Send to Motion and Back again, and again

[Zak Mussig]

Matt,

I think the reference movie concept was assuming that he wanted to use only a specific portion of a longer clip rather than having a clip that is the correct length, and has the in and out he already wants. Exporting a reference movie would give him more control over which part of the clip is being brought into Motion to minimize futzing in the Motion timeline.

Dan,

Your Motion project is still as editable as any Motion project, but it is very correct that just replacing the clip in your original sequence you sent to Motion will take your right back to square one. All you’ll need to do is open the project in Motion (through FCP is preferable so it looks for changes) select the clip you want to replace and drag the clip you want to replace it with into it’s media container in the inspector. If Motion shares it’s media window between open projects (I don’t know if it does or not) you could conceivably change your clip out in FCP, and select just your new track 5 clip and send that to Motion. When the new project you make opens, just add the clip you sent to the media list, and then you have quick access to the clip you want, with the correct in and out points, from your real Motion project. I kinda just made that up, and it’s speculation… but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that media list was shared among all open projects.

Hope that helps you out without muddying the waters too much,
Zak

[Zak Mussig]

Dan,

Felt I should just try and clarify a point that some other people have made. The “Send to Motion” option is not just a one way street because you can reopen and make changes to your Motion project, and FCP will update to reflect those changes when you save and close the project. The programs are talking to one another, but that doesn’t mean that the communication between them is telepathic. If you’ve changed your mind and now want to us a different clip than your originally told FCP to send to Motion, but want to keep everything else about your project the same, you have to somehow tell it that. SInce FCP is simply reading a Motion file, you have to tell the Motion file that you want to use a different piece of media than you are currently. The issue just seems to be how to make the clip available in Motion to make the swap. You’ve gotten several good options, so just pick one and run with it.

Zak

[Dan Powers]

Thanks for the clarification and for all the input. I just started using Motion today and had a little bit of a curve to figure out how it integrates. Pretty cool application. Like to see some improvements in keyframing but overall not bad at all for a V2 product!

Thanks again.

Dan