Premiere Pro timelines
in Final Cut Pro

Comes across

• Every sequence in the file, each as its own Final Cut project — you pick which ones to convert.
• The whole timeline: cuts, gaps, clip order. V1 becomes the primary storyline, V2 and up become connected clips, audio tracks become connected audio. Disabled clips arrive disabled.
• Essential Graphics titles as real, editable Final Cut titles — text, font, size, colour, alignment, position and scale.
• Speed: a constant speed, reverse, and speed ramps with the whole curve rather than an average.
• Cross dissolves — between two clips, and the fade from or to black at the edge of one — with the audio crossfade where the audio travels inside the clip.
• Position, scale, rotation, anchor point and crop of each clip, with their keyframes — a Ken Burns move on a photo included.
• Opacity with its fades, and the blend modes Premiere writes out: Screen, Multiply, Add, Lighten, Darken, Soft Light, Hard Light and Difference.
• Nested sequences as compound clips, trimmed and moved the way they are in Premiere.
• Markers — on the sequence and on clips, with their names and comments. Final Cut markers are single points of one colour, so a range marker arrives at its start and colours are not kept.
• The sequence’s start timecode, drop-frame included, so a timeline starting at 01:00:00:00 starts there in Final Cut too.
• Clip volume and pan, keyframes included: fades, dips and pans arrive as Final Cut volume and pan keyframes at the same moments.
• Stills (JPEG, PNG, PSD, HEIC…) with their length on the timeline.
• Any frame rate Premiere writes, NTSC rates included, 4K and vertical sequences.
• Media timecode, so Final Cut opens the right part of each file.

Does not, yet

• Transitions other than a cross dissolve — and a dissolve Premiere pressed flat against the cut, because Final Cut dissolves across a cut and there is nothing on the other side. The cut stays where it was.
• Keyframes and clip markers on a clip whose speed was changed: that clip keeps its still values.
• Effects — Lumetri, blurs, the stabiliser.
• A moving anchor point keeps its first position.
• A speed change on a nested sequence: the compound clip plays at 100%.
• A title mixing several styles keeps the first one; shapes in a graphic are dropped and only the text comes over.

Gone before the app sees it

Premiere drops these on the way out, into the XML itself. No converter can bring them back — not this one, not Final Cut, not DaVinci Resolve.

• Freeze frames. A clip held with Add Frame Hold or Insert Frame Hold Segment is written out as an ordinary playing clip; nothing in the file says a frame was ever held.
• Dip to Black becomes a Cross Dissolve. Premiere substitutes it on export and says so in its own report, which it saves next to the XML.
• An eased speed ramp keeps its frames, not its easing. The clip speeds up and slows down in the right places; the acceleration between keyframes is even rather than curved.
• Only the sequences you select. With nothing selected in the Project panel, Premiere writes out the open sequence alone.
• Channel Volume and the Balance effect. Premiere leaves both out of the XML and says so in its report. Volume and the clip’s own Panner do come across.
• Chapter markers become ordinary markers. The XML writes a chapter exactly like any other marker, so it arrives as one.
• Most blend modes. Only nine reach the XML; Overlay, Color Dodge and the rest are dropped with a line in Premiere’s report, and Texturize has no Final Cut match.

Export the XML from Premiere Pro

1. Open the project and select the sequence in the Project panel (or click its timeline).
2. Choose File ▸ Export ▸ Final Cut Pro XML… and save the .xml file.
3. Send that one file. The footage does not need to travel with it.

To convert several sequences at once, select them all in the Project panel before exporting; the app lists each one and you choose which to convert.

Clips won't relink in Final Cut

Final Cut relinks a file only if its frame rate, length and timecode match what the FCPXML says. Premiere's XML gets these wrong for footage with a variable frame rate — iPhone and drone clips mostly.

1. Look at the report: Phone or drone frame rate guessed and Frame rate could be 59.94 or 60 list exactly the clips at risk.
2. Click Locate Media… and choose the folders with the original files. Subfolders are searched too.
3. Wait for Reading media to finish, then save or open the result again.

No footage on this Mac? Convert on the Mac that has it, or relink in Final Cut with File ▸ Relink Files — the guessed rates are right for most cameras.

Final Cut imported, but the timeline is empty

You import the FCPXML, Final Cut says something like Invalid edit with no respective media, and the project opens with gaps instead of clips. Nothing is broken: Final Cut simply cannot find the footage at the moment in time the file claims it lives.

It happens with footage that has no timecode of its own — screen recordings, stock clips, anything exported from another app. Premiere still needs a number, so it invents one from the file's creation time and writes it into the XML as though the camera had recorded it. Final Cut then opens the real file, sees a clip that starts at zero, and finds nothing at, say, four in the afternoon.

1. Click Locate Media… and choose the folders with the original footage. The app lists the folders Premiere used, so you know what to look for; subfolders are searched too.
2. Wait for Reading media to finish. The app now takes the timecode from the files themselves instead of Premiere's word, and the warning at the top disappears.
3. Save or open the result again. The clips land where they belong.

A file the app could not read stays listed in grey, together with the folder Premiere kept it in: add that folder as well, or relink that one clip in Final Cut with File ▸ Relink Files. Picking a second folder adds to the first, so footage spread over several drives is no problem.

What carries over in titles

• Text, line breaks and any language, including Cyrillic.
• Font, size, colour, left or centre alignment, and position on screen.
• The layer's scale, folded into the font size.

Shapes and backgrounds inside a graphic, gradients, strokes and shadows are not carried; the report names every title that had shapes. If a font isn't installed on this Mac, Final Cut shows a substitute until you install it.

A title shows up as “Graphic”

When you duplicate a title in Premiere and only move it, Premiere doesn't write its text into the XML at all — there is nothing to convert. The app keeps the title's position so you can retype it in place.

To avoid it, click into the text of each duplicated title in Premiere (even type and delete a letter) before exporting.