Final Cut Pro 10.8: New Features and Enhancements

Final Cut Pro 10.8 introduces machine learning for shot normalization, enhanced light and color effect, and smooth slow-mo for better slow-motion clips.

### Final Cut Pro 10.8: Enhanced Light and Color, Smooth Slow-Mo, and Advanced Timeline Search
* 💡 Final Cut Pro 10.8 introduces the "**Enhanced Light and Color**" effect that uses machine learning to automatically **normalize shots for easier color grading and matching**.
* 🎥 The new "Smooth Slow-Mo" retime feature leverages **bidirectional optical flow analysis** based on machine learning to create **smoother slow-motion clips**.
* 🔍 The updated timeline search functionality allows users to search for **video and audio effects, asset-level metadata, keywords, user-created roles, and more**.
* 🎨 "**Enhanced Light and Color**" is particularly useful for **normalizing log-encoded clips**, **matching shots**, and creating a **balanced starting point before grading**.
* 🔄 The "**Smooth Slow-Mo**" quality setting is designed to generate in-between frames accurately, resulting in **better slow-motion playback** with **reduced artifacts**.
* 🔍 Users can now search for clips with **missing media**, **missing effects**, applied **video and audio effects**, and based on **custom metadata**, **keywords**, and **roles**.
* 📝 By renaming effects and using custom metadata fields effectively, users can **easily identify and manage clips within the timeline**.
* 📈 The new features in Final Cut Pro 10.8 enhance the **color grading, retiming, and organizational capabilities** of the software, providing users with **powerful tools for video editing**.

everybody, it's Steve and Mark from Ripple Training. Today, Apple has released new versions of Final Cut Pro for both the Mac and the iPad, and we're here to tell you all about the new features. On the Mac side, one thing I'm super excited about is a feature that uses machine learning to automatically normalize your shots. I think it's a great new feature. Can't wait to tell you about it. In addition, there's a new way to both manage and apply video effects that I think you're really going to like. There's also a great new re in option Apple calls Smooth Slow-Mo that's been trained to distinguish between the image and motion artifacts, giving you the cleanest and smoothest slow motion to date. There's also an advanced search feature that gives you a ton of new ways to search for content in your timeline. So let's dive right in. If you've seen my color correction tutorials, you'll know I'm a big proponent of normalizing your shots before performing any shot matching, secondary grading, or looks development.

we've included a link below to our free 360-minute overview to color grading in DaVinci Pro. Normalizing, sometimes called neutralizing or balancing, means ensuring each shot has good dynamic range or contrast and proper color balance. Once all your shots are normalized, you have a level playing field on which you can now get creative in your grading. DaVinci Pro's new enhanced light and color effect in version 10.8 uses machine learning to analyze and normalize your shots so that you can more easily match them and focus on creative grading. And frankly, it stands head and shoulders above the balance color effect. In this project, I have shots from several commonly used cameras in a variety of common formats. These first two clips are copies of the same H.264 encoded clip from a DJI drone of a sunset over the ocean. We can see in the RGB waveform that it has decent dynamic range and color balance, and the vector scope indicates high saturation in the yellows and reds of the sun and clouds. I'll press C to select the clip.

then from the enhancements pop-up menu, I'll choose the balance color effect, and in the inspector, I'll toggle the effect off and on. The shot becomes much bluer, with the vector scope traces now indicating more even saturation throughout the color spectrum, which we don't really want in this case. The RGB waveform indicates more blues in the midtones and highlights, so the result isn't very helpful in this case. And to make matters worse, this enhancement is adjustable. There are no parameters in the inspector to tweak other than the white balance method, which isn't useful to us here since there's nothing pure white, black, or gray to sample. Now I'll move the playhead over the second copy, select it with C, and this time use the same enhancements menu to select the new enhanced light and color effect. By the way, you can also find this command under the modify menu. Note the keyboard shortcut control option command zero, what I like to call smash zero, since you smash down all three of those modifier keys. Remember this key command.

