The wait is over! With great relief, pride and gratitude to the Neat Video community we are ready to announce the release of Neat Video 5.4.2 that enables native support for M1 Apple computers in Neat Video 5 for Final Cut. Thanks to all our Final Cut users who have been waiting patiently.
The new plug-in for Final Cut is not just an updated version of your denoiser capable of working directly on Apple Silicon Macs without the help of Rosetta, but an entirely new plug-in. And that’s the reason this release turned out to be such a long-awaited one.
This new plug-in has been called Neat Video Second Revision (or SR) for Final Cut. The traditional Neat Video 5 plug-in for Final Cut is also up and running, it is referred to as Standard Version. The Standard Version and new Second Revision plug-ins look and work very similar. They both do a great job of reducing video noise and flicker, restoring and improving footage. The filters work in the same way and should be customized in the same manner. The biggest contrast between the two plug-ins is the ability to work on new M1 Macs which is offered only in Neat Video (SR) for Final Cut. Most of the other differences are related to implementation details and not visible.
The SR plug-in also works faster on M1 computers than the Standard Version working via Rosetta on the same hardware. Both FullHD and 4K video clips are rendered 30% to 40% quicker with Neat Video working in CPU-only mode.
As a completely new software, the SR plug-in has not been used by thousands of video editors yet, so some sneaky bugs might have slipped through our extensive internal testing. If you run into an issue, please send us a message and describe the problem. Until all significant issues are fixed, the SR plug-in is going to be marked as a beta version.
Some issues are known (see known issues) but not yet fully resolved because that requires external assistance from the developers of Final Cut. We closely work with Apple to address such issues but that takes time.
System Requirements
The new SR plug-in and the traditional Standard Version plug-in have been created with different system requirements in mind. Due to the major differences in OS and hardware, there is no way the Standard Version could work on the new Apple Silicon systems natively. However, Neat Video (SR) for Final Cut is capable of running on both Intel and Apple Silicon processors.
| Processor required | macOS version required | FCP version required | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neat Video 5.4.2 (SR) |
Intel or Apple Silicon |
macOS 10.15.6 or newer | FCP 10.5.2 or newer |
| Neat Video 5.4.2 | Intel | macOS 10.13.6 or newer | FCP 10.0.4 or newer |
Project Converter
From now on the Standard Version and Second Revision plug-ins will appear in Final Cup as two separate video effects: Reduce Noise v5 and Reduce Noise v5 (SR). Those are independent effects and therefore cannot be automatically used one instead of another.
In order to change one of your existing projects from using the Standard Version plug-in to the new Second Revision plug-in, you would normally have to manually replace each instance of the Reduce Noise v5 effect in your project with a newly added and configured instance of the Reduce Noise v5 (SR) effect. Such conversion might be needed in case you upgraded from an Intel-based Mac to a new Apple Silicon-based Mac and wanted to continue using an existing FCP project created on the older computer.
To help you with such a transition, we have developed a project converter that can automatically replace instances of the older Reduce Noise v5 effect in your project with the equally configured instances of the new Reduce Noise v5 (SR) effect. Please read this article to learn more about using the project converter.
Also see our blog post for more details on the GUI changes in Neat Video 5.4.2 (SR), check the known issues of the beta plug-in and see the history of changes.