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Integration troubles between FCP and Motion
I am loving all that FCP and Motion can do, but I am pulling my hair out over what has to be a basic workflow issue. Any help or direction for help would be appreciated.
When I follow the Motion tutorial or the DMTS (Inside Motion) DVD, the instructions are to select the sequence in FCP that you want to export, go to file>export>export to motion project. Only, I don’t have that option in my file menu as the tutorial shows. I do have the option to “send to motion project” but when I try to save the file, it gives me an error message: File Error: wrong type.
The only way I can export my sequence to Motion is by selecting the “using Quicktime” option in the file export menu. However, this does not allow me to embed the motion project so all the cool interoperability stuff doesn’t come into play. I would like to be able to go back and forth between the two programs so that I can send a sequence from fcp to motion, add text and behaviors, have those changes automatically update in fcp and return to fcp for for transitions and filters. Is this not the correct workflow?
When I do import a fcp sequence into motion using QT, the audio is not in sync with the video.
When I import a .motn file into fcp and place it on the timeline, I try the “open in editor” feature but the only thing it opens is a quicktime player, no motion controls.
From what I have gleaned from the forum discussions, it seems that everyone’s preferred way to deal with this is to always export using QT with a lossless preset. But isn’t fcp the preferred way to add transitions and filters?
I know I must be missing something huge here, and I am willing to learn if someone will give me some guidance or point me in the right direction.
Thanks,
Jenny Oldham
Mac OS X, version 10.4.4
Dual 2.7 GHz Power PC G5
4 GB DDR SDRAM
Final Cut HD Studio
Motion 2
Tiger -
4 Replies
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“Send to Motion” is what you want, if it isn’t working, I’d suggest trashing your prefs files.
Mark—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Editor/Producer
Apple-certified instructor, Final Cut Pro and Motion
Author, Motion Visual Quickstart Guide from Peachpit Press (coming soon)
https://www.applemotion.net -
My only complaint with the integration so far is that the different pixel aspect ratios and bit rates don’t seem to survive the trip from FCP to Motion. I tried “sending” clips from three different projects/timelines (an 8bit, 10 bit, and an HD 1080i) and they all showed up as 720×486 – 8 bit in Motion. It seems you have to reset all the parameters in Motion to match the clips you import from FCP.
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Try opening the System Settings in FCP and changing the External Editor for Video files to Motion. Then send to Motion should open correctly.
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Thanks for the suggestion Ryan! I already have it set up this way though, and the import always defaults to 720 X 486 8-bit. I used to have it set up to go into AE, but I found the integration feature to Motion much more to my liking and workflow.
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