Have you heard? Apple just released the 12.3 update for Final Cut Pro. Is it all hype? What's hot and what's not? Let's go over it together, rating each feature as we go.
Automatic subtitles (finally)
Apple has finally done it: automatic captioning in FCP. It only took about a million years. Select your dialogue, then either use the magic wand icon, Generate Captions, Subtitles, or control-click and do the same. (Choose subtitles, not the "captions" option from a few updates ago, unless you're going for a look that should have died out in the 80s.)
Two things to do BEFORE generating. One (one-time setup): press Command Comma for settings, go to Editing, and find the new default subtitle duration. The default 2 seconds is crazy long and makes your subtitles read like a dang novel; set it between 0.5 and 1 second. Two: press Option A to make an adjustment clip and stretch it over your dialogue. It acts as a wall so the generated subtitles sit in a neat row instead of being peppered all over your timeline.
To style them: select one subtitle, press Command A (FCP knows you mean all subtitles), and adjust everything at once in the inspector: animation style (fade, scale, highlight, fill), per character, word, or line, plus font, color, and background. There's also a new vertical social media safe button that raises subtitles clear of the caption bar on social posts.
The built-in looks are minimal, but here's the caveat worth knowing: you can make ANY title your default subtitle, even third-party ones. Control-click a title you like and hit Make Default Subtitle, then generate. It doesn't work with every title, though, so if you want guaranteed coverage, my buddy Dylan Bates (The Final Cut Bro) just released Pro Subtitles: a whole pack of great-looking, fully customizable subtitle styles.
One bummer: automatic captioning is English-only right now. I was going to give this a fresh-out-of-the-oven rating, but between the bare-bones styling and the language limitation, I'm downgrading to a hot bowl of soup on a warm day. Still great. Not exactly what we wanted.
Auto Masks
Get ready, because this one feels like Christmas came early. Three ways to add one: the magic wand icon, the shortcut Control Command K, the effects browser under Masking and Keying, or the little AI mask button that now sits on every effect and color tool.
Auto masks immediately recognize people, parts of people, and objects, and mask them without tracking. Unlike the magnetic mask, there's no analyze step: I put an auto mask on my talent's lips and it locks on in real time as I drag through the clip. It's absolutely insane. And the best part: they're copyable. Paste the mask onto the next clip and it instantly finds and masks the same thing, adjustments included, which the magnetic mask could never do.
Use them for color grading, effects, selective sharpening, cutouts, teeth whitening, sky replacement. Masterclass students know exactly how exciting this is. Rating: the very rare Mount Vesuvius.
Match Color, revamped
We've had Match Color forever, but Apple rebuilt it with some AI magic so it no longer sucks so bad. Select your clip, magic wand, Match Color, then click reference clips to preview matches and hit Apply Match. It now creates a proper match color correction type in the inspector (and in the color correction dropdown), with individual sliders you can fine-tune afterward.
Will it replace knowing how to color correct? No. For a quick rough match across a bunch of clips before you do your thing? Not that terrible. Rating: slightly warm seat.
Edit Detection
Control-click any already-edited video (an old export, stock footage), press Detect Edits (or Shift E), and FCP finds the cuts and splits it into separate clips. It handles basic cuts well but falls apart on flashy sequences; I tested it on the intro of a MrBeast video and it could not keep up with the hubbub. Use case: reusing footage from an old video when you've lost the project file, or when you're too lazy to re-cut and re-grade. Rating: forgotten cup of coffee. Tell me in the comments if I'm off base.
Workflow additions
Two-up trim display: press T and trim, and the viewer now shows the end of shot one and the start of shot two side by side. Works for slip edits (potential new start and end of the clip) and slide edits too (hold Option with the trim tool and move the clip; you see the potential end of the previous shot and start of the next). Rating: fresh toast.
Send frame to Pixelmator Pro: the share icon now has a one-click button to send a frame straight to Apple's Photoshop alternative. Faster thumbnails for YouTube and social. (My girlfriend, a former Photoshop nerd, makes great Pixelmator tutorials, by the way.)
Swap clips with the keyboard: we could already move clips vertically with Option and the up/down arrows; now Option with left/right arrows swaps clip positions along the primary storyline. Handy for anyone who'd rather keep hands on keys. Rating: nice spring morning.
Select attached media: select a clip on the primary storyline, press Control Command A, and FCP selects everything attached to it, ready to Command C and paste into another project. Rating: tap water. Useful tap water.
The quiet wins
Background rendering is now off by default. Subscribers know this is the feature that makes library sizes so unbelievably massive; great change. And proxy media now defaults to HEVC instead of H.264, meaning better compression and much smaller libraries when you generate proxies. Plus a mountain of bug fixes.
So, 12.3: hot or not? For auto masks alone, it's hot. Let me know your own creative rating.
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