HDV slideshow

[Scott Novasic]

My opinion is after effects is far better and more versatile than final cut. Final cut is a great app, but used for longer form projects in general. Both will do the job for you, but if you want to have some basic 3d moves with your images and access to many more things that can make your slideshow ‘less boring’ so to speak, I think after effects wins out on that. With stills, I dont think rendering time will be much of an issue, Final Cut is faster for a lot of things, but what you are trying to do should render so fast in AE I dont think there is that big a difference. Again, just my opinion.

SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects

[Mark Suszko]

Well if you have Final Cut, you likely also have Motion, and frankly that is going to do a lot of things that AE does but much faster, particularly the less complicated things like these slide moves.

Motion has a lot of canned moves in it ready to apply and modify to suit, plus it has a simple interface that lets you just grab an image and drag it across the screen to define the path with no keyframing needed. Yet if there is a need to keyframe, Motion has a window for that too, but normally you wouldn’t need it.

The first thing I ever did in Motion, I never even cracked the instructions, I imported a photoshop file with elements on four layers and Motion *knew* what I wanted to do with it; it was all very intuitive, breaking down each layer to a separate track and letting me easily animate a complex coming together of the pieces into one composition.

The fastest, best tool is the one you know best and are most comfortable with, not necessarily the most powerful. This will be a different choice for each person according to what they know and like. Friday I was building an 3-layer animated composite just using FCP’s tracks and basic motion controls and I got it to do what I wanted after some initial fumbling, but then thought to myself “Self, next time you wanna make that move, throw it into Apple Motion and you’ll likely be faster at it”. Not only that, but in Motion I can make and save the moves and then add different items and save a lot of time as opposed to recreating the composite from scratch every time.

I think AE for this kind of work is swatting a fly with a bazooka. AE can do a marvelous job for you, no question, but how fast can you work in it is what I’d want to know. There are also plug-ins that handle pan and zoom moves specifically. If you’re going to do these a lot, you might want to invest in them as a time saver.

[Scott Novasic]

Its funny. Using After Effects for 15yrs roughly, and I find motion
terribly limiting. It is ‘counter intuitive’ to the way animators tend to work in both 2d and 3d. simple keyframes are the language of most animation software. I admire apps like motion for trying to re think things some. But the reason it has such little adoption among pro users, I feel, is because it has too many limitations, and presets look like, well, presets. As far as speed goes, after effects would render the project in question at FASTER than realtime. So, speed is not an issue to consider. One issue I personally think of, is, if you are looking to do this kind of work and more adventurous stuff in your career, its always nice to use and get more used to the industry standard applications.

I look at it this way. why try and catch fly with your hand (motion) when you could use a large net instead. AE 🙂

SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects

[Mark Suszko]

Nobody will regret learning AE, but like I said, the software you know best and are most comfortable with is usually the best for you, even if there are better tools out there. If you have over a decade of AE experience you’re likely to be mad speedy with it. Someone with just a modicum of experience, not so much.

[Ana Rad]

Thank you all, in the end I did it in Final Cut, it was very very slow (3yo Powerbook) and it seemed like the fastest option.
I tried Motion as well, but since I’ve never used it before and I had to finish all in 3 days, I didn’t have time to learn how to use it (I thought it was much more intuitive).
Thanx again;
Ana