You can now acquire Final Cut Pro in two ways: A perpetual license costs $299.99, and the app is also available as part of the Apple Creator Studio suite ($12.99 per month or $129 per year), which also includes Compressor, Logic Pro, and Motion. You get Final Cut Pro through the Mac App Store with either option, which makes downloading updates and installing the program across multiple machines easier. A one-month trial is available for Creator Studio.
DaVinci Resolve is free and imposes few restrictions, but you still need to buy the Studio edition ($295) to unlock its most advanced features. The app isn’t available
Although its color grading tools aren’t competitive with those in DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro’s Color Wheel tool is still impressive. Color Wheels show a puck in the middle that lets you move an image toward green, blue, or red, with the result appearing off to the side. You can also adjust brightness and saturation with the wheels, separately control everything (with the Master wheel), or adjust just shadows, midtones, and highlights. If wheels are not to your taste, the Color Board option shows a simple linear view of your color settings.
Winner: DaVinci Resolve
Titles, Captions, and Text: Lots of Flexibility With Each
(Credit: Apple/PCMag)
As with other aspects, DaVinci Resolve offers greater power and customization, while Final Cut emphasizes ease of use.
Resolve has all the standard title text capabilities I expect. If you go into its Fusion page, you can add all kinds of 3D effects and animations. It can generate captions with speaker detection and lets you edit based on the generated text. For example, you might want to remove silent sections in clips, but not those that contain speech like “um.”
Final Cut Pro can also generate captions from speech, but, as mentioned, it doesn’t let you edit based on the resulting text. Apple’s video editor includes 3D title editing with keyframe motion options. You get lots of control over title overlays, with dozens of animation templates. You can edit text and position, and size the titles right in the video preview. Eight basic templates and four cinematic ones are available, including a cool 3D Earth option for sci-fi projects. You get 20 font presets, but you can use any style and size you like. Materials such as concrete, fabric, and plastic give your 3D titles the texture you desire.
For maximum control, you can edit the 3D titles in the separate Motion app ($49.99). Extrude 2D titles into 3D by tapping the 3D Text option in the Text Inspector. Then you can position and rotate the text to your liking on three axes.
Winner: Tie
Audio Editing: Fairlight Is a Full-On Digital Audio Workstation
(Credit: Blackmagic Design)
DaVinci Resolve’s Fairlight module is a complete digital audio workstation (DAW) that supports up to 2,000 tracks and includes a full mixing console, a multiband compressor, and parametric EQ. It also features AI-based audio classification, an automatic dialog leveler, vector keyframe automation, and a timeline grid to help you sync audio and video. 3D audio panning capabilities, support for FX plug-ins (many of which are available from Blackmagic itself), and a large library of stock audio round out the component.
Final Cut Pro has strong audio editing capabilities, but they’re not on par with DaVinci Resolve’s. That said, Final Cut Pro automatically fixes hum, noise, and peaks, or gives you the tools to do so manually. Over 1,300 royalty-free sound effects are available, as are a long list of plug-ins. Round-trip support for Apple Logic Pro allows more powerful editing options.
Winner: DaVinci Resolve
360-Degree VR Editing Support: Better Support From Blackmagic
(Credit: Apple/PCMag)
DaVinci Resolve supports more VR formats and offers eye alignment, full stereoscopic control, and tripod and stitching cleanup for VR180 and 3D 360 content. Most of this comes courtesy of its Fusion 3D compositing page. Note that you need the paid Studio version to use these features.
You can’t use Final Cut Pro to edit 360-degree footage unless you stitch it into equirectangular format. Corel VideoStudio, CyberLink PowerDirector, and Pinnacle Studio can all open 360-degree footage without this conversion.
As you might expect, Apple’s pro video editor now supports Apple’s Vision Pro and the
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(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
DaVinci Resolve’s Deliver page allows batch export in a render queue to every video format imaginable. It includes all the tools pros in broadcast, film, and multi‑platform delivery need. The program supports Dolby Vision, VR180/360, and stereoscopic 3D, as well as deep color management and extensive metadata. Finally, it can output in industry-standard formats, including IMF, DCP, EXR, DPX, and DNxHR.
Final Cut Pro’s output options are comparatively limited unless you add the companion application, Apple Compressor. The base app can, however, export to XML and produce Rec. 2020 Hybrid Log Gamma and Rec. 2020 HDR10 outputs. Compressor adds the ability to customize output settings and perform batch output jobs. It also supports Blu-ray and DVD menus and chapter themes. If you’re just creating for YouTube or another social platform, Final Cut Pro’s export options will serve you just fine. You can even package movies in the format necessary for iTunes.
Winner: DaVinci Resolve
Performance and Render Time: Apple’s Optimizations Pay Off
A major advantage of Final Cut Pro is that it leverages Apple silicon chips’ 64-bit processing. But Blackmagic Design also prioritizes performance. Both apps feel snappy and lag-free during most editing operations. In my latest head-to-head export performance tests, Final Cut Pro beats the pack by a nose with an elapsed time of 94 seconds
