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Apple gives up another network client
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[Chris Harlan] “I would mention, however, that though Motion started as a stand-alone, it did not stay that way for long. The Studio concept came pretty fast, and I tend to think of FCS as being a single loose unit.”
All fair.
[Chris Harlan] “Its sad, now, to see Motion and X even further apart.”
In terms of round-tripping, yes, but in other ways, I think that FCPX and M5 are much closer.
The fact that FCPX and M5 share a common renderer and have the rigging/publishing feature is really, really cool: this lets users and artists build not only their own templates for lower thirds, but also build their own effects and transitions.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “[Chris Harlan] “Its sad, now, to see Motion and X even further apart.”
In terms of round-tripping, yes, but in other ways, I think that FCPX and M5 are much closer.
The fact that FCPX and M5 share a common renderer and have the rigging/publishing feature is really, really cool: this lets users and artists build not only their own templates for lower thirds, but also build their own effects and transitions.”
I think this is terrific, and one of the areas I feel I’m missing out on by not snuggling up with X. I really do hope that somewhere along the line I can become an X advocate. Some of the features are fantastic.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Motion is great for a lot of things. I don’t think it’s an Ae replacement and honestly, I don’t think it’s trying to be.”
Motion is great for a lot of things. I am hard on it when comparing it to Ae, but as a (practically) NLE-native titler/effects package, it’s outstanding.
I think that the FCPX/M5 integration is very cool and one of the best new features in the package. I think this workflow is superior to Pr/Ae dynamic link for a great many cases (and you know I love Pr/Ae dynamic link).
[Jeremy Garchow] “Since that original announcement, Motion now has cameras, lights, and 2.5D perspective, and the UI is pretty useful to use.”
As I mentioned, Motion has consistently added features, and the 3D environment was one of the ones I had in mind. If you make a feature comparison checklist, Motion wouldn’t look that bad next to Ae. It’s the philosophical differences that most separate them.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Motion is one project at a time just like Ae is one project at a time. You can literally drag one motion project in to another, though.”
Ae projects allow more than one comp, and you can import entire Ae projects into other projects, too.
[Jeremy Garchow] “There are (a few) keyframe commands.”
Yes, my bad! Many apologies for my error here. I was an early Motion adopter (loved that realtime performance!), and I started writing my post about Motion v1, but I missed this when rewriting it to try to make it more generalized.
Shortcuts for adding keyframes and navigating keyframes were some of cool new features early on, probably in v2 if I recall correctly. They were still a bit limiting, in part because the keyframe editor was disconnected from the timeline and in part because they only worked on keyframes for the selected layer, not on all visible keyframes. Keyframe management always seemed like an afterthought.
It does look a bit different (better?) in M5, but I haven’t done any keyframe animation in the current version.
[Jeremy Garchow] “There is a keyframe view that’s not the editor.”
That little summary shows where all keyframes for a specific layer are, but it does not show what property the keyframes are for. In other words, it’s a single line that smushes all keyframes on a layer together. If that twirled down (does it in M5?), it would be very useful. As it stands, it adds only limited value.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I’m not saying this is better or worse than Ae, but they have made significant improvements in Motion.”
I used Motion quite a bit over its first few versions, and as I said before, Motion made real improvements in each release — but the application’s overall approach is unchanged from day one.
Bringing this back to my original response to Aindreas, I’d expect this pattern to continue with FCPX. If the thing missing from FCPX that you need is a feature, you might well get it; if it’s a philosophy, don’t hold your breath.
I think the market for FCPX’s philosophy is significantly larger than the market for Motion’s philosophy.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “That little summary shows where all keyframes for a specific layer are, but it does not show what property the keyframes are for. In other words, it’s a single line that smushes all keyframes on a layer together. If that twirled down (does it in M5?), it would be very useful. As it stands, it adds only limited value.”
Yes, you can click on it and change values (it also lists values), but it’s still not very handy, and doesn’t hold a candle to Ae’s kb shortcuts to parameters (t for opaciTY, etc).
Really, Motion doesn’t hold a candle at all to Ae. They are just different.
[Walter Soyka] “Bringing this back to my original response to Aindreas, I’d expect this pattern to continue with FCPX. If the thing missing from FCPX that you need is a feature, you might well get it; if it’s a philosophy, don’t hold your breath.”
If you’re saying to not wait around for tracks in FCPX, I agree.
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[Walter Soyka] “[Jeremy Garchow] “There is a keyframe view that’s not the editor.”
That little summary shows where all keyframes for a specific layer are, but it does not show what property the keyframes are for. In other words, it’s a single line that smushes all keyframes on a layer together. If that twirled down (does it in M5?), it would be very useful. As it stands, it adds only limited value.
