Best Workflow of 4K Video with Final Cut Pro X

As a completely rewritten application, Final Cut Pro X offers blazing performance for 4K editing when working with Mac Pro. You can directly load 4K camera files such as 4K Prores, Sony 4K XAVC and 4K REDCODE RAW directly to FCP X without any transcoding. However, for those people who owns a underpowered Mac computer, do you have the opportunity to edit 4K with FCP X or if your Mac computer meet to minimum requirements to edit 4K video, how to import FCP X not supported 4K file codec such as H.265/HEVE or VP9? The following part will show you how to fix those issues one by one.

4K Video to FCP X

Workflow of 4K Video with FCP X on underpowered Mac computer

If your Mac computer does not have the powerful GPU and enough RAM storage to handle 4K resolution video, then it would be much ideal for you to encode 4K video to Apple Prores format which is a post-production format designed for pristine quality, economical hardware configurations, and high-performance, multistream Final Cut Pro X real-time editing. To produce Apple Prores format, you can just have a try at Pavtube HD Video Converter for Mac (best HD Video Converter for Mac Review), which enables you to convert 4K video in various differen file formats and codec to FCP X high quality and high performance Apple Prores codec in various different file types. For underpowered Mac computer, just select "Apple Prores 422(Proxy)" or "Apple Prores 422(LT)" format which can enhance playback performance in Final Cut Pro X viewer by lowering the video quality to one-half resolution.

Work FCP X unsupported 4K video on Mac Pro

Although FCP X has the capability to edit video with 4K resolution, however, it does not mean that you can throw 4K video with any file format to it. You can only import FCP X supported file formats including H.264, Apple Prores, XAVC S, etc with 4K resolution to it. If you have a 4K video encoded with H.265/HEVC or VP9, FCP X will not recognize them. To fix the codec incompatible issue, you can still use our Mac HD Video Converter to transcode the incompatible 4K H.265/HEVC and VP9 codec to FCP X editable editing codec listed above.

Simple editing of 4K video

Before loading the 4K video into FCP X, you can complete some simple video editing task with the program's built-in video editing functions. You can split large 4K video into small parts by file size, count or length, trim or cut off 4K video to remove unwanted parts or segments, apply special rendering effect to 4K video, add video/image/transparent text watermark to 4K video, flip or rotate 4K video angel, etc.

How to Import 4K Video for FCP X Post Editing Workflow?

Step 1: Add 4K videos.

Open the program, click "File" menu, from its drop-down option, select "Add Video/Audio" to load 4K video to the program.

Load 4K video into the program

Step 2: Choose output file format.

From "Format" drop-down option, if you have a underpowered Mac computer, it is ideal for you to output "Apple Prores 422(Proxy)(*.mov)" or "Apple Prores 422(LT)(*.mov)" for enhanced 4K playback performance in FCP X.

Output Apple Prores Proxy or LT format

If the 4K video it not supported by FCP X, just choose to output FCP X readable 4K format such as "H.264 High Profile MP4" video under "Common Video" main category.

Output FCP X readable 4K file format

Step 3: Edit 4K video.

Check an item to active the "Video Editor" function, then click the pencil like icon on the top tool bar to open the "Video Editor" window, you can trim video length, crop video black bars, add watermark, apply sepcial rendering effect, remove/replace audio in video, etc.

Edit 4K video

Step 4: Start the conversion process.

After all the setting is over, go back to the main interface and hit right-bottom "Convert" button to start to convert 4K video to FCP X supported editing formats.

When the conversion is completed, launch FCP X on your Mac computer to import converted video to FCP X for smooth editing workflow.

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