[Burt Hazard]

[Jerome Franks] ” I especially love the camera effect where the camera would pan from item to item, While keeping the same background…”

Actually that’s pretty easy to do in Motion 3, just keep your background layer as a 2D object and it will act as a cyclorama and always face the camera(s) and then make your other object layers 3D (you can a have a mixture of 2D layers and 3D layers in Motion 3; the only thing you have to watch out for is how you layer them in relation to each other).

[Burt Hazard]

[Angelo Baizas] “I’ve checked out Motion 3 but couldn’t find a suitable preset for it either…”

Basically because there isn’t any (yet, maybe Motion will have more actual 3D functionality in v. 3.5 or 4). One workaround would be to create a separate 3D text object for each letter in your text, rotate and position them accordingly in a y-axis circle, then group ’em in another 3D layer and animate the rotation of that (around a keyed or rotoed person, of course).

Zaxwerks does have a product called “Stackwerks” ($169) which apparently works in both Motion 2 & 3 which allows you to apply textures to 3D primitives which would probably allow you to achieve this effect with a cylinder or torus.

[Burt Hazard]

Actually I also realized that I ultimately used this document from the Apple website when I did my FCP 5 reinstall a couple of weekends ago: https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302337

Mainly what you’re doing is trashing the main app (of course), the Preferences, and the FCP Receipts.

I agree with you it is frustrating trying to track some of this stuff down, but I also just discovered that someone was talking about a freeware Mac OS X program called “appdelete” which supposedly would allow you to just drag FCP onto it and it would trash all the linked files automatically; now that’s more like it! 🙂

[Burt Hazard]

Another thing I forgot to mention is that obviously if you have 3rd party plugins for FCP, make sure you don’t trash them when you do your reinstall (just make sure you set that folder aside or whatever).

[Burt Hazard]

You could do it in Motion with an animated mask and one of the fire media clips in the Content folder.

[Burt Hazard]

I just copied and pasted this previous thread answer from Shane Ross in one of my “FCP tips” docs (it refers to FCP5, but is applicable to FCP6):

Name: Shane Ross
Date: May 4, 2006 at 5:40:53 am
Subject: Re: uninstalling…WE NEED AN UNINSTALLER

What other application makes an uninstaller? I know the makers of my capture card do, but Microsoft doesn’t, Avid doesn’t, Adobe doesn’t…why pick on Apple?

How to uninstall FCP 5

Here’s the way to do it:

1) Close FCP
2) Go to: /users/username/library/preferences/
a. Delete the com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist
b. Delete the FCP User data folder.
3) Go to: Applications
a. Delete FCP application
b. Delete FCP HD addition easy setups folder.
4) Go to: /library/applicaton support/fcp system support/
a. Delete Custom Settings folder
b. Delete Plugins folder
5) Go to: /library/receipts/ and delete the following:
a. AnalogPAL.pkg
b. AppleIntermediateCodec.pkg
c. DigitalPAL.pkg
d. DVCproHDCodec.pkg
e. FinalCutPro.pkg
f. FinalCutproHDUpdate4.5.pkg
g. FinalCutProHelp.pkg
h. HDVCodec.pkg
i. IMXCodec.pkg
j. Uncompressed422.pkg
k. VideoOutSupport.pkg
6) Insert the FCP 5.0 upgrade disk and re-install.

7) Run the OSX Disk Utility
a. Select the OSX drive
b. Repair the Disk Permissions.
c. Reboot.
8)Run Software update to get back to 5.0.4.

Shane

I just had to reinstall FCP 5 on my G4 Powerbook due to a viewing filters/transitions problem in the Canvas. Basically FCP Rescue is a handy program which lets you automatically trash your FCP Preferences (which also reinstalls Favorites).

[Burt Hazard]

You could animate a rough ellipse mask shape and use animated color filters.

[Burt Hazard]

Actually you could be experiencing two different issues. I too have an older XL1, bought used, and I haven’t taken it in to a Canon dealer to have proper service yet and occasionally I do get mini-DV dropouts. It just might just need a head cleaning.

As for the audio, the XL1 actually samples audio slightly higher than 48 kHz:

Name: Peter Ralph
Date: Nov 30, 2002 at 4:44:25 pm
Subject: Re: Canon Audio Issues

Many Canon DV cameras sample audio at rates slightly higher than the norm (something like 48.0487k instead of 48k) . This can cause sync problems when capturing clips longer than 5 minutes or so. The auto sync compensator built into FCP takes care of this problem – I dont know which other NLEs provide this functionality.

Canons and Macs play well together.

Actually, this info refers to the XL1, the XL1S, XL2, HD1, etc. sample audio at the normal 48k. And he’s right…I capture footage from the XL1 on a Mac using Final Cut Pro 5 which automatically compensates for the audio discrepancy…so you might check the settings of your non-linear editor or whatever.

[Burt Hazard]

One way would be to:
1) Type Text in Canvas
2) Inspector>Text>Style>Deselect “Face”, Select “Outline”,
adust color, pixel width, etc.
3) Add Filter>Outer Glow (adjust parameters)

[Burt Hazard]

This place offers Motion template DVDs: https://www.motionvfx.com/
I don’t know anything about the quality of the products, I’ve just seen them advertised.

But Noah’s right, of course, not only are there templates and themes in Motion 3, but in the Content folders there are literally hundreds of pre-done graphical elements ranging from stills, to animated graphics, frames, lower third color bars (“straps”), particle cell elements, arrows flying through 3D space, backgrounds, literally a plethora of stuff to get you started, just like the “plethora of pinatas” from THREE AMIGOS! 🙂