Final Cut Pro X 10.4 Coming Later This Year With Improved Color Tools, HEVC and VR Support

Friday October 27, 2017 6:54 PM PDT by Juli Clover
At the Final Cut Pro X Creative Summit, which includes a visit to Apple's Cupertino Campus, Apple announced the next version of its video editing software aimed at professionals, Final Cut Pro X 10.4. Details about the announcement were shared on Twitter by FCPX experts Peter Wiggins, Alex Gollner, and Richard Taylor, giving us a hint of what's coming later this year.

Image via Richard Taylor

The update will include new color tools, like color wheels and a white balance picker, with new controls for the color board. It will include support for HEVC, the new video format introduced in iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, and direct import of iMovie for iOS timelines. The new version of the software will support VR and HDR workflows.

Apple shared several demos of the new version of Final Cut Pro X in action, including an 8K timeline on the new iMac Pro.

No specific release date for Final Cut Pro X 10.4 was announced, but Apple did say that it's coming before the end of 2017. Final Cut Pro X can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $299.99. [Direct Link]

(Thanks, Olivier!)

Tag: Final Cut Pro X
93 comments


Top Rated Comments

(View all)
Avatar
HiRez
16 months ago
It may be too late for Apple to regain prominence, I know a lot of people in the industry who bailed to Adobe Premiere in the last 2 years. Our company just moved about 40 FCP seats to Premiere this year. Unfortunately the botched Final Cut X rollout created sticky negative preconceptions about the product that persisted long after Apple fixed and improved much of it.
Rating: 12 Votes
Avatar
simonmet
16 months ago
No matter how good FCPX is or becomes Apple simply won’t regain mass videographer market share without a classic upgradable desktop, much less an all-in-one. Corporate buyers see the risk in proprietary locked-down everything. Certain Mac-centric niche studios may like the iMac Pro but I can’t see it reaching a wider audience than the trash-can Mac Pro.

At this point we should be thankful Apple is still supporting and developing FCPX. I see it as an attractive option for amateur and prosumer users such as the YouTube set. Maybe even indie film makers.
Rating: 9 Votes
Avatar
OldSchoolMacGuy
16 months ago
It'll be interesting to see how long Apple sticks with the 10.everything scheme.
Rating: 9 Votes
Avatar
linuxcooldude
16 months ago

It may be too late for Apple to regain prominence, I know a lot of people in the industry who bailed to Adobe Premiere in the last 2 years. Our company just moved about 40 FCP seats to Premiere this year. Unfortunately the botched Final Cut X rollout created sticky negative preconceptions about the product that persisted long after Apple fixed and improved much of it.


In the long run, it won't matter. FCPX is more for a new generation of editor.
Rating: 8 Votes
Avatar
fitshaced
16 months ago
I use FCPX and so happy to see an improvement to colour tools and white balance. There are plugins that do a really good job but I think these are basic things that should be built in. No need to learn something else now.
Rating: 8 Votes
Avatar
Msivyparrot
16 months ago
Yes exactly, that is called post purchase upgrading, you upgrade after the initial purchase of the device, this was the idea of the cheesgrater, the macbook pro, with it's replaceable battery and RAM underneath..It was such a great idea, you bought 2GB RAM and then later, upgraded the RAM, or in the cheesgrater, changed everything, as it should.

Apple for some bizarre reason banned post purchase upgrading, the trash can mc pro was not upgradeable, then the mcbookpro was shown the same bizarre love, then the new 2017 imac and mac pro will be totally BTO...BTO is bad...

In the field you need power, both internal and external, you need to drive the laptops hard, editing, and this consumes power, in the old days, with FCP classic, you could switch out batteries, sure the app itself did not benefit from more RAM, being locked down to 2GB RAM, but email, other tasks, having more RAM helped...

Now in 2017 we have a device that is fixed to 8GB RAM [or 16GB] and fixed battery life, and if that runs out, you are **** out of luck...How in a decade is that progress..unless negative progress is what you desire....

No post purchase upgrading is the bullet to the heart of Apple, Tim Cock is the only one on the planet that can make the decision to end the ban of post purchase upgrading, the industries that use power mac hardware are simply mute and I wonder why...???

Am I missing something? Is post purchase upgrading bad???
Rating: 7 Votes
Avatar
BvizioN
16 months ago
Is it really too hard for a multi billion dollar company to make Final Cut Pro X app for iPad pro?
Rating: 6 Votes
Avatar
Sean4000
16 months ago
Every 5 years my media group changes out systems. 2012's MacPro "upgrade" that wasn't really an upgrade was our last straw. My Apple systems went immediately to the render farm. Now, in 2017, we view the upcoming iMac Pro as too little too late. It serves us no purpose. In 2 weeks when I'm finished building new AMD Threadripper boxes, our existing workstations will completely replace the Macs now in the farm. We'll be a WinLin system front to back.

"""It may be too late for Apple to regain prominence, I know a lot of people in the industry who bailed to Adobe Premiere in the last 2 years. Our company just moved about 40 FCP seats to Premiere this year. Unfortunately the botched Final Cut X rollout created sticky negative preconceptions about the product that persisted long after Apple fixed and improved much of it."""
Rating: 5 Votes
Avatar
wubsylol
16 months ago
There are plenty of "professionals" using FCPX; Premier fans are just louder. The majority of people are using Avid.
Rating: 5 Votes
Avatar
sidewinder3000
16 months ago

It may be too late for Apple to regain prominence, I know a lot of people in the industry who bailed to Adobe Premiere in the last 2 years. Our company just moved about 40 FCP seats to Premiere this year. Unfortunately the botched Final Cut X rollout created sticky negative preconceptions about the product that persisted long after Apple fixed and improved much of it.

I had a similar experience the month FCP X came out. I was the CD at a big improv comedy theater and we had five FCP 7 edit bays but needed to add two more. Apple wouldn’t sell us new licenses for 7 since X had come out, but X was still so stripped down, and had zero ability to work with a server and be a pro workstation. One of the great ****ups in Apple’s mostly stellar trajectory. They owned the small post studio market, and then gave it all away.

The irony is that now that FCP X has been updated, there are many who claim it is faster and more modern than Premiere. But no one knows that because everyone jumped ship.

I always maintain that if Apple had simply released what they called FCP X as FC Xpress, a light, personal version of their new software that people could get familiar with and learn the new magnetic timeline, and announce that a full-featured FC Pro version (X) would be coming the next year. This would have given them the time to make sure the pro version had all the pro features when it eventually launched, and would have allowed FCP 7 users to continue buying licenses until they were contra or with X.

Tragic.
Rating: 5 Votes
[ Read All Comments ]