[Bret Williams]

Oh how I hope you just broke your NDA.

[Bret Williams]

Somewhere in there is the key to my issues with it as it is. If I wish to place a motion project in the timeline a la legacy or AE dynamic link, I have to make it a generator. Now the motion project is store inside the bounds of FCP, and not backed up with my other media and job resources. Plus for the generator to work next year when I come back to the project, it must reside in the exact folder inside generators. And the fact that it doesn’t dynamically update when I open the generator in motion is just lame as you said.

So they need to fix two things, let the motion projects reside anywhere I want and show up in the EVENT, and either allow me to “open in motion” right from the event or from the timeline or at least dynamically update if I update them in motion.

Really, we shouldn’t even need send to motion. Heck, they share the same engine so we should be able to cut and paste to motion! I believe you can cut and paste between Premiere and AE. You can with Illustrator and PS. You can even drag between the apps. That’s integration.

[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.

[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.

[Bret Williams]

I do this sort of thing all the time. It’s a little know secret to how X works. You can even select a bunch of clips and move them all or scale them all at once with the transform inspector. Even though the position or scale might be different the inspector will read “–” and you just click and drag on the “–” and it all adjusts proportionately if I remember right.

Do other NLEs do this? AE does it, but I’m not sure if others do.

[Bret Williams]

I was thinking more of highlighting the project and doing a file–copy to new project command. I guess it doesn’t matter if you consolidate or not. And fwiw, nope, it will not double the data size, even when consolidated, as long as it’s on the same drive. X uses hard links nowadays. Multiple individual files (NOT aliases) can address the same data. Even if you trash the original file, the data isn’t deleted until the final instance of the hard link is deleted. Hard links are indescernable to the user. They can’t be created in the finder. Only by X. You can test it out by duplicating/consolidating a 500gig project to the same drive in X. It takes mere seconds and the available hard drive space remains the same. Pretty cool.

[Bret Williams]

Why not just consolidate to a new project? Worth a try and it’s pretty much instantaneous.

[Bret Williams]

So, you have a stereo audio file in the timeline, and you’d like to adjust volume and pan of each track independently, correct?

Highlight the clip in the timeline.
In the inspector, change the audio type to dual mono.
In the timeline right click on the clip and choose show audio components.
The two channels are now shown. Highlight the first one.
In the inspector choose pan mode stereo.
Pan left.
Adjust volume.
Repeat for the other channel.

Essentially it’s the same as legacy with the one extra step of showing audio components.
In legacy you’d have to change the stereo track to dual mono just like X. Then, you’d have to select each channel independently and pan and adjust volume independently.

[Bret Williams]

You would only want to make it a generator if it’s something you’re going to use repeatedly. Otherwise, yes, of course just render it from inside Motion. The biggest problem with rendering something like that inside FCP is that after a lengthly render, if you then decide to then add a title over it or scale it back or adjust it in some way it has to completely rerender. If it were just a single clip, no big deal, but a big motion comp with motion blur, reflections, 3D and all that is extremely inefficient to work with when you have to keep rendering it for various reasons.

[Bret Williams]

Well at least they gave the intern something to do.