-
FCP X Time Savers
Greetings everyone!
One of the great things about FCP X and Motion is the ability to publish a custom transition, effect, or generator. Some of these I like to call “essentials” as they can save time, or otherwise make for a better workflow.
One of these essentials would be a fade in / out effect. Very simple to do and takes under a minute. Just select effect from the welcome screen, duration and all those initial settings can be safely ignored, you will then see a group and a layer named “effect source”, which is nothing more then a drop zone. On the group level the fade in / out behavior was applied. From there, the only parameters needing to be published are the fade in and fade out parameters. Right after that, just simply publish out the effect.
Apply the effect to a clip in the timeline and you can fade up and down from any opacity you choose, all without keyframes.
Would love to hear from others on what they find to be useful time savers. Have a great day everyone!
P.S. Will be working on a texture overlay effect this week.
-
50 Replies
-
Publishing the strobe effect. I did that a long time ago. Just an effect we had in 7 that was lost in X.
-
This is why I would also consider Motion as an essential and as a path of opportunity. Sure, a few things are missing in FCP X but being able to create something from scratch in Motion makes up for that. On occasion, there really is no need to buy plug-ins, guess that makes it a money saver as well. To me Motion feels like a solid investment, zero risk and excellent returns.
I see lemons in life as lemonade or a 4 door gas guzzling clunker that could fall apart on me at any moment. I prefer lemonade.
-
And for the likely large group of non-X editors who lurk here to learn and who don’t have any real “hands on” experience with X,…
While it’s true that there’s no true round-tripping between X and it’s the $49 add on Motion 5 – there is quite a bit of linkage between them. In X if you option click on any of the transitions, you discover that they’re really just published Motion templates, and they’ll open into the Motion app for tweeting or revision.
From Motion, you can revise them at will, then re-“publish” existing (or newly created) motion files – so that they show up inside X via the Titles or Transitions browser.
A nice aspect of this is that whoever created the Motion file can enable or disable access to individual file attributes in a way that allows, for example, a Title designer to lock-off aspects of an overall design – perhaps to conform to a corporate stylebook – yet sill allow the editor access to changing other aspects such as text content or graphic element colors.
I think a lot of current X users needlessly pass by Motion work, but it’s a pretty amazing program who’s price totally belies it’s capabilities.
FWIW.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
-
OT, but I’ve never felt the need for fade in/out in X. Don’t we have that covered by just pressing cmd+T? How are you using it?
-
[Bill Davis] “While it’s true that there’s no true round-tripping between X and it’s the $49 add on Motion 5 – there is quite a bit of linkage between them. In X if you option click on any of the transitions, you discover that they’re really just published Motion templates, and they’ll open into the Motion app for tweeting or revision.”
I think there are a few transitions that will not open up in Motion but most will. Cannot recall at the moment which ones they are.
[Bill Davis] “From Motion, you can revise them at will, then re-“publish” existing (or newly created) motion files – so that they show up inside X via the Titles or Transitions browser.
A nice aspect of this is that whoever created the Motion file can enable or disable access to individual file attributes in a way that allows, for example, a Title designer to lock-off aspects of an overall design – perhaps to conform to a corporate stylebook – yet sill allow the editor access to changing other aspects such as text content or graphic element colors.”
Completely agree here and the ones I publish were designed to save time and prevent from constantly fiddling with settings. I just publish a few parameters and only ones that are necessary, otherwise minutes of twiddling turn into hours. 🙂
[Bill Davis] “I think a lot of current X users needlessly pass by Motion work, but it’s a pretty amazing program who’s price totally belies it’s capabilities.”
I love to think of Motion as an investment and not another “purchase” for this reason. It offers so much for such a small amount of money.
-
I occasionally use soft light overlays from Rampant Design Tools either as a transition or to add some flare to a clip. I often prefer the light leak to fade in at the beginning and out at the end, sometimes to an opacity of between 40% and 60% based on the look.
I could possibly use Command T as you described but having a pop-up menu with a selected duration kind of saves on mouse clicks. You do, however, have a valid point. Another aspect would be having to select the transition on either side then click Control D to change the duration. With the effect added to the clip, just head over to the inspector and choose the duration from the rig published from Motion. In the event that I decide not to do the fade on either side, just simply turn off the effect. Just a thought.
-
One bummer with all these great modifying and publishing is that there isn’t any report, aside from Intelligent Assistance’s Producer’s Best Friend, listing what effects are needed and/or used in a project. So swapping projects and consolidating projects is a bit of a pain. For example if you create templates in motion and use them in the timeline, and then complete a project and consolidate it with all it’s used media, these templates don’t get consolidated. They’d be completely missing on another’s machine. They should be stored within the project or in a user selectable folder outside of the user>movies folder. As I’ve suggested before this should be a line item in the Library Media inspector. Right there with renders and proxies and media, etc. Should be a location for Motion Projects. The minute you put a custom effect or template in your sequence, it should be copied (aliased) to this place. Then during consolidation it would be treated like any other media.
-
[Bret Williams] “One bummer with all these great modifying and publishing is that there isn’t any report, “
Spherico makes a few donation ware tools to help out with both listing and moving effects/templates.
https://www.spherico.de/filmtools/
-
These look great! I’m archiving a project right now and will give them a look.
-
[David Mathis] “I think there are a few transitions that will not open up in Motion but most will. Cannot recall at the moment which ones they are.”
Most the ones that operate in 3D space (like Swap and Mosaic), nearly the entire Wipes category, and the basic ones like Dissolve and Fade to Color. That isn’t to say, some of those can’t be recreated in Motion and published, but there are certainly some that were hard coded into FCPX.
As far as Motion templates go, there are a few that I go back to often.
The adjustment layer is a really good, useful effect. Published as a title, it sits atop of your project as a connected clip allowing you to apply color effects and looks to your edit without having to do it to each clip individually. Can also be used to mask off your frame.
Speaking of masking, I built my own personal mask that conforms to various Academy specs like 1,85, 2.33, etc. to mimic certain frame resolutions.
Also, until recently, FCPX didn’t have a blur effect so I built one. Mine’s still better since you can change shapes between oval (for faces) and rectangle (for objects like license plates and signs. It’s also adjustable as a blur or mosaic depending on which you prefer, has a “guide” mode that allows you to see the edge of the effect when you have things like feathering applied, and it has on screen controls for animating the mask.
As far as straight time savers in FCPX, most people are unaware that you can save color corrections as a “look” that you can apply later to other clips as or in other projects.
Andy
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107277729326633563425/videos
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up