Name: Final Cut Pro 2 on M4 iPad Pro: what you need to know
Uploaded: 2025-02-12T10:30:07.000Z
Duration: 9 min 29 s
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One year after the debut release of the iPad version of Final Cut Pro, the big sequel is here.

Basic passive voice

This professional video editing software was announced alongside the new stunning and incredibly thin iPad Pros, with brand new M4 chips and new accessories.

My expectations, as someone who deeply loves his iPad for his creative work, and as someone who had a long wish list for Final Cut Pro 2, were really high.

The iPad has always lived in this weird place between being just a bigger iPhone and something that's kind of a laptop, but not something you can get actual work done on.

So Apple's own Pro apps, like the Final Cut Pro for iPad, are meant to change that.

So for this review, I used the latest M4 iPad Pro and last year's M2 iPad Pro.

The smaller 11-inch iPad has 1TB of storage, which means that the M4 processor that's in it comes with 10 CPUs, 10 GPU cores, and 16GB of RAM, compared to the other smaller storage configurations.

Those come with 9 CPU cores and 8GB of RAM.

But, whichever one you pick up, you shouldn't be worried.

This one and the older M2 Pro fly through edits without any problems.

The performance of either of these iPads was never really in doubt, but you do get a little performance bump on the M4, as you can see from my export test.

It is minimal, and it's probably not a reason to upgrade.

For years now, we've known that despite the iPad's stunning hardware, its software is what leaves us wanting more.

Apple's list of ideas for Final Cut Pro this year, fortunately, remains really thin.

Even during Apple's modern-day infomercial event for the iPad, most of the focus and time was spent talking about the new companion app called Final Cut Camera.

It is a standalone app for your iPhone with more advanced camera controls, peaking, manual focusing, audio metering, that sort of stuff.

But on the iPad, via the Final Cut Pro app, it lets you, the director, monitor up to four separate streams of footage coming from the iPhones.

Okay, here's a quick demo of how it works.

We're gonna start the recording here, so now all of these cameras are being controlled.

So I can talk to you on this one, then I can switch on to that one, and lastly, I can go on here.

And from the iPad, you can take control of each camera.

You can change the focusing mode from auto to manual focus, you can change the exposure, and you can change the white balance.

You can zoom in and out, and you can slowly zoom out, or you can zoom in faster.

You cannot switch between lenses once you're locked in, so you have to make the selection beforehand.

So, as I've said before, you can use up to four iPhones, I have three, one, two, and three, and this fourth track is actually going to be for the audio, so I can sync it up later with something.

It sounds a little bit better than what you get on the iPhones themselves.

This isn't really a part of my normal workflow, but for anyone filming primarily on iPhones, the app is really simple and straightforward.

And I think it'll be particularly useful for video podcasts too.

You'll hear me say this a lot, I love working on my iPad, it is a device whose admittedly limited user interface and operating system actually help me keep focus on a task at hand.

But a proper video editing app could make an iPad my main machine.

I had a long list of notes after the first Final Cut Pro for iPad was released, and Apple addressed, well, not a lot of them, except one big one.

External drives are finally supported. iPads are already extremely expensive, and the markup on storage alone is what can really raise that price up quickly.

This feature was weirdly absent last year, but it is finally here.

However, it instantly reminded me of how poorly Final Cut Pro 2 for iPad handles file management.

All of your files have to live within the Final Cut Pro library, meaning you can't just link files or have them stored in a separate folder at all.

Okay, so for example, you're working on a video on your iPad's internal storage, and let's say you have a folder of 200GB of B-roll on your external hard drive.

You have to bring those into your internal storage, you can't just let them hang out on a drive and link them when you need them.

Another side effect of this method is that that means that you're just constantly duplicating files.

Furthermore, you still can't import complete folders in Final Cut Pro, just individual files because there is no folder hierarchy within the app either.

Meaning that all your media just hangs out in this little window, you can't organize it in separate folders like A-roll, B-roll, music, graphics, or whatever you use.

You can still favorite your files, filter through by types of files, but it all just feels a little bit too trivial for a professional video editing app.

Most of my library lives on a NAS, which is connected through the Files app, but once I import footage from it, the next time I open Final Cut, most of those files are just missing or need to be relinked, and you can't actually relink them, your only solution is to re-import everything again and hope it works the next time, which it won't.

There are some smaller updates coming as well, and these weren't available during my testing period, but there will be 20 new songs for you to choose from, new text titles, new dynamic backgrounds, and some new color presets.

Apple didn't give me a full list of which effects are getting added, but I do hope some of the more exciting ones from the desktop version are going to make their way here.

And there's also support for the new Pencil Pro for live drawings, but otherwise, there's not much to do with the Pencil Pro itself.

I wish there was a way to program the haptic squeeze to do something more on the timeline, maybe selecting more clips while hovering, or just use it as a right click.

I had high expectations for the new Final Cut Pro ahead of the iPad event, but I was expecting a lot more features to be added that are still absent, which could have been just easy wins.

Compounding clips, folders as I mentioned, adjustment layer, stabilization, more coloring tools like curves, sharing projects between machines is still kind of iffy, ability to add new LUTs, 360 video support, object tracking, there's a lot more that's missing that really can catch you off guard when you're in the flow.

Just a few weeks ago, I made this tiny video.

What I actually wanted to do is add a slight push-in effect, like Ken Burr's effect to it.

But while you can add that effect to individual clips, you can't add them to multiple clips.

Compound clips or adjustment layers wouldn't fix that.

The easiest thing for me to do is export this video, import it back into Final Cut Pro, and then add the Ken Burr's effect across the whole thing.

Bottom line is that I found myself making creative decisions based on software limitations.

CapCut has been extremely popular with TikTokers, and why I'm switching to DaVinci videos are all over my YouTube feed.

In fact, three of the features that I desperately need are already on DaVinci's iPad app.

Even after trying all of the other apps I just listed, I keep coming back to this one.

Because there is one thing Apple is doing right here.

So Apple calls this app the Touch First app, and they are right.

Once you're past the learning curve, and once you get a hang of the controls, and once you're aware of its limitations, I know that's a lot of disclaimers, but you start to actually enjoy it and have fun.

Apple isn't trying to replicate the desktop experience, they're building towards a new one.

And you can see it in the way that you interact with the digital jog wheel, the way that the sidebar comes in so you can edit everything with your left hand.

This is by far the best screen I ever had a chance to work on.

The tandem wallet is bright, super color accurate, vivid, and just breathes new life into my old videos.

And the fact that I'm editing 4K ProRes video on a device so small, so light, and so thin, does feel unreal at times.

So if Apple can check off those easy wins, then it's a vision of a Touch First, a Final Cut Pro could really thrive.

But until it does that, the iPad remains something that's kind of a laptop, but not something where you'd get actual work done.

Okay, I feel like my ender is always the same.

There's so much more that I wanted to get into, but it just feels like it would take forever to talk about.

So if you have any specific questions, drop them down below, I will be answering all of them.