After years of fan pleading, Apple has finally built an iPad version of Final Cut Pro, its premium video editing software. As someone who regularly uses Final Cut Pro on a MacBook and believes the iPad Pro is Apple’s best and most versatile product, I was very eager to start testing. After a relatively steep learning curve on day one, I was editing videos with only slight hiccups by day two. By the third day, I was running around the program and producing content almost as fast as I could on the Mac version.
While the iPad version of Final Cut Pro isn’t as good as the MacBook version (there are some glaring limitations), you can edit videos by touching and pinching the screen with your fingers, or actually writing text on the video via a stylus, which is intuitive and feels natural. There’s just something so satisfying to the touch about dragging a video file with your finger and dropping it onto the timeline, or writing a text caption directly with your hand.
Dare I say, while it is not better Version, the iPad version of Final Cut Pro could one day overtake the Mac version as a finest Issuance.
Final Cut Pro for iPad: Price and availability
The iPad version of Final Cut Pro is now available for download on the Apple App Store, but you need an Apple silicon iPad (either M1 or M2) to run it. Final Cut Pro for the iPad isn’t free either; Requires either a monthly subscription fee of $4.99 or an annual fee of $50.
The Mac version, for those wondering, requires a one-time fee of $300. With this subscription price, you also get a small library of copyright-free music to use in your videos.
What’s different?
If you’re familiar with the Mac version of Final Cut Pro, the first thing you’ll likely notice is how cramped the program looks on the iPad screen. I’m already on the largest iPad screen possible (the 12.9-inch M1 iPad Pro from 2021), and the software still feels squeaky with the three windows most video editors need open at all times (timeline, video preview, media library) feeling overwhelming. . On the smaller 11-inch iPad Air, it’s probably even more intimidating at first.
But the good news: Apple made some nice design tweaks, so I was able to get used to the denser layout within a couple of hours (I can’t say for sure what that would feel like on a smaller screen). All three window elements can be resized, and the video preview window can be “ejected” into picture-in-picture mode.
There are four “new” buttons at the bottom of the program below the timeline: scan, scale, pan, and multicam. Clicking the button toggles a window to pop up in and out of view either to the left or bottom of the screen, allowing you to adjust the file information video size, add animations, and so on. You can do all this in the Mac version, but it requires a series of right clicks or digging into submenus. On the iPad, it’s a bit more simplified with the buttons you press on or off.
The four new buttons are at the bottom.
These buttons are a good example of the approach Apple took with Final Cut Pro for the iPad: They’re a kind of fluidity or “flop” in doing a task. Adjusting the color or lighting in a video, for example, is now just a matter of moving a series of bars labeled “Exposure,” “Brightness,” or “Contrast,” as if we were adjusting photos in the iPhone’s native Photos app. In the Mac version of Final Cut Pro, these adjustments use a color wheel, which I’m sure most pros still prefer.
More tactile operation experience
Since foldable phones replaced the need to use the iPad as a tablet in hand, I used the iPad Pro exclusively as a desk-mounted device with the Magic Keyboard attached. So I began testing Final Cut Pro with this setup, navigating through the program using the Magic Keyboard’s trackpad. While this method worked surprisingly well despite the trackpad’s small size, I realized within 30 minutes that it was definitely meant to touch the software. In fact, it appears that Apple wants you to hold the iPad in both hands to use Final Cut Pro.
Jogging wheel
This is evident with the addition of a new software called Jog Wheel. It starts as a small floating box usually placed on the edge of the screen that you can slide around (similar to Samsung’s Edge panels). Once you expand it, it takes the form of a semicircle on the side of the screen, which you can rotate to clean up the timeline or perform other tasks like cropping a video. The Jog Wheel behaves with virtual physics, which means you can spin it faster with a stronger tap, or make it spin in small segments, as if you were unlocking a combo. Moving the Jog Wheel at great speed to cycle instantly from the end of the timeline to the start is satisfying. The movement reminds me of turning a fidget wheel or a bicycle wheel. Since it sits on the right side by default, with editing controls on the left, it feels designed for use with either hand.
live drawing
One of the things I’ve never been good at is adding captions or gifs to my videos. The process of doing this on Final Cut Pro on a Mac is complicated, requires plug-ins, and requires a lot of steps. But it just got a lot easier on the iPad thanks to Live Drawing. To access this mode, you can click the Live Drawing button, which will take you to a full screen version of the video key window where you can start scribbling. You can do this with your finger, but it’s obviously better with the Apple Pencil.
Next time I produce a video, I’ll be sure to add hand-drawn animation to give the clip more personality and flair. Again, all of this is possible on desktop video editing software, but it’s never been so simple or intuitive. Adding graphics and text to a video with your finger or a stylus makes the entire video creation process more lively and personal.
