From YouTube videos to full-length cinematic masterpieces, content created with Final Cut Pro X is seen by millions of people worldwide every single day. So why is sharing your works-in-progress with your team just across the city so incredibly difficult? 

Why are our choices limited to either hopping on the train or the 405 and hauling laptops and hard drives to a central location for a meeting or sometimes waiting hours to render out draft exports only to be inundated with a barrage of emails with mismatched revisions? 

Corporate teams can share their projects through remote meetings streamed over Zoom, so is there a way for creative teams to do the same? Is it possible to stream a live editing session over Zoom the same way you stream a meeting or presentation? 

We’ve examined the features and capabilities of Zoom and Final Cut Pro X to see if Zoom can support live workspace streaming and make it possible for content creation teams to recreate the feeling of a live editing/brainstorming session whether they’re across the city or the world. 

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The Challenges of Streaming Final Cut Pro X Over Zoom

Ok, let’s start with the bad news first; Zoom simply isn’t built to natively support streaming a platform like Final Cut Pro X. There are no built-in features or plugins that will allow you to just “plug and play” your Final Cut Pro X workstation straight into Zoom. 

While this may initially seem like an oversight, it appears to be by design. Zoom requires a significant amount of processing power to function. If there is not adequate power available, its priority becomes maintaining the connection of the meeting, which means Zoom will downgrade video and audio quality to prevent the call from dropping entirely. 

Final Cut Pro X (and other editing platforms like it) also require a significant amount of processing power. Running a program like this simultaneously with Zoom can cause substantial problems for Zoom, which is why there are simply no native features to support it. 

But creative teams are no strangers to technology not being quite fit for them, so to the workarounds we go. 

The most significant advantage to hosting a live editing session over Zoom always comes down to accessibility. Almost everyone has Zoom, and almost everyone knows how to use it. This means if you, the editor, can figure out how to stream your Final Cut Pro X workspace over Zoom, you’ll avoid that 45-minute phone call with your *ahem* less than technologically inclined producer trying to walk them through a software install and initiation. 

So the question that stands is this; will any workarounds be powerful enough to show your work in full detail but simple enough to use for your least tech-savvy team member? 

We’ve compiled some common workarounds that creative teams can utilize to stream programs like Final Cut Pro X over Zoom and examined how functional they are for the demands of creative teams, both large and small. 

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Common Workarounds to Stream Final Cut Pro X over Zoom

In our research, we’ve found three solutions that will allow you to stream your Final Cut Pro X workspace over Zoom. Most of them will require at least one additional piece of software, and some require other hardware as well. 

Solution #1: Two CPUs and OBS

This solution requires:

• Two separate screens 
• Two separate CPUs (for best performance)
• A broadcasting program like OBS (Open Broadcasting Software) 
• An NDI (network device interface).
  

This workaround will require you to download an NDI to the system running Final Cut Pro X and download OBS to the system you’ll run Zoom on. Once these programs are in place, open Final Cut Pro X and your NDI and use the NDI to broadcast a feed of your screen.

On the other system, open OBS, locate the NDI stream and set it as your video source. You should now see a live broadcast of your Final Cut Pro X workspace. 

The last step is to open Zoom and set your camera as the feed from OBS. This will allow you to broadcast your workspace to meeting participants over Zoom as if it were your webcam. 

This workaround allows you to broadcast your workspace, but beware; it may not solve the downgrade issue.