Motion and FCP 4.5

You guys are just going to love this.

I just finished the first tutorial for Motion. Rather than export the finished lesson, I simply save the project file, aka lesson 1.motn in a folder I will use for a Final Cut Pro project. I open Final Cut Pro and start this new project to test the interaction of the two applications.

I import my .motn project file, not an export of the project, but the project itself. I bring that into the viewer. The tutorial is not action safe or title safe, but who cares for now.

I create a v2 in FCP and make that active. I drop my .motn project into the canvas and choose overwrite, thus bringing this into the v2 track. I can now see it on my NTSC monitor.

I go back to my bin and select "Open in Editor".

This opens Motion up with the project loaded. I move everything to make it action save, do some color correcting in Motion and make a few other changes. I save the project, then switch applications back to FCP.

I see my timeline needs to be rendered now. The items have all been changed, reflecting what I just did in Motion. I now see my title- and action-safe changes.

So no exporting into DV or Uncompressed... Instead, you just save your project, and import it whole right in to FCP.

Nice!

Alexander,

What set-up are you running Motion on?

- Joe

It was the top dog a while ago. Not anymore, but it's a dual 2 GHz G5, 9800 Pro 128 MB VRAM, 4 GBs of ram. I was going to add premium gasoline to it, but everyone said not to. Something about an explosion or something.... I dunno....

:-)

Awesome Alex Thanks for sharing.

mike

When dropping your .motn project into the FCP canvas did the motion project change in size?

Yes and no.

Here the file size of the .motn file is 196k. That's the file sitting in my hard drive. It's the lesson file and it is does have the dolphin movie file as part of the project, but the project file itself is on 196k.



Now if you look at the FCP logging info, you will see the same file in the asset bin, which is about the same size.



Where you do it, is in the render Manager.



With nothing else in this example project to cloud the issue, you can see the render manager is 17.2 MBs.

So I am sure this adds size to your project. I don't see how it couldn't, though not exactly the way you would think. It's all linked.

-Alex

That shouldn't add size to the project file. The render manager is simply a data base for your render files, wherever they are on your hard drives.

What's the FCP project file size before and after you imported the .motn file?

All the best,

Tom

The project file size is right above the Motion Project file in the first graphic. It remains 24k. It hardly adds to the size.

Thanks Alex. I wasn't sure if it was before or after.

All the best,

Tom

Well, that's the tutorial file with lesson one, which has no audio. So its not a perfect test either. Right now, I am just very roughly exploring the software. I am on lesson 2, I have played with their media (a lot) and have tested the interacting between FCP and DVDSP3. There are all kinds of little things to learn with this. Layers can set an opacity for example, which affects all that is in the layer, but setting an item in the layer stack, adds to that effect.

Say you have 50% opacity on the layer itself. The contents are 50%, but if you click on properties for the items inside the layer, they state 100%. Its a cascade effect. Now if you set one item in the layer stack directly to say 50%, it is now really 25%. Half of the half.

In Photoshop I can use teh arrow keys to nudge an object in any direction. This its command-arrow direction or or Option, I forget.

I had hoped I could group objects together and then apply a repel behavior and on object be repels against the group as a whole, but that effects each of the object, so even though they are a group, they all run away from each other.

You get the idea.

There are lots of things to figure out with this new software. I am no doubt we will believe one truth, then find we are wrong and find a way to do it after all. We are all learning from scratch, and nothing is really set in stone just yet. We'll get there soon enough I am sure.

-Alex

typo city...


forgive me..

The size of the Motion project, like the size of an FCP project, has little to do with the content or length since it only stores information about the media- in and out points, behaviors, filters and so on. The size will vary depending on the complexity of the project.

You could have a one hour Motion project with a miniscule file size- if it is only one layer and a title saying "Hi Mike"

The rendered files are actual media data, and reflect the length of the Motion project. So the above project's render files would be 13 GB.

Conversely, you could have a 10 second animation whose render files would be 36 MB, but the project file would be way bigger than the one hour project, if you had 100 layers with tons of behaviors, filters, titles, and whatnot.

Watch for big Motion news on our site in the next couple days!!!

You forgot to say what site is your site?

:-)

Woops! Sorry Alex.

[www.dvcreators.net]

Josh is the Grand Poobah of DV Creators, makers of such classics as the FCP PowerStart, and currently DV Enlightenment and LiveType PowerStart.

And he dances a mean Tango.

:-)

mike

So Josh,

Do we get the extra discount on this or what? Even a bad guesser can figure this one out.

:-)

Yes, PLEASE order from the lafcpug store (once it is posted) to help support lafcpug.org. Lafcpug members will get free First Class shipping- a better deal than if you order on our site.