Find the best clips for Final Cut Pro with AI
Final Cut Pro is fast at rating clips once you are watching them. The slow part is watching them: skimming a whole card dump to find the dozen shots worth a timeline. This guide shows how to let AI do that first pass and open Final Cut with the picks already marked.
Last checked 2026-10-25, against Basecut 4.1.1.
Where a step names Basecut, it is our product, so judge that part on your own footage.
Rate before you import, not after
The usual Final Cut workflow is to import everything, skim, and mark Favorites and Rejects as you go. That works, but every clip costs you a watch. If the clips are ranked before they reach Final Cut, you spend your time on the maybes and the hero moments, not on the shot of the floor.
A tool that has watched and listened to every clip can answer the measurable questions well: is it steady and in focus, is someone talking, is this the same take twice, where is the best moment. It cannot know which shot matters most to you, so plan to check its picks.
Your options
| Approach | Good for | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|
| Skim and rate inside Final Cut | Full control, and nothing new to learn. | You watch every clip before you make a single creative choice. Hours of footage means hours of skimming. |
| Proxies and keyword shortcuts in Final Cut | Faster skimming on big shoots. | Still a human pass over every clip. It speeds up watching, not deciding. |
| Basecut, then Final Cut | The whole shoot ranked and tagged before import, opened in Final Cut with Favorites, Rejects, keyword collections and markers. | Our product. The AI pass takes time (overnight for a long shoot), and the ranking is a first pass to check, not a final selects reel. |
Step by step
1. Import the shoot into Basecut, not into Final Cut first
Point Basecut at the card dump or the folder on your drive. Basecut reads the files where they are and never changes the originals. Ranking before you import into Final Cut means your library only ever sees footage that has already been sorted.
2. Let the AI rank every clip
Basecut watches and listens to every clip and rates each one as a hero, keeper, maybe or skip, tags how it was shot and what happens in it, and finds its best moments. A rough view of the shaky, soft, dark and repeated clips appears within seconds, before the AI finishes. On an Apple Silicon Mac with 16 GB of memory or more, Argus, Basecut's own AI, does this on your computer. A long shoot is an overnight job.
3. Check the picks
In the Library, press A to keep a clip, R to reject it and S to pick a different take of the same shot. Your calls carry through to Final Cut. This is the part that needs your taste, and it is a lot faster on a ranked shoot than on a raw one.
4. Send it to Final Cut Pro
Click Send to Final Cut Pro. Basecut writes an FCPXML file and opens it in Final Cut. Your clips arrive in one event per rating (Heroes, Keepers, Maybe, Skip and Junk), with your original media linked in place, not copied.
5. Work from the keyword collections and ratings
Each event has keyword collections for the rating and for the shot type (for weddings, the part of the day), plus one per person if you named faces. Clips rated 4 or 5 stars are marked Favorite and clips rated 1 or 2 stars are marked Reject, so Final Cut's own Favorites and Rejects filters work straight away. Markers sit on the moments Basecut found.
6. Apply the color, if you shot log
Basecut does not apply color inside Final Cut. Each clip comes with a .cube file carrying Basecut's per-camera log-to-Rec.709 correction, matched across cameras. Apply it with the Custom LUT effect, and set the clip's Camera LUT to None first so you do not convert twice.
What arrives in Final Cut Pro
- One event per rating: Heroes, Keepers, Maybe, Skip and Junk.
- Keyword collections for the star rating and the shot type, or the part of the day for weddings, plus one per named person.
- Favorite on 4 and 5 star clips, Reject on 1 and 2 star clips.
- Markers on each clip with what is in the shot, and on the best moments Basecut found.
- A selects timeline of the heroes and keepers, ready to cut down.
- Links to your original media, plus one .cube file per clip for the color.
Want the full list of what each editor receives? See Hand a culled wedding project to Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro.
More guides
Questions people ask
Is there an AI that picks the best clips for Final Cut Pro?
Yes. Basecut ranks every clip in a card dump as a hero, keeper, maybe or skip and opens the result in Final Cut Pro with one click, as Favorites and Rejects in keyword collections, with markers on the best moments. It works before Final Cut, on the raw footage, so it does not need a plugin inside Final Cut.
How do Basecut's ratings show up in Final Cut Pro?
Final Cut has Favorite and Reject rather than star ratings, so Basecut maps them: 4 and 5 stars become Favorite, 1 and 2 stars become Reject, and 3 stars stay unrated. The star rating itself is also a keyword, so you can find every 5 star clip in its own keyword collection.
Does Basecut copy my footage into the Final Cut library?
No. The FCPXML links to your clips where they are on your drive. What Final Cut does on import, such as copying media into the library, follows your own Final Cut import settings.
Does it work with Final Cut Pro on Windows?
Final Cut Pro is Mac only, so Send to Final Cut Pro is a Mac feature. On Windows, Basecut sends to DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro instead.
Can it make a rough cut for Final Cut Pro too?
Yes. Auto Edit builds a first cut from one sentence, such as "a 60 second highlight", and exports it as FCPXML with the music, dissolves and titles in place for you to finish in Final Cut.
Does my footage get uploaded?
Not with Argus, which runs on your Mac and sends no footage anywhere. Paid plans also include Basecut Cloud, a faster option that sends reduced-size copies of clips through Basecut's server to Google.
Open Final Cut with the picks already made
Basecut ranks every clip in the card dump and opens Final Cut Pro with Favorites, Rejects, keyword collections and markers in place. 14-day free trial, 5 free exports, no card.
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