Send to Motion….. Could Automatic Duck tackle this?

[David Mathis]

You bring up a great question at which point i have no answer. This has long been a minor beef for me, the lack of “Send To Motion” is frustrating. My guess is that, going forward, Apple feels Motion is integrated enough, depending on your definition of that word. Every update that has come about has not fullfilled that one little wish.

Another little wish that I have is the spacial conform setting. I tried using an adjustment layer, spanned across several clips, with the hopes of changing the spacial conform setting globally to those clips within the adjustment layer. That and in the blend modes have to be changed on the individual clips as it will not work in the adjustment layer. Opacity, position and those other things will work. Not sure why this is. Nice to have a way to create an adjustment layer but still needs some minor tweaking.

I also had to create my own countdown leader, something else that is missing.

Sorry for the bit of rant and getting a bit off topic here. I just feel FCP X needs some minor tweaking because I really love editing with it.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Send to motion was a completely different animal in FCP Legend.

The Motion project used to be a big part of Quicktime so much so that you used to be able to play a Motion project in QT, and import a Motion project in to a layer in to Ae. It also included fair amount of XML. I believe you can still import Motion 4 project to Ae through Ae’s Pro Import After Effects option.

Now, Motion 5 has been rewritten and doesn’t seem to have much fcpxml exposed to let an import happen.

[Walter Soyka]

A couple of relevant re-posts follow:

(From “10.2 update” on 5/29/15 at https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/81294)

.motn files are themselves XML-based and somewhat human-readable. While there do seem to be a few magic numbers [link] throughout, an enterprising developer could at least partially reverse-engineer the project file format and hope it doesn’t change too much in the next version.

In fact, Automatic Duck could bring Motion 4 projects into Ae, but it won’t work on M5 projects due to changes in the format.

(From “Send to motion in FCPX” on 2/14/2012 at https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/26524#26626)

FCP7 didn’t need to know anything about Motion’s project file or data structures; it relied on a little bit of very cool QuickTime trickery.

Look in your Macintosh HD > Library > QuickTime folder, and you’ll see a file called Motion.component. This component allows the system to present Motion files as QuickTime-accessible media, which were rendered on-the-fly (and under-the-hood) by the Motion rendering engine. Any QuickTime-aware application could “import” .MOTN files this way — even After Effects [link].

Given that, maybe this is in part a casualty of the QuickTime/AVFoundation transition.

(From “Send to motion in FCPX” on 2/14/2012 at https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/26524#26633)

I think the Motion component was a frame server [link]. When the requesting application (be it FCP7, QuickTime Player, or in that example, AE) asks for the next frame of video from a .MOTN file, the Motion QT component directs the Motion engine to render that frame and then passes it back to the application as if it were any other piece of traditional media.

In other words, from FCP’s or AE’s perspective, it is very much like a codec (decoded by the QuickTime framework). From the component’s perspective, and from the Motion renderer’s perspective, yes, it’s Motion’s internal format, not pre-rendered video.

The brilliance of the old system was abstracting all that away from other apps, so they never had to know that they were using a Motion project; it just felt like a regular piece of media, just like any other .MOV file. By engineering the system well, integration came for free.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Tim Wilson]

[Walter Soyka] “The brilliance of the old system was abstracting all that away from other apps, so they never had to know that they were using a Motion project; it just felt like a regular piece of media, just like any other .MOV file. By engineering the system well, integration came for free.”

That’s exactly the direction that I personally would tend to identify as “modern,” “forward,” and “generally a good thing.”

So why is it, in practice, backwards and perfidious of me to want, or beneath Apple’s apparent level of interest, to continue the existence of integration that comes for free?

Or is this new, un-integrated, and — do I understand correctly? — un-integratable new arrangement superior in some way that my dinosaur eyes don’t see? What’s the advantage for either Apple or its customers for Apple to be so committed to not integrating its products as well as they used to be?

Of course, all of this assumes that I’m understanding you, which, through no fault of yours, is likely more optimistic than is useful.

What’s the what?

[Bret Williams]

People say “send to motion” but what I think they mean is “open in motion.” That’s really the key. Send to motion just got the round trip process started by saving your selected bit of clips as a motion project and replacing those clips with the motion project. The real key was the ability to place a motion project in the timeline and open it in motion like dynamic link on AE/Premiere. As it stands right now, you can place a generator in the timeline, but once it’s there you can’t open it in motion and change things. You can open and change the generator itself, but that doesn’t ripple to instances already in the timeline. I don’t often need send to motion. I use clips in Motion projects but don’t usually have a need to send a sequence.

If you really need send to motion you can still do it with a copy of xtoCC and a copy of FCP 7.

[Charlie Austin]

[Tim Wilson] “So why is it, in practice, backwards and perfidious of me to want, or beneath Apple’s apparent level of interest, to continue the existence of integration that comes for free?
“

Maybe it’s not? QTKit was very mature when this integration was available. AVFoundation is still a moving target. The fact that QTKit still works at all may mean that AVF isn’t really done yet. Or not…

FWIW, QT Reference Movies, which Apple had “killed”, are back, as is the ability to use growing files etc. So…

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Don Walker]

[Bret Williams] ” I don’t often need send to motion. I use clips in Motion projects but don’t usually have a need to send a sequence.”

Are you saying Bret, that you wouldn’t find the ability to edit and faux composite a group of clips together in a project, get the timing just how you want it, and then send that nest (for a lack of a better word) to Motion for the hard core effect work, useful?

don walker
texarkana, texas

John 3:16

[Bret Williams]

Some would. I just don’t come across the need that often. There is more need for that in AE because it’s RT playback is kinda useless. In motion, with just some video and audio and basic effects, you can playback just like a regular NLE. So it’s pretty easy to accomplish a few bits of timing.

But usually if I’m doing an open graphic with some shots I can time them in Motion or output a ProRes clip pre edited.

What I could use is the ability to take a complicated motion sequence in the timeline and re-open it in motion to make changes and whatnot and see the results back in the sequence without having to render and import and replace.

In any case, we certainly don’t have roundtripping. We have a plugin maker. Which is pretty cool too.

[Walter Soyka]

[Charlie Austin] “QTKit was very mature when this integration was available. AVFoundation is still a moving target. The fact that QTKit still works at all may mean that AVF isn’t really done yet. Or not…”

How long is reasonable to give Apple the benefit of the doubt on “missing” features?

AV Foundation is nearly five or six years old, depending on whether you count from Lion or iOS 4. That’s enough time to go from FCP 1.0 to FCP 5.0.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Walter Soyka] “How long is reasonable to give Apple the benefit of the doubt on “missing” features? “

It may be that AVFoundation may never be QTKit for whatever reason.

There was a thread here the other day taking about a patent filing from Apple that discusses a recently approved patent for an audio mixer for an app that looks a lot like fcpx.

The patent was filed Sept 30, 2011, and approved Jan 2016.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/86775

Not that a patent needs to determine a release schedule, or ensures that the feature will be included in a future release, but if we have to wait over 4 years for ‘feature approval’ from the patent office, we could be waiting around a long time for other features.