We've just got back from the Apple Presentation that's part of the FCPX Creative Summit and we have some great news about 10.4 to share. New colour tools including wheels & curves and 360 tools built in.

A lot to digest, but the presentation was pretty awesome in Apple's Town Hall in Cupertino. We also got to see the new iMac Pro playing back 8K media on the timeline unrendered. Impressive

We now know the new FCPX is 10.4 and although it has now been shown to us attendees, no word on an exact release date yet, but it is coming later this year.

New Features

• 360 tools built in including 360 and 360 3D titles built in motion.
• Clone tool for rig concealment at bottom of 360 frame.
• Horizon straightening tool in 360
• Custom 360 transitions built with the new version of motion
• Support for onscreen 360 and headset display at the same time
• Support for HDR
• New Colour Wheels with RGB and Hue/Saturation Curves
• Manual white balance using a colour picker (yay!)
• New preference for what colour correction control is shown first on clip
• Ssupport for additional camera LUTs
• Custom LUTs can be loaded per clip in Inspector
• Custom LUTs can be added as an effect
• Role based forward/back clip selection (i.e. it can ignore titles)
• Extra Programmable functions for colour correction to be mapped onto keyboard
• Existing Projects with colour board colour correction not affected - just extra controls added
• 10.4 on iMac Pro can play 4K native RED footage with colour correction & title overlay unrendered on the timeline 
• 10.4 on iMac Pro can play optimised (ProRes 4444) in 8K with colour correction and effects in an unrendered timeline
• HEVC Support
• Can import an iOS iMovie project into FCPX 10.4

Not Added

• Dupe detection
• More Audio controls

 Ok, enough of the bullet points, let's have at look at the pictures!

The new colour wheels in FCPX 10.4

A close-up of the wheels, the controls in the middle are like joysticks

The new colour curves. Clicking on a point on the canvas puts a corresponding mark on the curve as shown at the top

Extra colour controls on the curves.

Hue/Saturation - the bottom one can be selected to any colour.

Loading custom LUTs. This can be done on the clip in the inspector info panel or there is also a custom LUT loader effect. Support for new RED LUTs announced.

Custom LUT effect. Can be stored as a new effect with all the other multiple colour corrections bundled up.

More custom LUT loading - can load folders full of LUTs at once.

Yes it is 10.4 - no word on release date yet.

Auto white colour picker at last!!!  It seems to work well.

iMac Pro playing 8K Optimised RED files unrenderd on the timeline 

Peter Wiggins is a broadcast freelance editor based in the UK although his work takes him around the world. An early adopter of FCP setting up pioneering broadcasts workflows, his weapon of choice is now Final Cut Pro X.

You can follow him on Twitter as @peterwiggins or as he runs the majority of this site, you can contact him here.