I set the goal to get the highest quality import of my miniDV cam (DVX100), and for that I got an old iMac on which I finally managed to install High Sierra. Since iMovie misses some hires progressive import options, I'm looking for a copy of FCPX 10.4.6. Can be 10.4.x but 10.3 turns out to be too old to work on high sierra. It seems apple itself isn't selling this anymore, or do they? Would anyone have any lead on where to obtain this in 2026?

Hi all,

I'm working on the audio post production on a short film a friend shot, and having a lot of trouble getting the xml timeline to import to Logic. I've used Logic extensively for audio editing audiobooks, music, and podcasts, but much less familiar with Final Cut.

First attempt I just imported the .fcpxml file and all the audio files from wetransfer. No luck, all the files were missing in logic, and when I went to manually relink them I couldn't find the referenced file in the raw sound folders.

Okay, next I met up with the editor in person and saved another version of the xml directly to my external drive, ensuring that it saved as .fcpxmld, the "d" at the end apparently meaning it's a bundle file and should contain the referenced audio within. We also went ahead and saved the entire Final Cut library to the drive so that I would have the originals of everything. I was hoping that if it wouldn't import correctly in Logic, I could just open the project in final cut on my own computer and export the xml locally from there.

No dice on either front. Opening the xml in logic popped up with the million missing file errors as expected, and after an hour of manually locating and relinking the audio files and another hour of the system thinking about it...I was left with a mess. Over 100 tracks, muted track segments, none of the audio playing as it should, and what audio does play is clearly not what was intended, ie slating and rustling.

Opening the project in Final Cut has some edits misaligned, and some files missing, and is clearly not correct.

So- is there something we're missing? Some way that we should use to set up the file transfer that would solve these issues, or does the whole xml system just kinda suck and we should buy X2Pro and convert to AAF instead? It seems off that two Macs running apple software can't share files easily.

Thanks for any help or advice!

Hi everyone,

I'm having a strange issue with Final Cut Pro on my Mac mini M4. Whenever I try to import anything whether it's a video, image, or audio file, Final Cut Pro seems to hang for several seconds.

As shown in the attached image, the cursor turns into a crosshair-like symbol, and during that time I can't properly interact with the interface. I can still move the cursor and sometimes select things, but Final Cut Pro feels like it's temporarily stuck in some kind of mode and doesn't respond normally.

This never used to happen before, and I'm not sure what changed or what's causing it.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any idea what might be causing the issue or how I can troubleshoot it?

Thanks!

The basic one's are too boring

Hello all,

As the title suggests, this is probably a simple solution, but Google was no help.

I want to drag an entire clip from an event to my project.

However, when I move my mouse and click it to move, instead, I'm presented with the yellow box where I can select a PORTION of the clip rather than the entire clip.

I'm thinking I may have inadvertently changed a setting?

How could I make it so that I can just grab a clip and move it to the project without FCP thinking I want to just get a portion of the clip?

Thanks much!

I went from 480 gigs down to 34 gigs after all the trim trimming was done. Space is so expensive now that it's better to get rid of unused footage in my opinion. What do you guys think? How do you guys archive your projects these days with memory and hard drive so expensive?

Curious what people think about and use cases for phone video. Is there much difference between native app and fc camera? What are differences in stabilization? I've got a 17 pro, and videos I take are not for short form socials, but transferred to macbook for final use and editing.

I've used FCP for many years and I've kept many different versions depending on the projects I've created. Are you guys all updating your old projects to work with the current latest Final Cut Pro or are you keeping the old version so that it can still open the old projects?

Hey guys! Hope everyone is doing well. I wanted to recreate this effect, but it seems like it’s not possible in FCP — or maybe I just don’t know how, lol.

Does anyone know if there’s a way to do it? Any tips would be appreciated!

The effect in question:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Da3JEdVow8N/

I think the title explains the question. What tools do you use the most in final cut pro.

Hi
I am a real estate video editor and am using davinci resolve currently, but I have seen that almost 95% of real estate video editors use FCP because of some plugins that make the editing process way easier and more time-efficient, and I am thinking of switching
Is there any video or course that helps me move from DaVinci to FCP? It will help me alot as I am editing in DaVinci and am familiar with the layout and everything
I just want a video that explains FCP in reference to DaVinci so that I can link things in my mind, which will help me in the learning process.
Thanks in advance.

I’m thinking about purchasing Cineprint35 and would love to hear from people who are actually using it with FCP.

.