“Ever since–I think–Motion 3, there has been a fairly robust keyframe editor that is available as an alternate tab in the full timeline view. All events are labeled, though perhaps a bit cryptically. It works well with the keyframe recorder, so that you can set broad parameters very quickly, and then fine tune. You can also filter what parameters are visible. Its quite usable, though NOT as we are all agreeing, AE.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[Walter Soyka] “Bringing this back to my original response to Aindreas, I’d expect this pattern to continue with FCPX. If the thing missing from FCPX that you need is a feature, you might well get it; if it’s a philosophy, don’t hold your breath.”
If you’re saying to not wait around for tracks in FCPX, I agree.
“Yup. If Roles gets sophisticated enough, however, I could manage with that.
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[Chris Harlan] “Ever since–I think–Motion 3, there has been a fairly robust keyframe editor that is available as an alternate tab in the full timeline view. All events are labeled, though perhaps a bit cryptically. It works well with the keyframe recorder, so that you can set broad parameters very quickly, and then fine tune. You can also filter what parameters are visible. Its quite usable, though NOT as we are all agreeing, AE.”
Motion’s keyframe editor (curve editor) was there from the beginning. Motion has always had keyframes, as I mentioned in my first post — but working with them has always been challenging when compared to other apps.
I don’t want to get too bogged down in a conversation about Motion vs Ae, because I do share the group opinion here — Motion does some things very well, but it does other things relatively poorly, and there are still other things it doesn’t do at all. I have quite a lot of good things to say about Motion, too, and I only raised my specific critiques because they illustrate the high floor, low ceiling point, and I want to explore if that applies to FCPX or not.
I think the “Motion is great for what it is, but it’s not Ae” theme that we all agree on is a key part of Aindreas’s point. As FCP Legend matured, people largely stopped saying “FCP is great for what it is, but it’s not Avid.” Motion never had a Cold Mountain moment (which is like jumping the shark, only good). Here we are, 8 years after its launch, saying that Motion is a nice titler that is just not ideal for motion graphics — when mograph was its original raison d’être!
Although I don’t agree with all his hyperbole, I think Aindreas has a fantastic point in saying that there’s no guarantee that FCPX will develop like FCP Legend did (becoming all things to all people). It might develop more like Motion (very good in key areas while disregarding others). If Apple wants FCPX to develop like FCP, they need to pay attention to FCPX’s low-ceiling areas, but is Apple really in the all-things-to-all-people business?
Personally, I think that FCPX’s improving interchange options are a good way out here. As long as the edit is portable, FCPX can be used for its strengths while mitigating its weaknesses in a way that was never applicable to Motion. I think that if this kind of interoperability work continues (and expands beyond the edit into events as well), the question of whether FCPX itself has a low ceiling becomes irrelevant.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Walter, I was just responding to your earlier statement that the keyframe editor effects only a single layer. In one view that’s true, in another its not. You can see all keyframes at one time if you want to. I’m not trying to make any larger point than that.
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Let me try again. I think I was coming across as argumentative when I was trying to expand on this question.
[Aindreas Gallagher] “FCPX, a year and a half in, has all the industry presence of its effects backbone motion. motion that no one ever cared about outside of ripple training. Which is to say, utterly none. No clients request it, it appears on no jobs boards, it features in no post houses, in a schrodinger’s cat sense, if it wasn’t discussed to the extent that it is on this forum, it might as well not exist as a means to be paid to edit.”
The context: if you are paid to deliver finished programs, this does not apply to you. Result are the only thing that counts there, and you can use whatever application you see fit: FCP Legend in 2001, Motion in 2004, FCPX in 2011. If, however, you are a freelancer being paid to work within a specific pipeline, then your application-specific knowledge is important.
After eight years on the market, there are virtually no Motion-specific jobs of this kind.
The question: what has to change in order for freelancers to be able to sell FCPX skills?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Chris Harlan] “Walter, I was just responding to your earlier statement that the keyframe editor effects only a single layer. In one view that’s true, in another its not. You can see all keyframes at one time if you want to. I’m not trying to make any larger point than that.”
Sorry, I was really unclear (again) above. The “they” referred to keyboard shortcuts, not the keyframe editor. The keyboard shortcuts for keyframe navigation only work on the keyframes of the selected layer, not on all visible keyframes of all layers in the keyframe editor.
In other words, you can see keyframes in the editor that you can’t easily navigate to with the keyboard, as you must first use the arrow keys to select the layer, then use the Shift-K / Opt-K to move back and forth. This is so slow as to practically force mouse usage.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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