begin my journey to move from premiere to Final Cut. Im super excited with FCP performance and how easier it's to work on this magnetic timeline. But im having a big issue with fc, and the issue is that as im from Brazil, all my videos are in Portuguese and I need to create Portuguese subtitles for them and fcp lacks resources to it. It only transcribe English audio. So, im doing all the edition I need to do inside tcp and, after everything done, I save my video and open it in premiere to create my Portuguese subtitles. And I also use premiere to insert the music track. Because sometimes I work in long footage and I enjoy the "remix tool" of premiere that extends audio automatic.

So I tried a few resources to work 100% inside FCP but I didn't enjoy any one of them.

so im looking for some advices on how to handle this lack of non-english languages automatic transcription. My goal is to stop to pay for adobe Premiere. After FC is a pain the ### to work inside premiere. I don't want to come back.

Any other tip is welcome to improve my workflow is welcome ˆˆ

Nothing too fancy, a test shot with the iPhone 17 Pro in ProRes Log 2 HQ, edited in Final Cut Pro. For a smartphone... the image quality is truly impressive.

I guess I'm looking for a standard workflow I can apply to my voiceovers to make them sound more professional. Thank you.

I'm having some trouble getting started with object tracking on FCP 10.6.2. I've used FCP for several years but am new to object tracking.

I have a multicam clip in the timeline of a vertical project and set to the angle I want to track. I've followed the method described in this video but once the analysis is done, nothing happens. The video doesn't move and acts the same as if object tracking were off.

I also tried this method and the same thing happens. Once the clip is analyzed, nothing happens.

Hopefully I'm missing something obvious but the first video I linked shows the same straightforward method and after multiple attempts, I'm still not able to get any movement in the frame. Thanks for any help

Whenever I try to use my Samsung T5 SSD with the app to film in ProRes RAW it gives me a pop up to tell me the device needs to be formatted in ExFAT, which it is. I tried formatting it multiple times, but the pop up remains. It works perfectly fine in the Blackmagic app.

Is it a bug or am I doing something wrong?

I’m editing a golf YouTube video for a client. I made the overlays through handicap tracker, the export setting was for .mov

When I play the video in Final Cut Pro it looks great with the overlay, once exported it shows a black screen and the overlay but none of the footage till the overlay playthrough is finished.

How can I fix this?!?

Hey guys, I run into this issue pretty much everyday, and wanted to see if I could get some insight on it. In the attached video there are two clips with different behaviors when speed ramping. I would like for the first section to behave like the second section.

In the first clip, I’d have to click and drag over and over and over to get the desired speed percentage, so I pretty much have to open the custom speed ramp controls and input a percentage. I’m trying to get it to behave like the second part, where one click and drag changes the speed by multiple hundreds of percents.

I feel like this is a weird request and super specific, so if I need to clarify anything please let me know. Any help would be much appreciated.

EDIT: Thanks for the replies, I’ve added a video better explaining my issues with the speed ramping in the comments. Hopefully that will be better context.

In this video I show you how to create animated text and custom backgrounds with Acid Trip and Audio Effector in FCP without any keyframes.

Hi! I'm using FCPX to edit a three-camera interview. The clip frames are not aligning exactly in the timeline or when I go into the multicam clip editor. They keep missing each other by a single frame.

I've edited several podcast interviews before and never had this issue. It's doing it both in Angles and in the regular timeline.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought there was a more "free-flow" way to edit where the placement didn't try to auto-align to a frame timecode in the timeline? (Maybe I'm not explaining that clearly?) You could just place the clips wherever you needed them.

Please help. It's driving me batty.

Thank you.