Creation Randy Ubillos led the team that developed the first three versions of
Adobe Premiere. His group was then hired by
Macromedia to develop KeyGrip, a more professional video editing program based on Apple's
QuickTime, for Macromedia. Niya C Sisk was retained by Macromedia to create the UI of KeyGrip in partnership with the engineering team. However, Macromedia was unable to release the product, since they had licensed a component from
Truevision, and the latter had a licensing agreement with Microsoft that prohibited the component's use in conjunction with QuickTime. As a result, and due to Macromedia's decision to focus on the web market, it sold its desktop applications, including KeyGrip. In 1998, KeyGrip was renamed Final Cut, and was demonstrated as a 0.9
alpha in a private room at the
NAB Show. The demonstration showed both Mac and Windows versions of the software, with the Mac version using a Truevision RTX dual-stream real-time card with limited real-time effects. When no buyer was found for the program, Apple acquired the development team as a defensive measure. As Apple was unable to find a buyer for Final Cut, it continued development work, adding
FireWire support and releasing the program as Final Cut Pro at NAB 1999.
Early versions To ensure that Final Cut Pro had strong support for third-party self-paced and instructor-led training from the start, Apple partnered with
DVcreators.net to release a training disc called "Final Cut Pro PowerStart" at the NAB show on the day of Final Cut Pro's release. Apple also worked with DVcreators.net to host hundreds of free and paid Final Cut Pro seminars and workshops in 60 cities around the world in the following years, a strategy that some credit with significantly contributing to Final Cut Pro's early market awareness and success. After the release of Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere maintained a strong market share on Windows, but began to decline on Mac as its older codebase was more difficult to maintain. In 2003, Apple launched a trade-in program that allowed Premiere users to exchange their discs for a free copy of
Final Cut Express or receive a $500 discount on Final Cut Pro. In late 2001, independent producer Michael A. Bloom credited Final Cut Pro as being crucial to the production of his controversial film
PlayCouples, A New Era of Swinging (2003). In an interview with
Larry King, Bloom claimed that the relatively new platform did not fail once while rendering the film, unlike his experiences with Avid Media Composer. Bloom had been an advocate for Final Cut Pro since using it for beta testing under an agreement between his production company and The Oxygen Network. The studio motion picture
The Rules of Attraction was also edited using beta versions of Final Cut Pro 3, demonstrating that successful
3:2 pulldown matchback to 24fps was possible with an easy-to-use software product. The film's director,
Roger Avary, became a spokesperson for Final Cut Pro, appearing in print advertisements worldwide. His endorsement of the product helped to give mainstream editors like
Walter Murch confidence in its readiness for professional use. In August 2002, Final Cut Pro received a Primetime
Emmy Engineering Award for its impact on the television industry. Final Cut Pro X was fully-rewritten in
64-bit, with a new interface, workflow enhancements and improved automation, and new features such as
ColorSync integration, a resolution-independent playback system, and
Core Animation-based system scaling. As part of the release, Final Cut Studio was discontinued, along with
Color, Soundtrack Pro, and DVD Studio Pro. The reaction was extremely mixed, with veteran film editor
Walter Murch initially refusing to use it, citing a lack of features compared to Final Cut Pro 7. Support for translating timelines from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X was notably missing, requiring editors to preserve a copy of Final Cut Pro 7 to edit older projects. An online petition asking Apple to continue development of Final Cut Pro 7 or to sell it to a third-party gathered 1,600 signatures within a week. Some of the missing features in Final Cut Pro X that were essential for professional video production included the lack of an
edit decision list (EDL),
XML and
Open Media Framework Interchange (OMF) support, the inability to import projects created in previous versions of Final Cut Pro, the absence of a multicam editing tool, missing support for third-party I/O hardware output, and videotape capture being limited to FireWire video devices, including capture with third-party hardware. These missing features were addressed within the first six months of the product's life. EDL export, a product of the early days of videotape editing, is now supported through third-party software and creating an AAF (a newer version of OMF) for passing projects to
Pro Tools through X2Pro. In a 2015 interview, Murch was much less critical of the tool and suggested that he was interested in using it. One of the notable changes introduced in Final Cut Pro X was the Magnetic Timeline, which replaced the track-based timeline of previous versions. This initially caused issues with exporting audio stems for broadcast and distribution, but this was addressed with the release of version 10.0.1, which introduced Video and Audio Roles, allowing users to export multitrack QuickTime files or stems. Files can be exported as AFF using a third-party app called X2Pro or through
Logic Pro X. With version 10.0.6 released on October 23, 2012, Apple added native support for
Redcode Raw and
MXF through a third party plugin. Prior to the introduction of version 10.1, Project and Event Libraries were separate folders. Events contained all the original media and Project Libraries contained the actual edited Projects on timelines. The Project and Event Libraries were stored in a user's Movie folder or on the root level of an external hard drive. These Libraries automatically opened in Final Cut Pro X depending on which hard drives were mounted. That all changed on December 19, 2013, when Project and Event Libraries were merged into a new Library model. Libraries contained Events which in turn contained Projects. And unlike before Libraries could be opened and closed by the user. Media could be stored internally in the Library or kept outside the Library. Media management was further refined in version 10.1.2, released on June 27, 2014. MXF import, edit, and export became natively supported with version 10.1.4. Version 10.2, released during the
NAB Show 2015, introduced 3D Titles in both Final Cut Pro X and Motion. The Color Board was merged with a new Color Correction effect to allow for more flexibility in stacking layers of effects, and Apple added the ability to apply Keying or Shape Masks to any effect. Version 10.3 introduced a redesigned interface with Magnetic Timeline 2, support for
iXML metadata when importing audio, significantly improved audio editing, support for wide-gamut color and
REC 2020 color import, edit, and export, and support for MXF-wrapped
Apple ProRes. Version 10.4 introduced color wheels and color curves,
360º video editing, and
high-dynamic-range (HDR) video, and the
HEVC and
HEIF formats. In April 2018, Apple said that there were more than 2.5 million users of Final Cut Pro X. In version 10.4.1, released during the NAB Show 2018,
closed captioning was added, along with support for
ProRes RAW. In November 2020, in tandem with the release of
macOS Big Sur, the X was dropped from the name, and the product became again known as Final Cut Pro. ==Release history==