going to be using it a lot. If I toggle this effect off and on, we can see that this time it doesn't attempt to oversaturate the blues and has an overall more subtle impact. I'll press control command 6 to open the comparison viewer, which I've set to view the previous edit and open the same Scopes, so we can see both images and the Scopes side by side. To my eye, the enhanced light and color has a more pleasing result by keeping the yellows and reds more saturated and not redistributing the blue Channel as much. But here's the kicker, I'll press control command 6 to close the comparison viewer, then I'll go to the color inspector. Now we can see that enhanced light and color uses the relatively new color adjustments corrector to automatically balance the image, which means you can adjust the result. Here I want to bring down the blues and the highlights, so I'll drag the highlights warmth slider to the right a bit. The magic W icon for color turns gray to

indicate that I've made a manual change, and the same icon for light stays Blue, indicating that the automatic values are still being used. If I click the gray wand, Final Cut analyzes the color again and returns the previous automatic values. I'll undo that. This next shot is another drone shot, but this time over land with lots of greens and browns, daytime blue sky, and puffy white clouds. It already has decent dynamic range and is quite saturated, not unusual with drone footage. In the video inspector, you can see I've already applied and disabled both balance color and the new enhanced light and color effects. Balance color makes the shot even more saturated and quite a bit browner. Enhanced light and color has a more subtle impact, once again on saturation, and also brings down the highlights a bit. In this case, I'd probably go to the color inspector and maybe pull back on overall saturation. I could perform these same normalizing tasks from scratch with one of the color correctors like color wheels or color board, but I find that

enhanced light and color gets me there faster. This next clip is an underwater shot from a GoPro. Notice how balance color simply increases saturation and contrast, but in enhanced light and color, it actually shifts the vector scope traces and the overall color balance to create a more balanced result. Here's a shot of Steve peering through window blinds with an obvious blue color cast. With it selected, I'll press option command B for balance color. The color cast is removed, but the result is rather harsh. On the next clip, which is a copy, I'll select it and press control option command O for enhance Laden color. Then I'll press control command 6 for the comparison viewer. You can see again how balance color attempts to completely even out saturation across all hues and to match the RGB waveforms. But as I toggle it off and on, enhanced light and color takes a softer approach, reducing but not fully balancing saturation and not forcing the waveforms to match. The skin tones look much more natural to me in this version. To summarize, if you want to

fully balance saturation and hues on a shot, especially if you have a known pure white, black, or gray area to sample. Balance color is still a useful tool, but for most shots, I find that the machine learning built into the enhanced light and color effect creates a more pleasing, natural, normalized shot ready for further grading. So let's leave balance color behind and focus on how you can use enhanced light and color on different camera formats. First, I find it works great to normalize log-encoded clips that have a lot applied. This clip was shot on a Sony A7S3 with the HVC codec and log encoding. In the Info inspector, which is set to the general view, you can see I've applied the built-in Sony S-Log3/S-Gamut3.Cine LUT to the clip because that's the profile it was shot with. Since the original clip was shot with good exposure and white balance, the LUT alone does a decent job of creating good dynamic range and saturation. I'll reset the camera LUT to none so you can see the

difference and I'll set it back now. If I apply enhanced light and color, then just bring down the saturation a bit. I find I get better skin tones and an overall more balanced image. Remember, all I'm after here is normalizing the shot, not creating any sort of look. At this point, you might be wondering if you could use enhanced light and color on log footage if you're grading manually, in other words, not using a LUT. The answer is absolutely. I'll remove the camera LUT and then reanalyze the clip with enhanced light and color. Saturation and dynamic range are increased for a normalized starting point. In this case, for a Rec 709 grade. Since we're choosing to now manually adjust this clip from its original log encoding to the Rec 709 working color space, we could either modify the starting point within the same correction, or we could add a separate correction. For simplicity, I'll adjust this one, increasing contrast and saturation, and warming up the highlights a bit to balance out the blue.

