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Apple's Final Cut Pro X uses AI to auto-crop videos for social media
The company released a major update that includes improvements for remote collaboration.
Apple has updated Final Cut Pro X with a slew of features and improvements. The editing suite can now use machine learning smarts to automate video cropping for social media-friendly formats, including square and vertical sizes.
Final Cut Pro can analyze clips for “dominant motion” and crop them in what it thinks is the most effective way. You’ll be able to reposition the crop manually, if it’s not quite right. You can also use a custom overlay as a guide for placing graphics and text on non-landscape videos.
Many of us are still working from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but we still need to work closely with colleagues on some projects. Changes to how you create and handle proxy media in Final Cut Pro will help some folks on that front. Apple says those improvements will “provide editors with portability and performance when working with large resolution formats, or when collaborating remotely.”
There are other workflow and performance improvements across the board. Final Cut Pro can transcode 8K RED RAW video to ProRes 422 up to three times faster on MacBook Pro and up to twice as fast on Mac Pro, Apple says. If you’re working with 360-degree video, you’ll be able to “quickly stabilize stereoscopic 3D video” and review footage separately for each eye in the 360-degree viewer.
Along with the Final Cut Pro improvements, Apple has updated its motion graphics tool Motion and encoding app Compressor. You can read more about all of the upgrades, which are free for existing users, on the Apple Newsroom.
