6.0.2 motion template warning…

[Chris Borjis]

[CoryTV] “Furthermore, is showing the media as “rendered” even though it’s clearly unrendered.”

and when you do render, does it take severely long times to do so? Or does it render fast now like it did in 5x?

[Jeremy Garchow]

You can now select the render quality of motion templates in the preferences. You can choose draft, normal, or best. Best, of course, will be the slowest.

From the release notes:

“Updating Motion and Motion Templates
Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 master templates require Motion version 3.0.2 or later. By upgrading to Motion version 3.0.2 or later, you take advantage of important fixes and improvements made in the Motion application and templates.

Setting Render Preferences for Motion Master Templates and Motion Projects
Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 is preset to render Motion templates and Motion projects at Normal quality. If the render quality is not adequate, you can change the render setting for Motion templates and projects in the Render Control tab of the User Preferences window.

When Motion master template and project rendering is set to Normal, Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 renders your templates at the same quality seen when rendering the templates at Normal quality in Motion. If you determine that the render quality is not high enough, as might be the case when your Motion templates or projects use render-intensive features such as 3D text rotation or 3D particles, you can change the render quality setting to Best. However, rendering Motion templates and projects at Best quality can greatly extend the time it takes to render your movie.

Note: Selecting the Always Use Best Quality When Rendering Movies checkbox in the Render Control tab of the User Preferences window sets Final Cut Pro to always render your Motion templates and projects at Best quality during export or when doing any necessary final rendering for output, no matter which quality level you chose from the Quality pop-up menu. To render your Motion templates and projects at the Normal or Draft quality, be sure this checkbox is deselected. In Final Cut Pro 6.0.2, the Always Use Best Quality When Rendering Movies checkbox is deselected by default.”

Jeremy

[Cory Caplan]

As the other poster stated, you can now set quality preferences in the FCP timeline, however, this is akin to putting a bandaid on an amputation… Yes, you can drop the quality to make up for the piss poor rendering times, however, FCP just took 2 minutes to render a 7 second text type-on effect from Motion, utilizing only 40% of CPU (out of 400%). Same effect in Motionr”best settings” renders to disk in 18 seconds.

Also, I turned off all other layers to test, just so it would be a fair fight.

The motion-templates emperor still has no clothes.

[Jeremy Garchow]

So why not just render out of Motion?

[Cory Caplan]

Well, as my jaw hits the floor, just off the top of my head, why not do it in after effects? Or why not just take prerendered graphics and put it over your AVID timeline?

Motion templates were in the top 5 reasons I switched to FCS– if not #1. I have many, many, many, many graphics in the commercials I do. I’m still praying that maybe, one day I might be able to save some time by doing my graphics using a template that can be updated in FCP as promised without taking much longer than prerendering everything manually like I was doing before.

And the other reason?
FCP sucks high holy balls with realtime alpha. Not to mention some truly insanely bizarre behavior with “straight” alphas mixed in with scaling artifacts and disolves.

So, my graphical sophie’s choice in FCP is do everything manually– the way I was doing it before, only instead of bringing into my AVID which plays nicely with realtime alphas, into FCP which I then have to RERENDER which, by the way, takes only 40%-80% of my processor instead of the 400% it’s capable of– Or I can just suck it up, use the motion templates, and have a lot of coffee/snack breaks while I rack up hours I can’t bill for, as I’m on a production contract based on the finished product..

Yeah, great workaround.

Sorry, it’s really, really not personal, but I would love some backup from folks in the form of vocal disappointment towards Apple with these issues– They are not delivering what they promised. They are LIARS, and instead of REALLY FIXING IT, they now allow us to drop the quality to make up for their lackluster coding. Thanks guys.

I’m beginning to think I’m in a very very very small minority of people who push their systems very hard… If a lot of people were experiencing these totally illogical slowdowns on a regular basis, there’d be a fullscale riot in cupertino.

Let me see if my render is done…

[Jeremy Garchow]

Yikes.

[CoryTV] “I’m beginning to think I’m in a very very very small minority of people who push their systems very hard… “

I doubt that with certainty.

I would voice your opinions directly to Apple. Write every day if you have to:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html

What you are doing does work, it just takes a while.

And yes, real time alphas in FCP has been horrendous. I was hoping ProRes would change that, but alas it has not. I have also found that premultiplied does tend to work a bit better in FCP, but I thought that was just me.

Jeremy

Jeremy

[George Loch]

Two obvious questions:

Did you ensure that the template settings and the sequence settings are compatible?

Also, have you tried a new 6.02 project with the templates freshly placed?

-gl

Prologue Media
http://www.prologuemedia.com

[Chris Borjis]

[prologue] “Did you ensure that the template settings and the sequence settings are compatible?

Also, have you tried a new 6.02 project with the templates freshly placed?”

It doesn’t have to do with that at all.

Ever since Final Cut Studio 2 came out, .motn files within FCP take an unreasonably long time to render.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Borjis] “Ever since Final Cut Studio 2 came out, .motn files within FCP take an unreasonably long time to render. “

This is true, my work around for that is to render out of motion and place the rendered movie over the motion project in the FCP timeline and then disable the motion project by selecting it and hitting control-b. If i then need to make changes, I simply open the motion project by right clicking and choosing ‘open in editor’ then make changes, save and render out of motion to the same name and reconnect the media from within FCP.

It’s not ideal but it does work well.

[Tom Brooks]

Nice synopsis for the workaround.