From Amateur to Expert: Top 10 Mac Video Editing Picks

1. Compatibility: Ensure that the software is compatible with your Mac and its operating system.
2. Pricing: Determine your budget and evaluate if the software offers a free version or trial.
3. Features: Evaluate the available tools and features that meet your editing needs.
4. Ease of use: Look for software that is user-friendly and easy to learn, especially if you're a beginner.
5. Support: Check if the software has active community forums, tutorials, or customer support to help you when needed.

Final Cut Pro Features

High-Quality Video Editing: Final Cut Pro is designed for creating, editing, and producing high-quality video content.

Wide Format Support: The software offers native support for virtually any video format, making it versatile for different video editing needs.

Performance and Efficiency on Mac: Final Cut Pro showcases exceptional performance and efficiency on Mac computers, particularly those with Apple silicon.

It utilizes unified memory shared across the CPU, the GPU, and the Apple Neural Engine for faster video rendering and playback.

Advanced Editing Features: Notable features like the Magnetic Timeline allow for easy organization and movement of clips within a project without disrupting the rest of the timeline.

Additionally, the "Auditions" feature facilitates trying out different versions of a clip within the timeline to choose the best option.

Intelligent Motion Tracking: In a recent update (version 10.6), intelligent motion tracking capabilities were added to the software, enhancing its video editing toolkit.

Ease of Use: Despite its professional-grade capabilities, Final Cut Pro is known for its user-friendly interface and time-saving features that streamline the video editing process.

Professional Editing Ease: Final Cut Pro simplifies professional video editing by allowing users to log & transfer videos and images onto the hard drive (internal or external), where they can be edited, processed, and output to many formats, making it a preferred choice among professionals.

Adobe Premiere Pro Features

Simplified Color Settings: Premiere Pro offers simplified color settings and higher-quality tone mapping, making it easier to produce visually appealing work without extra, complicated steps.

The Color Settings feature consolidates many color selections into a single tab for quick and easy adjustments​.

Enhanced Performance: The latest version, Premiere Pro 24.0, introduces features like faster timeline drawing which is now 5x faster, ensuring smoother workflow especially in complex projects​.

Text-Based Editing Features: New Text-Based Editing features are introduced in the latest version, enabling easier editing of video, almost as simple as copying and pasting text. This feature is powered by AI, which probably leverages Adobe's Sensei AI technology​.

Audio Auto-Tagging and Effects Manager: Premiere Pro 24.0 also introduced Audio Auto-Tagging and an Effects Manager to streamline the editing process, making it easier to manage audio and effects in your projects​.

Precision Editing Tools: Adobe Premiere Pro provides industry-standard tools that help craft the perfect story with total precision. It allows easy setting of start and end points for clips with three-point editing, and uses stacked ("pancake") timelines to pull source footage into rough cuts with fewer clicks​

Project Templates and Recovery Mode: Project templates for fast setup and a Recovery mode to restore projects are also new features in Premiere Pro 24.0, aiming to save time and prevent loss of work​

Automatic Tone Mapping: Automatic Tone Mapping achieves consistent colors and contrast when mixing footage from different cameras, which is essential for professional video editing where footage from various sources and cameras is used​

Significant GPU Acceleration: The latest version of Premiere Pro has significant GPU acceleration and other performance enhancements making it the fastest version ever released, which is crucial for real-time editing and rendering​.

iMovie Features:

Ease of Use and Accessibility: iMovie is known for its user-friendly interface and ease of use, making it a great option for beginners or those with little to no video editing experience.

It's designed to be accessible to users, providing a simple yet effective platform for video editing.

Free and Preinstalled on Apple Devices: Unlike many other video editing applications, iMovie is free and comes preinstalled on Mac computers, iPhones, and iPads.

This accessibility makes it a convenient choice for Apple users looking to delve into video editing without additional costs.

Basic Video Editing Capabilities: iMovie provides a range of basic video editing tools and features.

These include options to modify and enhance video color settings, crop and rotate video clips, stabilize shaky videos, add video transitions, and change the speed of clips.

It also allows for audio editing to a certain extent, such as reducing background noise and boosting the audio of a project.

High-Quality Effects and 4K Resolution Support: iMovie supports video creators with high-quality effects and also supports 4K resolution, enabling the creation of crisp, high-definition videos.

Storyboard Feature: A notable feature is the Storyboard, which helps aspiring content creators and moviemakers learn to edit and improve their video storytelling skills with pre-made templates for popular types of videos shared on social platforms.

Integration with Other Apple Applications: Being an Apple product, iMovie integrates well with other Apple applications and hardware, allowing for a seamless video editing experience especially for those already invested in the Apple ecosystem.

Davinci Resolve Features:

Advanced Machine Learning Technology: DaVinci Resolve 18 features some of the most cutting-edge technology in the industry today. It houses the DaVinci Neural Engine, an advanced machine learning system powering many of the software's most powerful tools, and is fully supported in Apple M1 Mac models including M1 Ultra​

Comprehensive Video Editing Suite: It's free to use and includes editing, visual effects (Fusion), audio post-production (Fairlight, a DAW) and professional color grading. There's also a paid version called DaVinci Resolve Studio with enhanced features for a cost of $295​

Organized Feature Set: DaVinci Resolve's feature set is organized into seven pages, each dedicated to a different part of the post-production workflow: media management, editing, VFX, color correction, grading, audio, and delivery. This organization resembles most NLE's workspaces, each configured for a different task​

Continuous Improvement and Expansion: The software undergoes continuous improvement, with the latest version having over 100 new features and 200+ improvements, covering various areas like editing, cutting, coloring, fusion, and Fairlight, making it a robust all-in-one solution for filmmakers​

Variety of GPU and CPU Accelerated Resolve FX: DaVinci Resolve Studio 18 features over 100 GPU and CPU accelerated Resolve FX, which includes blurs, light effects, noise, image restoration, beauty enhancement, stylize and more.

The latest version added more plugins for depth map generation, surface tracking, fast noise, and despilling​

Cloud-Based Collaboration: The Blackmagic Cloud facilitates collaborative projects, allowing different artists around the world to work on the same project.

For instance, an editor in the US could work on a project, share it with a VFX artist in Canada, have the audio tweaked by an engineer in Asia, and the grade completed by a colorist based in Europe, all while the footage remains on the same server​

Avid Media Composer Features:

Avid DNxHD Codec and FrameFlex: Avid Media Composer provides professional features including the Avid DNxHD codec and FrameFlex, which allow users to maintain high-quality video while managing file sizes and adjusting the frame size and aspect ratio of their footage​

Audio Dupe Detection: Audio Dupe Detection is another noteworthy feature in Avid Media Composer, helping users in identifying duplicate audio clips, thus aiding in efficient management and editing of audio assets within the projects​

Edit 3D and Multicam Editing: Edit 3D is a feature that enables editing of 3D content, while multicam editing facilitates handling and editing of footage from multiple cameras, enhancing the editing experience especially in scenarios with multi-angle shots​

High Resolution and HDR Editing: Users can edit high resolution and HDR (High Dynamic Range) projects natively, which is particularly beneficial for maintaining quality and achieving professional-grade color grading and visual effects​