You can shoot directly on your iPad using the manual controls
Because the iPad has cameras, you can shoot video directly within Final Cut Pro, which saves to your media library for instant access. And this isn’t just a mirror of the iPad’s native Camera app — it’s better. The Camera app in Final Cut Pro lets you adjust focus, white balance, exposure, and color temperature. Android users will know that these controls are common in Android smartphone camera apps, but the iPhone and iPad have never offered us such granular controls in a first-party app before. This is the first time we get manual controls from Apple’s native software for an iOS device.
Apple has released some promotional materials for this program which suggest that the iPad can now be an all-in-one creative machine. You can shoot videos with it, then edit it on Final Cut Pro, and post it directly to social media platforms. While this is possible, I find that the iPad’s camera just isn’t good enough for my liking. The stability, in particular, is nowhere near as high as the iPhone’s. Perhaps future iPads will take this into account and put the iPhone Pro camera system in the iPad. If this is the case, then the iPad really could be a content creation machine.
Overall performance: a testament to Apple Silicon’s brilliance
The overall performance is very impressive. I’m using a two-year-old M1 iPad Pro, and it handled any video I threw at it without the hiccups. I could easily clear the timeline, even when I put 8K video tracks in the timeline, I could start or pause playback without delay, and rendering speeds were really fast, almost as fast as a higher-end M2 MacBook Pro. In fact, I’ve heard peers say their M1 iPad Pro runs faster than the M1 MacBook Pro, though I can’t vouch for that myself.
Just for reference, I rendered about a half-dozen videos during my testing period, and for a 4K video, rendering speeds are just over twice as fast as real-time, so a five-minute clip will render in just over two minutes. For a fanless machine that’s so portable and relatively thin, that’s quite an oddity. For comparison, I’ve been editing much shorter, less complex videos on a Google Pixel 7 Pro using PowerDirector for the past week and have been experiencing constant lag when digging into the timeline.
The cult of Apple is so strong that I feel the need to make this clear in all my reviews of Apple products. I am actually not a fan of Apple. My iPhone 14 Pro Max sits in a drawer most of the year because I’d rather carry my Android phone around than that. But when it comes to computing, Apple’s sillcon Macs and iPads are far ahead of anything in the competition.
There are of course shortcomings and limitations
Unfortunately, not all of it is broth. For example, Final Cut Pro was quite a drain on the battery of my M1 iPad Pro. Exporting a five-minute video clip drained 7% of the battery. When I generally played with Final Cut Pro, I noticed that my iPad’s battery would drop 30-40% in an hour. So if I’m actively editing, I don’t think my M1 iPad Pro can last more than 2 hours. I suppose that’s not terrible, considering that two hours is usually enough time for me to put together at least the first piece, and I can always plug my iPad in, but it’s annoying to see an Apple device drain power so quickly.
Those who color their videos may also be upset by how Final Cut Pro for the iPad handles a custom lookup table (LUT), which is used for color mapping. You can either have the lookup table set to 100% or turn it off completely; That’s it. In the Mac version of Final Cut, you can adjust the strength of the lookup table. The process of adding a look-up table (LUT) is also more complicated on the iPad software, although that could change in the future.
You also can’t edit directly from the SSD at this time. You have to transfer media files to your iPad to make edits. This can be annoying for those with fewer iPad storage options because video files can fill up storage space quickly. The file system in iOS/iPadOS is still a bit complicated. After I submitted a video, it took me two minutes of searching before I found the file. But maybe the next version of iPadOS or the next iPad Pro will fix a lot of these issues. WWDC is just two weeks away, and rumors of a 16-inch iPad Pro are on the horizon. I feel like we’re not too far behind most people who would probably get away with just an iPad and not a real laptop.
Another step in making the iPad a potential computer replacement
Final Cut Pro on the M1 iPad Pro
Although the term makes me feel confused, I fit the definition of “digital nomad” to a tee. Between frequent business trips and personal trips, I’m on the road at least 3-4 months a year. And even when I’m not traveling, I don’t enjoy working at home staring at the same four walls; I usually start my day by taking a laptop and doing work at the many coffee shops around town.
Because of my nomadic lifestyle, I’m always looking for the lightest work setting possible, and have experimented with doing work entirely from my iPad. I can type words, respond to emails, and edit photos pretty well on the iPad Pro, so the only thing that requires a Mac is video editing, which I do in Final Cut Pro.
Now that Final Cut Pro is available on the iPad, and it works really well, it will definitely inspire me to try and make more videos on the iPad. Of course, the experience is still better on the Mac version for now, so I’ll still stick with the Mac version for more complex tasks. But for shorter, simpler videos, I could probably just use my iPad.
It took nearly a decade, but Apple commercials in 2015 that claimed the iPad could replace a PC might finally be right around the corner.
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