[Ben Balser]

Cropping is the opposite of what you want to do. Resize, and if needed, reposition. Or change the frame size of your Motion project.

[Ben Balser]

Yes, the more behaviors, filters, etc, you add to a Motion project, the harder it has to work. Thus, it will slow down playback so it can show you a clear enough representation to continue doing your work. All compositing software does this, but Motion gives the best playback, so you’re not suffering as much as you would with AE. It all depends on the hardware you’re running it on.

[Ben Balser]

You can use a clone layer to do this easily. Right-click the Drop Zone, near the bottom of that pop-up menu is the option to “Make Clone Layer” which will be just that, a clone you can position and animate separately. Adding an image to the parent DZ will also add it to the clone.

[Ben Balser]

I recently upgraded from GH5s to GH6s, and I’ll state that I never had issues grading 4K from the GH5s, for television broadcast. Loved those cameras.

[Ben Balser]

I’ve been using Topaz Video AI for a couple of years now, I swear by it, best product of its kind on the market today.

[Ben Balser]

I have used Promise RAIDs for almost two decades now. My current is 32TB, super fast, no issues after several years of work.

When you say “BIG” exactly what do you mean? To me, that’s 15TB and above. To someone else that may be 4TB and above. Very subjective term to ask.

BTW, we’ve gone through many Seagate drives and none have ever failed on us.

[Ben Balser]

H264 (which is mp4) has come a long way, been advanced, and is perfectly good for use in productions, and as said before, depends on the camera. Manufacturers have great flexibility in implimenting H264, and most do a great job. We use it all the time for television broadcast and web use, and it looks great. I shoot slow motion on my iPhone 14 Pro Max, no one has ever seen the final production and said, “Hey, that looks like an iPhone.” Nope, what I hear is, “that’s great slow motion, what did you shoot it with?”

[Ben Balser]

You say when you “add” the audio, you mean when you create a Multicam with just the audio, correct? Adding audio to an existing Multicam clip doesn’t change anything. But you can override the defaults.

Select all the clips to include in your Multicam.

Right-click, select “New Multicam Clip”.

Click the bottom left button, “Use Custom Settings”.

Set it up as you need it to be, it will ignore the media’s specs at that point.

If you need to change the frame rate after the fact, can’t be done on a Mutlicam clip. Don’t ask me why, but Apple decided it can’t be done at that point. You’ll have to create the Mutlicam clip from scratch.

When using audio only clips, FCPX uses the sample rate of the audio. But audio has no frame size nor frame rate, so FCP defaults to TV broadcast standard. Ideally you’d include all audio and video clips in the initial creation of the Multicam Clip. But if you have to start with just the audio clips, again, there’s the “Use Custom Settings” button at the bottom left which lets you override to your own specs.

[Ben Balser]

Bear in mind that Thunderbolt is faster, but both sides of the cable must support it for that speed increase. Otherwise, you’re running USB-C.

[Ben Balser]

I’d edit at the native resolution the project was shot on, if you have the hardware power to do that. Convert to another resolution when exporting for distribution. Do you have specific concerns?

Just personal curiosity, why switch to FCPX suddenly for such a large project?