Does FCP have “easy-ease” keyframe capability?

[Jeremy Garchow]

Yes, kind of. The functionality is there but very poorly implemented. If you have image + wireframe enabled in your canvas you can control-click on the keyframes and choose ease in/ease out then play with the bezier handles which will drive you nutty. If you are key framing form the motion tab in the viewer, you can control click on a keyframe and choose smooth and play with the bezier handle which will drive you nutty.

Might be best to bounce out to Motion for this.

Jeremy

[Matthew Nelson]

[Michael Escher] “When I have done similar work in AE the easy-ease, easy-ease out, and other “ramping” keyframes softened the movements and made them feel more organic. Are there similar controls for FCP?”

Yes FCP does have an easy ease option. Set your keyframes then in the Canvas window right click on the keyframes you what to easy ease. A context menu will appear and you can select easy ease. Easy ease will give you bezier handles with 2 control points the out adjusts the interpolation path. The inner adjusts the interpolation distribution.

Enjoy!

Matt

[Michael Escher]

Thanks for your suggestions Jeremy.

How does one “bounce out” to motion? Through export?

Thanks,

Michael Escher

[Jeremy Garchow]

If you have FCS2, you can simply right click-your timeline or on the clips you want to send out and choose Send to > Motion. Work in Motion, then hit save. When you hit save, FCP will be updated. render in FCP. You can also export right form Motion when you are done with the Motion work and bring that movie in to FCP. FCPs Motion rendering is slow.

Jeremy

[Dean Sensui]

FCP’s controls are much more cumbersome than AE. I find myself spending a lot of time fiddling with FCP’s motion controls and not getting the desired results.

AE is straightforward and much more precise.

Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii

[Jeremy Garchow]

Q[Dean Sensui] “FCP’s controls are much more cumbersome than AE. I find myself spending a lot of time fiddling with FCP’s motion controls and not getting the desired results.

AE is straightforward and much more precise.”

Ditto.

[Michael Escher]

Slow? My god, it’s impossible. I tried each and every way I could think of (having FCP being the only program running, letting the auto render do the rendering, etc.) and each and every time the computer would lock up half way through the render requiring a hard restart. Over seven times I did this (changing the set up each time) putting at least a half an hour into each render before it crashed again. And I have a nice new powermac with five gigs of memory, an Aja LHe card and breakout box and a RadeonX1900 graphics card. WTF?

I finally did render out the movie and imported it into FCP, but I have to say that it kind of defeats the purpose if “real time” changes and file exchanges between the two programs when you can’t render out from a Motion file in FCP. I may as well be using After Effects and Premier, which as others have mentioned in this thread, is much easier to fine tune than what I was able to do in either FCP or Motion. I love Final Cut and the Macintosh platform, but until they get their s*** together in their FCP Studio platform, why should I buy it again?

Michael Escher

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Michael Escher] “I may as well be using After Effects and Premier, which as others have mentioned in this thread, is much easier to fine tune than what I was able to do in either FCP or Motion.”

Yes, FCS does not have the integration, but Premiere is not as good of an editor as FCP, and Motion is no where near AE. It’s a give and take. If you want to sketch out your timeline in FCP then send it to AE, automatic duck is the tool for you. I use it a lot for things just like this.

I told you it’d drive you nutty.

If I need to bounce to Motion, I usually send to MOtion, do the work, save. Export from Motion and bring the movie into FCP and lay it on top of the Motion project. I then disable the Motion project (control-b). That way, if i need to change something, I simply open the disabled Motion project by right clicking and choosing open in editor. It opens in Motion, I make my change, and then render out another QT. It can’t touch the Adobe integration, but I like FCP so I deal with it. Automatic Duck Pro Import AE is awesome too. http://www.automaticduck.com

Jeremy

[Chris Poisson]

Michael,

Another vote for AE. FCPs keyframing is just awful. and not just for the easing method.

We need to hammer at Apple to fix this, instead of adding glitz to the Studio that is just cosmetic. Let’s have some basic functionality here!

I had several jobs last year that had to be done n an editor, due to budget constraints, we need to be able to do simple compositing in FCP.

Have a wonderful day.

[Scott Sniffen]

If I right click in canvas, I get nothing but a tiny box. If I control click KF in viewer, all I get is an option to “clear”. What am I doing wrong? Thanks.