I need to create animated pie charts.

[Zane Barker]

Try Keynote, and then export your chart as a video file. I don’t know the extent of keynotes animation abilities but I know i can do some.

There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!

[Richard Harrington]

If you own the official Apple book on iWork.. this is covered in detail on the last chapter (bonus PDF on DVD-ROM)

Richard M. Harrington, PMP

Author: Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, and ATS:iWork

[Dave Jenkins]

Boris Red, but it cost almost as much as FCP Studio.

Dajen Productions
Santa Barbara, CA
Mac Pro 2.8 Octo – AJA Kona LHe
Huge 1.2 Raid
FCP 6.0.2-OS X 10.5.2-QT 7.4

[Kris Anderson]

Not sure if this is the sort of thing you had in mind but may be worth checking out….

https://toolfarm.stores.yahoo.net/diandaan.html

https://toolfarm.stores.yahoo.net/stmo1.html

I know they’re not FCP based…but may be useful if you have access to other platforms.

[Stace Carter]

also:

https://www.eventdv.net/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=49665

[Godfrey Gudeski]

Thank you all for your responses. I just wanted to post my ultimate solution to this problem in the event that it can help anyone else. I know I often stumble on threads like this years after they’ve been written and find them helpful.

So:

I looked at Digital Anarchy’s Data Animator. It was a bit clunky for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it doesn’t work with FCP or with an Intel Mac so I had to use it on my Windows box (which is considerably slower) with Adobe AE. Also, the interface wasn’t very intuitive and the support was rather slow (it took a few days to get an email response to a basic question). They did say they would be integrating FCP and Intel capability “within a few months” but frankly I’m not convinced; they apparently hadn’t updated the download page in two years.

Next I tried iWork’s Keynote and also Powerpoint. Both are fine, but they lacked mobility I was looking for (camera movement, animated movement within the chart). It looked fine for a presentation at a convention, but not very cinematic.

Then I looked into Stagetools’ program Moving Charts. This was a bit closer to what I wanted, but it’s a Windows-only product and the resolution isn’t quite up to the 1920 width I need for this project; the max would probably end up being about 1000 pixels in width. The guy at Stagetools (very responsive, by the way) said it wasn’t a product they support with any real enthusiasm, that it never really “took off”.

So I bit the bullet and paid for Boris Red. This program is as spectacular as its high price suggests. As someone who hasn’t really worked in a 3D environment much, the learning curve promises to be tremendous. But I’m already hooked on the powerful features this program offers, including a bar chart preset, which makes things much easier.

Thanks to all who took the time to answer my post; I appreciate it!