Motion Effect button

[David Mcquinn]

Are you trying to apply the effect to a the source clip or a precompute?

[Paul Allen]

David, not entirely sure what you mean by a pre-compute, but I’ve tried appying the effect to both the clip in the source window and also on the timeline, but no joy,
thanks,
Paul

[Michael Hancock]

A precompute is a title or imported graphic/video with an alpha. Basically, it’s a render file. You can’t put a speed effect directly onto a precomputer, and the workaround is kind of a nuisance.

Regarding a motion effect to an actual clip–are you just hitting the motion effect button on your timeline, or are you actually applying a motion effect from the effects palette?

Unfortunately, Xpress Pro doesn’t let you keyframe a motion effect, so it’s hard to get exactly the speed you want and speed ramps are all but impossible. If you go to your effects palette you’ll find several motion effect options, or you can do a Fit to Fill of your source clip to your timeline. Then, when you hit the motion effect button on your timeline toolbar your motion effect editor will open up.

Does that make sense? If you have a motion effect button available on your source monitor toolbar (you can map it if you don’t) it should open up a box where you can set the speed percentage when it gets cut into the timeline. Have you tried this, and it’s not working?

Michael.

[Paul Allen]

Thanks Michael. Yeh, I have the motion effect button available on my source monitor toolbar, but it doesn’t do anything when I click on it.
Using the effects palette I can drop an effect onto a clip on the timeline and get it to work, but none of them seem to do a simple fast speed effect. Also, when I go to edit the effect, I don’t get any options.
Sorry, I feel like I’m doing something fundamentally wrong here,
Paul

[Michael Hancock]

I have no idea why it isn’t working. I just opened Xpress Pro v5.2 here and have the motion effect button in my source monitor as well, so I loaded some footage and hit it. Up popped a little box where I could set the speed, the blending interpolation, or choose the Fit to Fill option. It should be working.

About the last thing I can suggest would be new user settings. Just create a brand new user, open a project, and see if it works then. User settings do become corrupted sometimes and weird things happen–this may be one of them. If a new user setting fixes it then remap your keyboard, layout your workspaces, etc…and save a copy in case they’re corrupted again. Otherwise, a reinstall may be worth trying. Uninstall the Avid software and reinstall it to see if it fixes the problem.

As far as applying an effect then editing the parameters–in Xpress Pro you can’t. I applied a basic Speed Ramp timewarp effect to a clip in the timeline then tried to open the Motion Effect editor–it doesn’t do anything here either! I’m wondering if it’s just something that was left by accident from the Media Composer code (since Xpress Pro is simply a limited version of Media Composer). Weird. It wouldn’t even do anything when I just hit the Motion Effect button in the timeline without having applied a motion effect to my clip–I figured it would have at least let me set the speed of the clip. I guess not, though. It does work from the source monitor, though.

Good luck. Let us know if you get it working. If I come across another possible solution I’ll be sure to post it.

Michael.

[Paul Allen]

Micahel,
Many thanks for looking into this in such detail. I’ll have a look into new user settings first I think and see if I have any joy. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks again,
Paul