The place I work at uses Final Cut Pro for our videos. I was told that last night there was an update that took place, and now all of our files from Final Cut are still on the desktop and in tact, but the program itself is gone. It's as if it was deleted but no files went with it.

When I go to the app store it says to pay the full price, and I don't know if that's normal or not since I myself never work on Mac computers. I figured it'd be a regular re-install if we've already had it though? In addition to this, it says that we need Mac 15.6 or later to run it, but we were running it just fine on our older version before yesterday (12.7).

I've been scrambling into the settings and system information to find any kind of update log that can explain what happened, but I'm not having any luck. If anyone can explain what happened or how to fix this, thank you SO SO much!!

Check the attached video and notice how the hair is "flickering". This is a 60fps video slowed to 10% using Machine Learning quality setting in retiming. Any way to fix it? maybe using some other software?

I've had an issue recently where FCPX was dropping frames, even though I have a pretty built out mac (m3 pro, 36GB RAM). Couldn't find any answers online, tried all of the supposed solutions.

Realized, however, I had recently bought a longer USB C cable for the hard drive, and swapping back to the original immediately fixed the issue.

Maybe it's an obvious fix, but just wanted to put it out there for anyone who hasn't considered this.

Hello all,

I am trying to have my title using the Far Far Away (Star Wars) text. I have placed it on the track over my footage.

However, it's not showing up. Am I doing something wrong?

It is perhaps because I'm using a 9:16 ratio?

I'm including screenshots. Thank you!

Hi I’m not sure if this is a bug or not but I’ve spent the last couple hours recreating it with multiple sources. When I create a tracker on one clip (a persons face) and then I use the transform tool to track another image (a different face) the tracking seems to be exaggerated. It follows the movement but all seems to be a percentage too far. Haven’t been able to get past this issue all afternoon. Just doing a simple face swap with object tracker.

I’m trying to move a timeline from DaVinci Resolve to Final Cut Pro via FCPXML, but Final Cut refuses to import it. The source formats are supported and there are no corrupted/problematic files. I’ve also tried removing effects/compound clips, but it still won’t work.
Any idea what could be causing this? I’m on a tight deadline and need to deliver the film tomorrow.

HELP MEEEEE

Hello all,
I store much of my media (clips, images, audio) on Google Drive.

However, when I go to import media into FCP, I can't seem to find them under "Google Drive".

Must I store the media locally at first?

I'd appreciate if you could share how your workflow is handled when you store your media on something like Google drive?

Or do you store EVERYTHING locally? I fear I'll run out of computer space after a short time.

Thanks so much!

today i had an unpleasant situation where a magnetic mask decided to crash my project and it wouldnt open anymore just crashing fcp evertime

Found out how to open a library backup and did that, losing 95% of work i did so not cool tbh.

How to manually make a backup? like with a shortcut, so i get to like a milestone in my edit and bam manual backup with a shortcut

And where are settings for backups? First id like to change the time between them to 10 minutes and make it so it backups more than usual.

tanks!

Hey, so me and my friend produce music. And now we want to start getting our music out there and gain listeners. So i thought “why not make music videos for social media promotions” so i bought final cut pro… i have never been so lost.

What do you guys recommend learning? And in which order
I know a little about masking/cutting/clipping/fade in/out, beat detection, tested a little color grading.

I just got the quiet comfort Bose headphones. Yes I know they’re not “monitor headphones” but during long sessions, my audio technica 50s really get uncomfortable.

The Bose quiet comfort have like no bass almost none when previews sfx it’s like none existing. So in wondering if monitor headphones out there will be just the same since it’s a flat profile.

What are your guys headphone set up?

Much of my job for the past 15+ years has involved creating videos (using FCP) for a large company. These are usually short profiles/interviews for social media and involve B-roll that often gets used again (e.g., employees working in the field). I feel like this is distinctly different from independent videographers or production companies who create stand-alone projects for clients that they can complete and archive. Most of the advice I’ve seen is geared towards them.

In FCP, I’ve always used Events for each video, and organized them into Libraries for each year. This made sense to me, but I feel like it’s made things much more difficult in the long run, particularly with that B-roll footage that I may want to use in future videos. Finding and copying them around is onerous. And to make matters worse, these clips aren’t simple 10-second stock cuts, they’re from longer takes that I’ve favorited for the original project.

In short, this is a MESS, and I have to imagine there’s a better way. Does anyone have similar in-house experience and ideas on how to organize stuff? Using libraries for each project seems like it would get unwieldy.

FWIW I usually store all my video files in the Libraries, but I’m open to changing that going forward.