DaVinci Resolve vs. Final Cut Pro: Find Out Which Video E…

After extensive testing, I put the two top video editing apps head-to-head—covering effects, media support, rendering speed, value, and more—to see which one truly comes out on top. Price: You Can’t Beat FreeYou can now acquire Final Cut Pro in two ways: A pe…

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 via subscription. Final Cut Pro is available only on Apple Macs and iPads. It requires macOS 15.6 or later, 8GB of memory (16GB recommended), and 7.2GB of available disk space. The iPad version requires iPadOS 18.6 or later and an iPad with Apple M1 chip or later, the base iPad (A16), or the iPad mini (A17 Pro).

DaVinci Resolve is far more flexible. It runs on Linux (officially only Rocky Linux, but versions for Arch Linux, Manjaro, and Ubuntu enjoy substantial community support), macOS (macOS 14 Sonoma or later), and Windows (10 and later). It even supports Windows on Arm devices, with AI features leveraging the neural processing units (NPUs) of Copilot+ PCs. There’s no sugarcoating it: DaVinci Resolve’s interface requires some adjustment.

That said, longtime video editors might be more comfortable with its more standard timeline tracks versus Apple's trackless Magnetic Timeline. DaVinci organizes major function groups across seven pages (in order): Media (gathering and organizing clips), Cut (quick assembly and edits), Edit (advanced editing and effects), Fusion (motion graphics), Color (color correction and grading), Fairlight (audio editing), and Deliver (exporting).

The timeline in the Cut section works differently from that in the Edit section, and other pages’ node layouts demand a significant learning curve. Apple's Magnetic Timeline is easier on the eyes. Instead of tracks, Final Cut Pro uses lanes, with a primary storyline to which everything else attaches. This approach makes it easier to keep everything in sync than in DaVinci Resolve, but the latter does support linked clips.

Final Cut Pro offers several other editing advantages, including connected Auditions, clips, and roles. Auditions let you designate optional clips or takes for a spot in your movie, and you can group clips into compound clips—roughly the equivalent of DaVinci Resolve’s Nested Timelines. Roles include descriptive labels such as Dialog, Effects, Music, Titles, and Video. Both programs have strong media management capabilities.

Resolve's tools are more traditional, while Final Cut Pro’s are simpler and more automatic. DaVinci Resolve starts you off in the Project Manager, before letting you organize media in databases called Media Pools that contain bins, power bins, and smart bins. Power bins are accessible across all projects, and smart bins are automatically created by the program based on metadata, keywords, and clip properties.

Final Cut Pro organizes your media through events, keyword tagging, libraries, and roles. The library is the overarching container that includes your projects, events, and clips, and it keeps track of all your edits and options. You can also manage storage targets and perform batch clip renaming. The program’s new speech and object search are a boon if you want to be able to search for clips or sections of clips without applying metadata.

Both DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro work with pretty much every media format that you will need, along with those available via codecs or plug-ins for your OS. The list of supported files includes Apple ProRes, H.264, HEVC, and MXF, as well as raw formats from pro video camera manufacturers like ARRI, Blackmagic, Canon, Panasonic, RED, and Sony (some via plug-ins). They both work with XML file imports and exports.

Winner: Tie Final Cut includes an auto-captioning tool, but it still lacks both text-based editing and video generation capabilities. It does, however, integrate with macOS's Image Playground to generate cartoon-like still images, for what that's worth. Magnetic Mask (applies effects just to fine-tuned masked areas) and Scene Removal round out some of the other recent AI tools. New AI features in Final Cut Pro let you search content based on speech (even if there’s no caption track) and objects or actions in the video.

Finally, the Beat Detection option makes it easy to time action with background music. DaVinci Resolve has a ton of AI features and consistently gets new ones. The software now includes auto-captioning and text-based editing. Its AI IntelliScript feature lets you describe the edits you want to make by entering text prompts. AI Animated Subtitles can animate words as your subject speaks them. Other AI tools include: AI Audio Assistant (analyzes your audio to create a the audio mix), AI Music Editor (adjusts the soundtrack to fit the video), AI Set Extender (creates a scene that fills the frame based on a text prompt), AI Superscale (offers triple and quadruple upscaling), and Magic Mask (lets you easily isolate and track objects).

DaVinci is an industry-standard application for color editing, thanks to its Fusion color correction and grading component. Its node-based interface lets you create precise, complex effects and apply them to individual clips, clip groups, or the entire timeline. It's also possible to apply an effect to the original image or an effect node-modified version. With other software, effects simply stack, and you can’t control how they interact.

Just keep in mind that nodes take a while to understand and aren't for simple hobbyists. DaVinci Resolve also supports the industry-standard Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), which Final Cut doesn't. DaVinci’s recent Chroma Color Warp feature lets you precisely adjust the hue and saturation of any color in your image by dragging points on a chromaticity diagram. But even nonprofessionals can benefit from DaVinci’s effective Auto Color tool.

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. 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. 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. 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 HTC Vive (sorry Meta Quest users). Though DaVinci can edit Vision Pro’s MV-HEVC format, it doesn’t offer full Apple Spatial Video support. Final Cut offers 360-degree titles and some effects.

Its Patch tool, which removes the camera and tripod from your movie, works only with 2D blurring and cloning, not by analyzing 3D eye-separation content. DaVinci’s tools maintain alignment and avoid distortion. Apple’s separate Compressor app ($49.99) lets you share 360-degree video directly to Facebook, Vimeo, and YouTube. It's not a close contest for this category. DaVinci Resolve features auto-syncing, remote editing, and streaming URLs for review via Blackmagic Cloud, Smart Proxies for improved editing performance, shared Cloud Folders and Project Libraries, and team management capabilities.

That last item is especially important because large production teams include separate specialists for audio editing, color grading, cutting, and motion graphics. The software also pairs well with Frame.io, the standard video collaboration platform. And, as mentioned, it can run on the three major desktop OSes, rather than just one. Final Cut Pro also works with Frame.io via a plug-in and supports XML files and locking.

However, unless all your collaborators use iPads, iPhones, and Macs, you’re better off with DaVinci. 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. 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 compared with DaVinci Resolve’s 102 seconds. I test export time by creating a five-minute movie consisting of four clips of mixed types with a standard set of transitions. My test media files include some 8K and more 4K source clips. I render it to H.264 1080p at 60fps, using the H.264 High Profile.

The audio is AAC 192Kbps. For testing, I use a MacBook Air with an M1 processor and 8GB of RAM running macOS Sequoia. It's on the low end of power for video editing, so it shows differences more distinctly than more expensive hardware would. Of course, professionals working on much longer projects with many more tracks and effects would see larger differences. On Windows, DaVinci Resolve took just 25 seconds to perform the test on a  Windows 11 PC with a 3.60GHz Intel Core i7-12700K, 16GB RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GPU, and a 512GB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. This result was only one second behind CyberLink PowerDirector's leading time of 24 seconds, with some other apps taking four and five times as long.

With DaVinci Resolve, you get everything you need. As mentioned, Final Cut Pro requires you to download separate applications for deep audio editing, color grading, rendering, and motion graphics design. Adobe After Effects is the industry-standard motion graphics tool, but DaVinci Resolve’s built-in Fusion page is highly competitive. It uses node-based effect editing and supports custom curves, keyframe interpolation, and particle systems.

Apple Motion is also a powerful tool for creating effects, titles, and transitions, but its layer-based approach—think Photoshop—makes it easier to use. It supports custom templates, logical layers, and a rich plug-in ecosystem. It costs $49.99 for a perpetual license or is available through a Creator Studio subscription.

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