Apple Unveils Final Cut Pro 11 with AI-Powered Transcription + More
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Apple has released Final Cut Pro 11, a significant update to its suite of video editing tools with a host of new AI-powered tools to improve creativity and support for editing spatial video projects for viewing on the Apple Vision Pro.
The full version number increment is significant, as Final Cut Pro has been on version 10 for the past 13 years. Apple dubbed it “Final Cut Pro X” in its 2011 update, but much like Mac OS X, it was always version 10-point-something under the hood. The “X” was dropped in 2020, but with last May’s update bearing a 10.8 version, many expected the next one to be 10.9. The fact that Apple is going up to 11 for this one emphasizes how big of an update it is.
Apple teased a coming update to Final Cut Pro when showing off its M4 Macs at the end of October, with hints of new features like AI-based transcription that wasn’t too surprising considering that Apple Intelligence can already do the same for phone calls and audio notes. There were also passing mentions of a “Magnetic Mask” and AI effects, but it wasn’t entirely clear what those would be until today’s announcement.
Final Cut Pro 11 takes full advantage of Apple’s M-series chips, introducing the powerful and intuitive Magnetic Mask; Transcribe to Captions, a highly requested feature that provides fast and accurate closed captions; spatial video editing; and a range of timesaving tools and workflow optimizations.Apple
In Final Cut Pro 11, Apple is determined to fully exploit the power of its M-series chips. The Transcribe to Captions tool leverages the same large language models (LLMs) used by Apple Intelligence to analyze spoken audio and automatically generate closed captions in the timeline.
Another AI feature, Magnetic Mask, is even more powerful, letting you “effortlessly isolate people and objects in a video clip without the need for a green screen or more time-consuming rotoscoping.” This is essentially a much more advanced version of the lift subject and Clean Up tools from the Photos app, allowing for more flexibility in working with different backgrounds and environments.
These two new tools join other recently added AI features, such as voice isolation to enhance spoken audio, smooth slo-mo, automatic light and color enhancement, and smart conform to create social media-friendly versions of videos without manually cropping every frame to fit a square or vertical format.
While it’s arguably a more niche feature, Final Cut Pro 11 will let you import and edit spatial videos taken with an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, or Apple Vision Pro. Still, it’s significant as until now, there was no way to do anything more than the most basic edits and trims on spatial videos. Even if you don’t own a Vision Pro today, you may want to record significant life moments in spatial video for the day when you can view them on one of Appel’s future spatial computing headsets. At a minimum, Final Cut Pro 11 lets you edit them without losing the 3D spatial aspect, but you can also adjust the depth and even add titles that fit properly into the 3D space, as well as previewing the left and right eye angles individually.
A corresponding Final Cut Pro for iPad update accompanies Final Cut Pro 11 for Mac. Version 2.1 of the iPad app adds the Mac’s Enhance Light and Color tool, improves haptic feedback for the new iPad models and Apple Pencil Pro, and adds Live Drawing inks and more built-in content. Final Cut Camera for iPhone also gets an update to version 1.1 to add support for 4K120 fps recording on the iPhone 16 Pro.
Final Cut Pro 11 for Mac is available on the Mac App Store for $300 with a 90-day trial available, but despite the version bump to 11, it’s still a free update for existing users. Final Cut Pro for iPad 2.1 continues Apple’s subscription model for the iPad version, priced at $4.99 monthly or $49 per year, with a one-month free trial. Final Cut Camera 1.1 is a free standalone app for the iPhone.
