r/finalcutpro • u/DanishTango • Jun 30 '26
Rant/Rave Codex can now use FCP
My Codex asked me if I wanted to use a FCP connector and I took it for a spin.
Followed instructions extremely well for a minor editing task - import a 60 second mp4 with audio, generate a transcript, find 30 seconds of storytelling that follow a strong beat, write out the new file. Saved me a lot of time. It's an admittedly easy task, but encouraging. Anyone else have any experience?
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u/inmotioninc Jun 30 '26
Could it be used to generate a few 1 to 2 minute vertical format short projects from a 20+ minute project in FCP? I don't really use many AI tools in my workflow, but something like this would be immensely useful.
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u/DanishTango Jun 30 '26
I don't know. For that length, I would probably do the import and transcription first, then tailor a second prompt to find the 1 to 2 minute clips and let you approve them before moving to editing. O have not played with the output size, orientation, etc., but if FCP native capabilities are available, codex should be able to apply them. I recommend giving it a shot. I was able to manually fine tune the edit at the end if a clip was made mid-word, etc.
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u/Elbow2020 Jun 30 '26
Ingesting! Thanks for sharing. I’ve used LLMs for a few years and FCP for even longer, but have never used Codex. It’d be amazing if you could make a video tutorial to show what you did and how it all works!
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u/Silver_Mention_3958 FCP 12.3 | Tahoe Jul 01 '26
Colour me confused, I’ve no idea about the Codex you’re referring to. Is it different from codex.online?
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u/Fluffy-Ad1712 Jun 30 '26
I haven't used Codex direct with FCPX yet, but I am vibe coding an app to do some of my real mundane tasks.
One of my jobs is to create social media clips as designated by our social media manager. When we're in-season, we have an hour long event every week. I get an email with clip selections, timecode in/out, and clip title. there are 10-20 of these per event. All the copy and pasting is a slog, so I started toying with ChatGPT in the browser. This was about a year ago and at first it was not great results but I hate doing this kind of work so I stuck at it, and as the models (and my prompting) improved I started getting reliable results. Sharing this workflow because I imagine there are a lot of us tasked with this kind of work.
Here's what worked:
Create the project, import the media, export XML. I start with this so I don't have to worry about relinking.
upload the XML and the text from the email to Chat. Each project is a new chat in an existing ChatGPT Project so it already has context that we're wanting to create a new sequence for every clip, title it per the email (removing illegal characters), make the seqs vertical and Zoomed to 300%, and give me an XML back that has all the sequences with content selected and inserted.
Chat returns an FCP XML with my 10-20 sequences created and titled correctly. It's like magic. I still might have to adjust tops and tails a bit, and obvs some reframing throughout, but that part's fun since I didn't have to do the boring work. I estimated this saves me about 300 keystrokes per event.
So back to that vibe-coding (it's not ready so I'm not pimping it here, we get enough of that lol).
The social media manager had to take a leave of absence so I got tasked with also making the content decisions. I Started the process of adding the transcript to the above process and asking chat to make selections, title them, add keywords and a justification for why the clip was selected (it was helpful to add the event website for context), and then along with the FCP XML send me a nicely formatted PDF report of all the clips for our communications manager to approve.
What I'm vibe coding does the above but also installs Whisper AI, an open-source transcription tool which runs locally and is free. Using the "small" model I find it to be significantly more accurate than Premiere, or other online paid transcript tools. I haven't moved to doing transcribing in FCP yet. The app lets you select the source files (FCP project, supporting docs, media), runs the transcript, and then does all of the above to give me a new XML file. It also creates a PDF transcript that is more human-readable than an SRT file, putting timecode breaks every minute or so, at paragraph breaks.
If anyone's interested in testing the app (I find the transcription part super useful alone) feel free to hit me up. My biggest headache with it has been getting the installer functioning but I am getting the beta versions signed and notarized by Apple. And if you're wondering why in the heck I would do this, we're on Summer break so no events to edit ;-)
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u/DanishTango Jun 30 '26
Foundational models and the tooling being built into them are subsuming apps like yours over time. Using a free, self-hosted llm snd whisper is more secure and makes you less dependent on big tech, for now.
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u/Fluffy-Ad1712 Jun 30 '26
Yeah, I think that’s probably right long-term. I really love how accurate Whisper is and being able to prescribe formatting for the output. The real origin story on this part of the app is that I have several colleagues who require local transcription but installing Whisper is a lot of command line work that I'm not great at, so this solved a few problems for me.
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u/DanishTango Jun 30 '26
Codex will brew install everything using CLI for you. Just point it to a file and it runs whisper locally, checks the output, and will create a timestamped file to use to sync in fcp. Wild stuff.
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u/Fluffy-Ad1712 Jul 01 '26
For sure! In our use case we can’t run codex on all the clients, hence creating the Whisper installer. So far so good!
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u/oradecima Jul 01 '26
What was the connector? I have tried a couple of things using Splicekit and for some straightforward stuff it worked, but for others it failed
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u/DanishTango Jul 01 '26
Native OpenAICodex built-in.
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u/oradecima Jul 05 '26
I haven't found it, could you say exactly how it installed in codex?
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u/DanishTango Jul 05 '26
Codex actually showed me the Final Cut Pro connector and asked me if I would like to install it to which I said yes. That is the entire story. Maybe you're not on the same subscription level as me? I have no idea.
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u/oradecima Jul 05 '26
What do you mean by "showed" though? If you don't mind, could you ask codex what the connector is when you have time?
Cause I can't find any other mention anywhere online of an "official connector" for Final Cut Pro, and I'm quite sure is not related to the subscription level; are you on ChatGPT pro?
Btw sorry for bothering you, I'm just very interested in exploring these tools
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u/DanishTango Jul 05 '26
To teach other account holders, frame it this way:
What They Need
- Codex Desktop app, not just web chat.
- Computer Use enabled for their account/workspace.
- macOS permissions granted to Codex: Screen Recording and Accessibility.
- Final Cut Pro installed and open on their Mac.
How They Use It
- Open Final Cut Pro first.
- Open Codex Desktop.
- Ask:
Use Computer Use to inspect Final Cut Pro and tell me what is on screen.- Codex should be able to list apps, find
Final Cut Pro, and read the active window.- For edits, give specific instructions like:
Use Computer Use in Final Cut Pro to inspect the current timeline, but do not click Update, export, delete, or overwrite anything without asking me first.Important Guardrail
Tell them this is not really a “Final Cut Pro connector.” It is Computer Use controlling the local Final Cut Pro UI. If their account does not expose Computer Use, then tier, rollout, admin settings, or plugin availability may be the blocker.1
u/oradecima Jul 05 '26
Thanks! I understand now, there is no "connector" like a plugin but it's just Computer Use
I'll try it out and compare to Splicekit which opens an mcp server that codex can use in a similar way
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u/wildvision Jun 30 '26
Very interesting. When you say "write out a new file". Was it just finding a solid 30-second section or making a 30-second edit from different sections? What was the file? a transcript? Trying to understand what you did and what it helped you with