Final Cut Pro 11: AI subtitles in English only for the time being

The generation of subtitles with AI help in Final Cut Pro 11 is currently only available for the English language. Initial tests with the new FCP version with Apple's integrated language model have shown that transcribing German-language videos does not currently produce any usable results. Apple itself points out in the support documents for the new version of the video editing software that the function can "create subtitles from spoken English audio" – There is no mention of other languages. It is not yet known when Apple will add support for German or other languages. However, there may be a connection to the announcement that Apple Intelligence will support additional languages in 2025.

The new function, which makes use of artificial intelligence, is one of the flagship features of the new version of Final Cut Pro. Other improvements include magnetic masks, which use machine learning to select moving objects in videos and edit them separately from the rest of the image, as well as the ability to edit spatial videos, for example for Apple's spatial computer, Vision Pro.

How subtitles are generated

Subtitles are created via a new menu item under "Edit" and "Subtitles". Once all the desired sections in the timeline have been marked, the generation can be triggered via "Transcribe to subtitles". The first time Final Cut Pro loads the required language model from the Internet. On a Mac with M2 Pro, the subtitles were generated in a matter of seconds for a six-and-a-half minute video – but only resulted in gibberish for a German-language video.

The subtitles can then be exported in various formats in order to upload them to YouTube, for example. It is also possible to "burn" them directly into the video image – but this function is quite well hidden. This can be set in the "Reels" tab in "Export file". There you will find a "Subtitles" button in the "Video track" field. There you can select the language in which existing subtitles should be permanently integrated.

Only partially useful for social videos

However, the design options for burnt-in subtitles are limited, unlike with classic titles. It is only possible to change the text color and style (bold/italic/underlined), but not the color of the underlay, the font or the size. This means that the automatic function is only of limited use in social videos. However, it is at least a small help because users can manually create their own titles that correspond to the length and arrangement of the automatic subtitles. However, they then have to copy the texts by hand. In any case, this is less time-consuming than creating everything by hand. Alternatively, we recommend using external plug-ins to do this work.

(mki)