Channel. Now I have a normalized shot ready for a grade. This next clip is another one of my buddy Steve, this time playing pool, and it was shot with an iPhone in HDR. But this is an SDR project, so it's been automatically tone-mapped. But notice how the iPhone's in-camera processing adds quite a bit of saturation. I'll add enhanced light and color, and the difference, especially on the red and orange pool balls, is obvious. Here's the second HDR iPhone shot, this one outside with several folks on horses. Notice how enhanced light and color improves the color balance. I might adjust the exposure just a tiny bit. This clip of early morning grape harvesting was shot with a Sony A7 S3 but recorded to a Ninja 5 in ProRes 422. In this case, I have no camera L applied because I've used the custom L effect to apply an L so that I can have the L processed after any grading I perform on the clip, including enhanced light and color. If I toggle the enhanc

light and color adjustment. You can see how much an impact the default automatic setting has. I'll pull back the saturation a bit. Here's a red raw clip in the info inspector. I'll click modify red ra settings so you can see the assigned color space, gamma, and ISO. I'll apply enhan light and color and toggle it off and on. It increases saturation and removes the green cast to the clip, making the grapes look more natural. And here's a PR raw clip in the info inspector. I'll click modify prores raw settings so you can see how ISO, exposure offset, and color temperature are all adjustable. And for the raw to log conversion, I have assigned the same Sony profile from earlier. In the video inspector, we can see how enhanced light and color balances the shot so that it's normalized before adding these two other corrections that I used to create a more stylized look. I'll enable them, then toggle the enhanced light and color off and on so you can see what a difference it makes to normalize a clip.

before grading, it removes any contrast or color balance issues that can become magnified by further grading. Enhancing light color is also incredibly helpful when applied before attempting to match shots to each other. These two clips were shot at the same location on the same day, a few minutes apart. The first with a Sony A7 S3 recording prores to a ninja 5, and the second on an iPhone in hlg. The Sony clip has a red cast, while the iPhone clip is blindingly white and much more saturated. Before attempting to match them, I'll select them both and apply an enhan lighten color with a keyboard command. Already they're much closer since they are each normalized. Now I'll select the iPhone clip, choose match color from the enhancements popup, select the Sony clip to match to, and click match. Finally, in the color inspector for the color adjustments effect, I'll bring down the saturation to better match the Sony clip. I'll also adjust exposure. I'd probably also add a huat curves correction to sample and bring

down the saturation of the green blouse by using enhanced light and color. In combination with match color, we can match our shots faster than ever. Enhanced light and color works great for matching shots in multicam projects shot with different cameras. In the angle editor, simply select all your clips and apply enhanced light and color to all the clips at once. Toggling the effect in inspector with all clips selected toggles them all on and off together. From here, you can further normalize as needed, then choose a hero shot to match to and use match color or match manually. Then develop a look as desired. Phonica Pro version 10.8 now makes it easier to both manage and apply your video effects. Here I have a clip with five separate effects applied, all currently disabled. The first is enhanced lighten color at its default automatic settings, which you can tell because the bar here is blue. The next is a color curves correction, which isolates the green channel and adds some contrast. Next is the hue saturation effect that desaturates just that green.

Channel, then a second color curves correction to introduce a slight blue tint, and finally the vignette mask effect. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a hard time remembering what each of these effects do. Thankfully, we can now finally rename our video effects. One way is to simply double click the effect in the video inspector. I'll rename this first one normalize. Note that you can always right-click to reset the effect back to its original name. Or specifically for a color correction effect, if you're in the color inspector, choose rename from the drop-down menu. I'll call this one isolate green channel. Back in the video inspector, I'll rename this one desaturate channel, and this one I'll call tint, and I'll leave vignette mask as is. Now, when I come back to this project later or hand it off to someone else, it will be clear what each of these effects is meant to do. Fantastic! Now, what if I want to copy any or all these effects to the next clip? Of course, I can press Command + C to copy the

clip. Move to the next clip and press Shift + Command + V to paste attributes. There are my effects with their new custom names, and I can select the ones I want to include. But here's a useful new alternative. I'll cancel this. Instead, if I select that first clip in order to see its effects in the video inspector, I can select ones I want. I'll skip normalize, since this second clip already has its own enhanced light and color applied. And I can drag any or all of them either directly into the viewer window to apply them to this clip or onto any other clip in the timeline. Very cool. Before I hand it over to Steve, here's one last change. If you go to settings and to playback in order to enable the Recently Added scrolling timeline feature, you'll be disappointed to discover it's nowhere to be found. That's because it's been moved to a new icon at the top right of the timeline, so you don't have to go into settings anymore. Clicking it toggles the scrolling timeline on and off, and there's a new dedicated hotkey as

