[Andy Neil]

[Chris Conlee] “Because I’m not familiar with FCPX’s method of doing this, how does it work? Honestly, I’d be surprised if Avid couldn’t do it.”

It’s a two function solution in Avid. The basic replace edit in FCPX will replace a clip in the project with the IN/OUT of the clip in the browser, changing the length of the timeline clip to match the length of the browser clip and if done in the primary storyline, it moves the rest of the timeline down to make room.

In Avid, it’s equivalent to doing a replace edit and then a trim of the new clip to match a new length.

Andy

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107277729326633563425/videos

[Andy Neil]

Motion templates need to be located in the Movies folder in the users home folder or they won’t be seen in FCPX.

Andy

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107277729326633563425/videos

[Andy Neil]

[Keith Koby] “Imagine you create an animated lower 3rd that is 20 seconds long but only want 10 seconds of it and want to throw a fade on the end. Making it shorter only retimes it to make it faster. Or if you make a 7 second countdown slate and want to shorten it to 5. Impossible.”

No it’s not. It’s completely doable. You just need to make sure and set a project loop point marker at the end so FCPX knows you’re looping the generator.

Check out this tutorial of mine which covers how to make a looping background.

FCPX INs and OUTs: Looping Backgrounds

And regarding your lower third example, you can use markers to force a specified range of frames to be played normally and not retimed so that expansion only occurs in the still portion of an animated L3. Check out my other tutorial on Lower Thirds that shows how this is done.

Motion Quick Tip: Custom Titles for FCPX

The pertinent section starts around 18:00.

Andy

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107277729326633563425/videos

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[Andy Neil]

What you’re talking about is called Motion Typography. If you google that, you’ll find a number of tutorials on it (although I don’t know if any of them are for Motion). But you don’t always have to make each word separate. That’ll make hundreds of layers and will slow Motion to an absolute crawl, I’m sure. Without getting into the specifics of how you’d complete a Motion Typographic video, I have two suggestions.

First, break the video into pieces. This will take some planning, but trying to do a 3-4 minute song with hundreds of layers of text will become unwieldy quickly.

Second, if a line of text will have the same kind of animation (like a scale up for example), you can write the entire line of text in a single layer and then apply a sequence text behavior to animate the individual words into place. This is how I’d do it.

Good luck.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

FCPX is rendering in ProRes. If your source files are H264, then you don’t really gain anything by rendering in ProRes except for some optimization in playback. But I haven’t had that much trouble playing back H264 in editing so I probably wouldn’t bother rendering until the end (for export).

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

[David Mathis] “1. More plug-ins Adobe wins hands down “

I try not to consider AE and Motion to be in competition, but this is also a catch 22. Plugin manufacturers don’t make as many plugins for Motion because it has a much smaller user base. The user base grows slowly because there aren’t enough plugins.

[David Mathis] “2. Expressions, parameters seem to require a couple of steps too many and are not as flexible”

True. But though behaviors are less flexible, they are far and away easier to pick up and learn. People good at expressions don’t believe this, but that’s because they can’t remember when they didn’t understand how to make expressions work.

[David Mathis] “3. Null object”

Any layer in Motion can be a null object. Just create a layer and turn it off. I do this all the time.

[David Mathis] “4. The ability to parent layers together”

Linking provides some of this, but it’s too limited.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

Great list, John. I especially would love to see an embedded audio option. It would make gfx package building so much better. I don’t even need a B&T generator, just the ability to make one with embedded tone.

One of the biggest things I’ve wanted from Motion is a 3D paint stroke.

Also, I would love to be able to replicate a 3D element like a 3D paint stroke or particle emitter.

I would like clones to maintain any 3D properties. For example, if you create a 3D particle emitter or replicator to mimic a 3D paint stroke (there it is again), and then clone that layer, I’d like the clone to be able to react in 3D space the same.

A better RAM preview. One that doesn’t max out to the gfx card memory and will allow a preview of an entire project even if it’s complicated.

Project nesting. Being able to place one project inside another as a kind of precomp.

A way for users to create custom behavior simulations. Wouldn’t it be great if enterprising users could script custom behaviors that anyone could use?

As far as Motion/FCPX collaboration…

A menu option in the inspector to save a group of effects applied to a clip as a single group. So if you have a color effect, blur, texture filter all combining on one clip, FCPX can group them (and their parameter values) into a single effect that can be saved to the favorites theme you suggested and applied as one to other clips in other projects as needed.

A default option to restrict whether or not a transition applied to a top level clip affects clips below. In other words, if you apply a flip transition to a title, that you can choose for the effect to only affect the title and not any clips below it if you so desire.

An individual default transition length. It would work like this. Right-click a transition in the effects browser and select “Choose Transition Length”, and then type in what you want in frames. That default length is saved for that transition only. Different transitions can have different default lengths.

Better UI tools for creating On Screen Controls for custom effects.

Multiple transition/filter/generator shortcuts similar to the favorites folder in FCP7.

Most of these are probably pipe dreams, but you asked. I don’t want any new transition or effect content really. Most of that default stuff is useless or else it’ll become ubiquitous when everyone and their dog starts using it.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

Thanks for the locator app. Very cool. I’m amazed that there are so many VFX shots in a tv series. Considering there are less than 500 in The Matrix and you’re breaking that practically every week. The VFX guys must be chained to their Flames.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

[Chris Conlee] “Working on Once Upon A Time at ABC, I have to eye-match sometimes as many as 800 or more VFX shots per episode, so this lack of functionality would be a deal-breaker right there.”

Chris, can you go into a little more detail about your workflow regarding eye-matching VFX shots? Particularly how it pertains to replace and/or ganging? You use Avid I presume on Once Upon A Time?

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

[Scott Witthaus] “We get it Andy. You’re a Premiere person and that’s cool. Not even sure why you continue to post on this forum.”

Media 100 4Lyfe!!!

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com