FCP Image jumping when adding “Motion Keyframe” (with text layer)

[Kevin Monahan]

Try rendering them, and then see how they play. You have too many things going on for smooth real time playback of effects.

[Serena Kefayeh]

All the clips are rendered, but the images still jump around, I’m not sure why. If I play the image motion keyframe by itself it plays smoothly. As soon as I add other layers (the transparent box layer, the text layer or both) it starts to jump even after rendering. In fact, I’m FORCED to render in order to see the motion, because otherwise I get a black and blue screen that says “unrendered”.

Thanks in advance for the help!

[John Hadwin]

You’re not going to believe this! While watching one of the great videos on Lynda.com I learned a VERY useful fact that I shouldn’t have to learn because the people that designed FCP should FIX THE PROBLEM… but here’s the solution. It has to do with using even integers with your scale, rotation, center, anchor point, etc… In other words, if you animate your scale from 100 to 117.8, you’ll likely see jumping and screw-ups. or say it’s at 118.1, or 119.3 or 111, or 3, or 101, it will likely mess up. The same goes for center, rotation, anchor, and the whole nine yards. This means that you must tediously go through, disregarding ‘what looks good’ and round all of these numbers up or down at the keyframes (or if you’re not animating a property, still make sure the static number is an even one! i.e. 150, 118, 2342, -98). Obviously (as if anything about this is obvious) there will be odd numbers throughout the interpolation from even keyframe to even keyframe, but this should be fine!

Let me know if this solution worked for you, because it really is the difference between a dinky production and a high end production. I see it on local TV way too much and have always grimaced when I do. For this reason I have always used After Effects for my titles… until now.

[Cass Gravitt]

The tip about the integers was very helpful! I’d been working on a project myself when I came across this site, because I was having the same problem. To restate it simply, decimals are bad for motion-keyframed still images. Especially if you want the image to move slow and smooth.

Very helpful, John, thank you!

[Glen Irvine]

John,

Never seemed to experience the problem in earlier versions of FCP, but was pulling my hair out on a current project. Evened out the keyframe integers and everything is working like a charm. Many thanks for the post. Glen