indicated by the tool tip option shift s. You'll also find that backward scrolling playback now keeps the playhead in the middle of the screen. All right, we've got lots more for you. Take it away, Steve. Final Cut Pro 10.8 introduces a new clip retiming feature called Smooth slow-mo that creates new frames using a bidirectional optical flow analysis based on machine learning. What does this mean? It means that your slow-motion clips will now look better than ever. Now, before I show you how it works, let's quickly look at the other retiming methods so you can truly appreciate what this new machine learning model brings to the table. Here I have a 24 frames per second clip of My Buddy Joe walking along the Catalina Island promenade. With a play it over the clip, I'll press Control Option R to bring up the custom speed dialogue, enter 50% for the speed, press return, then escape to exit the window. In order for a slow-motion clip to be created, Final Cut Pro must generate

additional frames to fill the gaps between the original frames. For example, in this 24 frames per second clip, reducing the speed by 50% requires Final Cut Pro to double the number of frames by adding one in between frame for every original frame. By changing the speed to 25%, Final Cut Pro must quadruple the total number of frames in order to achieve slow motion playback. How those in between frames are generated and the quality by which they're generated is determined by choosing a video quality setting from the timing menu. The settings are listed from least to best, with the new machine learning setting supplanting the older Optical Flow setting at the bottom. The two options at the top labeled Fast are similar in that they simply duplicate frames based on the nearest whole frame after rendering. And by the way, you should always render your real-time clips for the highest quality playback. These Fast settings produce a slow motion clip that has a noticeable stutter during playback. This is because the in-between frames needed to produce slow motion playback are not

being generated but duplicated. In this case, 72 additional frames for every second of playback. Moving over to the next clip, which is a duplicate of the previous one. I'll set the video quality to good frame blending. This setting is only slightly better than the fast settings. Instead of duplicating frames, pixels are blended together from neighboring frames to create the in-between frames. In areas of motion, particularly around the subject's body, you can see ghosting artifacts where the original frames are blended together. After rendering, the video still has a stuttery quality to it. It's not as pronounced as the fast settings, but it still looks unnatural. Prior to Final Cut Pro 10.8, the best setting to use was Optical Flow, which I've already applied to this next clip. The playback is buttery smooth because Optical Flow uses a sophisticated algorithm to analyze the pixel movement from the original frames, then generates new in-between frames based on that pixel movement. Because the algorithm is using motion estimation to determine how to generate the needed

frames. It can often get confused when objects are occluded. For example, after zooming in, the golf cart and the tree trunks appear noticeably distorted as the subject moves in front of them. You can also observe artifacts in the subject's hand as it passes over the pavement and in the grassy area behind him. And once again, occlusion artifacts appear in the sailboat's mast as it becomes obscured by the archway. So, while very good, there's an even better Optical Flow method that Apple calls Smooth Slow-Mo. I've already applied this quality setting to the last clip. However, you can save yourself a step by choosing this option from the Retime menu, which will apply this quality setting automatically once you've chosen a speed percentage. In order to take advantage of this feature, you'll need to be running Final Cut Pro 10.8 on a Mac with Apple Silicon. After rendering, let's take a closer look at the final result. With machine learning, the tree trunks and the passing golf cart now appear

void of the distortion artifacts we saw previously. The same is true of the subject's hand passing over the pavement and the sailboat mask now looks perfectly normal. Machine learning really brings a lot to the table when it comes to clip re coming because the algorithm has been trained to distinguish between genuine image features and undesirable artifacts, which results in more accurate generation of in-between frames without compromising image quality. Here's another clip that I recorded using my Sony A7 S3 at 120 frames per second. I slowed it down to 10% using smooth slow-mo. For shots like this where there's a lot of movement, shooting at a higher frame rate offers the advantage of capturing more detail while reducing motion blur. Let's compare the same shot with the Legacy Optical flow setting applied. The slow motion has a noticeably mushy look to it, particularly with the cards overlap one another. Without machine learning, the algorithm has a much tougher time predicting the trajectories of the objects in order to maintain temporal

