[Brad Hurley]

Sorry the plugin isn’t working for you. Yes, you need to copy the API token from Mapbox and paste it in somewhere in the plugin interface (can’t remember now and I don’t have it on this computer, it’s on my production machine). It worked pretty smoothly for me. Next time I’m on my production machine (probably this weekend) I’ll see if I can find where to put the token, but I thought it was all explained pretty will in the plug-in instruction video (which is in the “tutorial” section of the website here: https://store.pixelfilmstudios.com/product/fcpx-maps/

[Brad Hurley]

Hi Ray — in addition to the Ripple Training tutorial on animating a map in Motion (which I linked to earlier), there are a few others on youtube; a Google search will turn them up. Here’s one for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi0kq0Ig-C4

I imagine you can add the other elements of the animation in Motion too (the animated signs and crosses, etc.) but my experience with motion graphics is very limited (and I’m using Fusion now, not Motion, only because I mainly use Resolve these days).

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[Brad Hurley]

See https://support.apple.com/kb/PH12538?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

Works for both audio and video clips. Are you saying you can’t get this to work for an audio clip using any of the methods described here?

[Brad Hurley]

Hi Ray — you don’t need a paid subscription to Mapbox to be able to use the plugin.

You can set up a free account (which is what I have; I’ve had a free Mapbox account for many years). You will need the API code from your free account if you end up using the PixelStudios plugin, but the plugin instructions tell you how to do that. It’s very straightforward.

As for finding more tutorials on Motion, Ripple Training is a great source for training on FCPX and Motion. Mark really knows Motion; he also has a good tutorial on Fusion in DaVinci Resolve if you end up going that route.

[Brad Hurley]

As an addendum, I found the Ripple Training free tutorial I mentioned above:

https://www.rippletraining.com/articles/free-motion-video-tutorials/2015/03/02/animating-a-map/

This kind of thing can also be done in Fusion in DaVinci Resolve, which is where I’m doing my current animated map project. I’m dropping a bunch of icons onto a map from offscreen, separated in one-second intervals. The hardest part of the project was getting a good high-resolution map; I ended up using free GIS software (QGIS with Natural Earth) and exporting a high-resolution map image from that.

[Brad Hurley]

I’ve used the FCPX Maps plugin and the new version is pretty stable (the original version did crash a lot). I did a lot of research before buying it and as far as I know this is the best plugin currently available for this particular task. The plugin is pretty straightforward; you do need to set up a Mapbox account first and you may have a bit of trial and error in terms of selecting the right number of map tiles for your purposes.

However, I’m sure you can find tutorials online for doing the same thing yourself using Motion (I believe Ripple Training did a free one a few years ago). If you think you’ll need more flexibility that what the plugin offers it’s probably worth learning how to do it in Motion which will then give you transferrable skills that you can use in other effects.