consistency. Smooth slow-mo also works when applied as a variable speed effect, meaning that you can apply it to segments of a clip to create really clean speed ramps from fast to slow or vice versa. Final Cut Pro 10.8 introduces some powerful new ways to search your timeline. You can now search for video and audio effects, including missing effects, asset-level metadata like reel, scene, and camera names, keywords, user-created roles, and more. To begin a search, open the timeline index, click the button next to the magnifying glass to reveal a menu of new search filters. The only one in this list that isn't new is the duplicate ranges filter, which first appeared in Final Cut Pro 10.6.2. Choosing this filter will bring up all the clips in the timeline that are using the same clip or portions of the same clip. The clips listed in dark purple are all the places in the timeline the selected clip appears with duplicate content. Most of the duplicate ranges that appear in my list are related to an ocean sound effect that I repurposed throughout the project.

more detailed explanation of why this feature is so useful. Particularly for long-form work, click the dupe detection video link in the description to invoke a new search. You'll first need to clear out the search by clicking the X. Choosing missing media will bring up any clip that Final Cut Pro cannot locate on your system, either because you deleted the original media file, you've moved it to another location, or the drive Final Cut Pro is looking for is offline. While certainly useful, the next option, locating missing effects, is something many of us have been begging for. With this filter, you no longer have to guess which of your clips have a missing effect applied. You select the clip from the list, and the playhead jumps to the clip with a missing effect. If there is more than one effect applied to the clip, you'll need to reveal the inspector to isolate which one is offline by clicking the relevant box next to the effect name. As welcome as this feature is, there's one small issue: Final Cut Pro will not tell you what effect category.

the effect came from. I just happen to know this effect came from our tools complete pack from FX Factory. If, if you've purchased a lot of effects packages from a variety of vendors, it may not be so easy to figure out where the effect came from, so I'm going to give you a tip. After initially applying the effect, double click the effect name to edit it, then append the name of the effect pack it came from. Here, I'll enter tools complete, so months from now when I need to revisit this project and discover the effect is missing, I'll know exactly where it came from so I can then take the appropriate action to reinstall it. You can also search for clips that have video and or audio effects applied. Choosing video effects will bring up a list of every clip that has at least one effect applied. While certainly helpful, I find it infinitely more helpful to search for a specific effect by name. For example, I want to locate clips that have a noise reduction filter applied, and only clips with the noise reduction effect are returned by the search.

perhaps I need to locate all my color-corrected clips by the color corrector I used. I'll enter wheels and every clip used a Color Wheels corrector shows up in the search list. What's super awesome is that even if you've renamed your color corrections in the inspector, as I've done here, Final Cut Pro still knows which corrector you've used when you search for them. You can also search for clips based on your custom names. I'll enter contrast and any clip that uses that custom effect name will show up in my search. Often, it's useful to search for clips based on metadata. I'll select these marine life clips, then reveal the Info inspector and set the metadata view to extended. Each clip can be assigned searchable metadata such as reel, scene, camera angle, camera name, and so on. Since these clips were recorded at night, I'll enter KN into the scene input field. When I search using that word, only clips are returned without designation. You can also create custom metadata fields. For example, I want a tag

clip setting include a product that I'm promoting in my video. I could use the notes field, but I prefer using that for General notes about a shot's content. From the pop-up menu, choose add custom metadata field, all enter product shots, and press return. The custom input field appears at the bottom of the window. I'll select a few clips where my Apple watch appears prominently, then enter Apple watch into the custom metadata field and hit return. In the search box, I'll type app, and any clip that includes my Apple watch is returned. What if you need to locate clips by the keyword you've assigned to them? No problem. In the index window, click tags, then enter the keyword. I want to find all the clips that have my buddy Joe in them, so I'll enter his name, then select the keyword in the search list to jump the play at to each one. Just keep in mind that keywords can only be searched if they were assigned to your clips before editing them into the timeline. Unless we forget about roles, these too can be searched as well.

can see from my timeline, I've created custom roles to identify my mics in purple and pink, and my voice over in Orange. Select the clips tab, then in the search field, enter the role name. I'll enter voice for voice over, and any clip with that role assignment will come up. From there, I can select one or more of the clips in the list, then add an effect or reassign them to a different role if needed. And finally, you can search for clips that have retiming effects applied. Just choose that option from the filters menu, then navigate to them using your mouse or up and down arrow keys. So what do you guys think? We're interested in hearing your comments. Leave them below and check out all of our training at rippletraining.com. See you soon. Thanks for watching.

Final Cut Pro 10.8 New Features

Founded in 2002, Ripple Training Inc. is an online digital training and content distribution company specializing in software training products and plug-ins for post production professionals. Ripple Training was founded by editor and producer Steve Martin who has over 18 years of experience as an editor, educator, and producer.

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The New Features of Final Cut Pro's Mac Version

Final Cut Pro's new version on Mac introduces a machine learning feature for shot normalization, a new way to manage and apply video effects, and a Smooth Slow-Mo option for the cleanest slow motion.

The machine learning feature helps to analyze and normalize shots for better grading, while the new enhanced light and color effect provides a more subtle and pleasing impact on the footage.

The update also includes an advanced search feature for more efficient content search in the timeline.

Using Balance Color and Enhanced Light and Color in Final Cut

Manual changes are indicated by the blue icon, while the gray wand returns to the automatic values.

Balance color increases saturation and contrast, while enhanced light and color provides a more balanced and natural result, especially for skin tones.

Enhanced light and color is particularly useful for normalizing shots and works well with log-encoded clips, providing good dynamic range and saturation.

Using Enhanced Light and Color for Color Grading

Enhanced light and color can be used to normalize the shot and improve skin tones without creating a specific look.

It can also be applied to log footage when grading manually, increasing saturation and dynamic range for a normalized starting point.

The use of enhanced light and color is demonstrated in various footage types, from iPhone HDR to Red Raw clips, effectively improving color balance and saturation while preparing the shot for further grading.

Using Enhanced Light and Color for Shot Matching and Effect Management

Enhanced light and color is crucial for preparing shots before matching them, especially when using different cameras.

It allows for quick normalization and matching of shots, as well as faster color correction.

8 makes it easier to manage and apply video effects, including the ability to rename effects for better organization.

Additionally, it provides a simple way to copy effects from one clip to another, improving workflow efficiency.

8 introduces a new clip retiming feature called Smooth slow-mo, which uses machine learning to create high-quality slow-motion clips.

The update also includes a new way to enable the Recently Added scrolling timeline feature, with a dedicated hotkey for toggling it on and off.

Additionally, the update improves backward scrolling playback by keeping the playhead in the middle of the screen, providing a better user experience.

Comparing Video Quality Settings in Final Cut Pro

Using the "Good Frame Blending" setting slightly improves the video quality by blending pixels from neighboring frames, but still results in noticeable ghosting artifacts.

The "Optical Flow" setting provides buttery smooth playback by generating new frames based on pixel movement, but can cause distortion and occlusion artifacts in complex scenes.

The "Smooth Slow-Mo" setting, powered by machine learning, offers the best quality by accurately generating in-between frames and eliminating undesirable artifacts, especially effective for high-motion shots.

8 introduces powerful new search filters for video and audio effects, including missing effects and asset-level metadata.

The update also allows users to easily locate missing media and provides a feature to search for specific effects by name, making it more efficient to manage and locate effects in a project.

The new search filters for duplicate ranges and missing effects address common user requests, although there is currently no feature to identify the source effect category, users can manually edit effect names to include this information for future reference.

Efficient Clip Searching and Organization in Final Cut Pro

Final Cut Pro allows for easy searching of clips by color corrector, custom names, metadata, custom metadata fields, keywords, and roles.

Custom metadata fields can be created to tag and search for specific clip attributes, such as product shots.

Keywords can be used to quickly locate clips with assigned tags, and roles can also be searched and clips can be easily reassigned if needed.

Additionally, the software enables the searching of clips with retiming effects applied, providing a comprehensive way to organize and locate specific clips in a project.