Chris Harlan
Forum Replies Created
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[Herb Sevush] “[Jeremy Garchow] “I guess I never knew what those goals were.”
They were quite clear at the launch that they wanted Motion to be the pre-eminent MoGfx program out there – they wanted to knock off AE, just the same way they want FCPX to be the market leader in NLEs. They weren’t shy about it. Also, as Craig and others have often pointed out, they make software to sell hardware. They didn’t launch Motion to be the titler program for Final Cut, they wanted a market leader that you would have to buy Apple hardware to use.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions”Yeah, but they wrapped it up into FCS pretty dang fast. Same with Soundtrack. I don’t think you could buy it as a stand-alone for more than a year or two, until now of course. Whatever their plans were at the outset, it pretty quickly evolved into the notion of being a part of the Suite. Personally, when I think of FCP I’m actually thinking of the entire suite, not just the editing component. Motion was part of that suite for quite a bit longer than it was a stand-alone.
I also think it gets a bad rap, because a lot of AE folk just plain hate it. Maybe thats an analog with X as well. I’ve created some blow away GFX with Motion, that have been appreciated by AE folk, only to be dissed by them when they find I created them in Motion. They tend to get angry at it. And, I get that. Its no threat to high end gfx, but it sure is to the middle ground. Or what used to be the middle ground.
I’m from TV and old enough to remember when GFX meant Chyron or the like, and there was no big separation between video editor, GFX creator, and FX editor. So, from my perspective, things like Motion are simply restoring a balance that was lost for awhile.
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Walter, I was just responding to your earlier statement that the keyframe editor effects only a single layer. In one view that’s true, in another its not. You can see all keyframes at one time if you want to. I’m not trying to make any larger point than that.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[Walter Soyka] “Bringing this back to my original response to Aindreas, I’d expect this pattern to continue with FCPX. If the thing missing from FCPX that you need is a feature, you might well get it; if it’s a philosophy, don’t hold your breath.”
If you’re saying to not wait around for tracks in FCPX, I agree.
“Yup. If Roles gets sophisticated enough, however, I could manage with that.
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[Walter Soyka] “[Jeremy Garchow] “There is a keyframe view that’s not the editor.”
That little summary shows where all keyframes for a specific layer are, but it does not show what property the keyframes are for. In other words, it’s a single line that smushes all keyframes on a layer together. If that twirled down (does it in M5?), it would be very useful. As it stands, it adds only limited value.
“Ever since–I think–Motion 3, there has been a fairly robust keyframe editor that is available as an alternate tab in the full timeline view. All events are labeled, though perhaps a bit cryptically. It works well with the keyframe recorder, so that you can set broad parameters very quickly, and then fine tune. You can also filter what parameters are visible. Its quite usable, though NOT as we are all agreeing, AE.
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[Walter Soyka] “[Chris Harlan] “Its sad, now, to see Motion and X even further apart.”
In terms of round-tripping, yes, but in other ways, I think that FCPX and M5 are much closer.
The fact that FCPX and M5 share a common renderer and have the rigging/publishing feature is really, really cool: this lets users and artists build not only their own templates for lower thirds, but also build their own effects and transitions.”
I think this is terrific, and one of the areas I feel I’m missing out on by not snuggling up with X. I really do hope that somewhere along the line I can become an X advocate. Some of the features are fantastic.
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Walter I agree with pretty much everything you are saying here. I would mention, however, that though Motion started as a stand-alone, it did not stay that way for long. The Studio concept came pretty fast, and I tend to think of FCS as being a single loose unit. I think the majority of hopes for FCP 8, was that Soundtrack Pro, Color and Motion would be welded into one super unit. Some of that happened with X, but not enough. Its sad, now, to see Motion and X even further apart.
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Nice list. I agree with a number of the things you say. I can see why you might prefer it, though for me its missing quite a lot still. I would say there are three things that I would need to see before I could see it as being better than 6/7.
1: A mixer with Master channels. It would also be nice to see them take it to the level of Adobe and include busses and subs.
2. Support for Control surfaces.
3. Some sort of organizational device that allows me to see at a glance the position of all my audio types. Right now, in all other NLEs that is track position. In the case of X, color-coding of roles would probably be sufficient.
Sync info is also important, but maybe not directly related to the “better-ness” of the audio component.
So, yes–I agree there have been some improvements, and maybe this next round will take it the whole 9 yards, but right now Audio in X is, overall, a step backwards for me.
[Charlie Austin] “In 7, I move the second clip off the track, follow the track I want to solo all the way back to the beginning of the sequence, solo it, move back to the clip and play it. Then I want to hear the second clip too, so I either un mute the track I moved it to, or move it back to the soloed track and play it. Then maybe I want to hear the FX under those clips too… back to the head, un mute that… etc. click click move click click on and on.
“In 7, I just un-enable the clip I don’t want to hear. As you say, click, click.
[Charlie Austin] “In X, I hover over the clip I want to solo, press C to select it and option-S to solo it. To hear the other clip I right click it and “add to soloed clips”. Same for the FX or anything else. Or just select of bunch of random clips wherever they are relative to other clips and solo ’em. It’s really nice.
“That sounds cool.
[Charlie Austin] “-The Audio filters in X are better, many of the Logic plugins are there in addition to the usual AU stuff. Things I might have had to round trip to STP I can do right in the timeline. Faster.
“Agreed. Much better.
[Charlie Austin] “-The “Audio Enhancements” inspector tab for each clip in X is awesome, especially the “Loudness” settings. I don’t know about you, but in 7 I often have to double/triple/quadruple, or throw the DynamicsProcessor filter on quiet audio clips to get them to the right level for a specific mix. Not in X. Open the tab, make a couple quick adjustments, done. The Hum and BG Noise removal adjustments are nice too. 3 common audio fixes in one place, easy. Also available for compound clips, so you can put all your crappy dialog in one clip and effect it all. Faster.”
I think I’d like that as well. Just FYI, there is a loudness solution in 7 that goes beyond +12db. You access it through Modify Audio and it allows you to by-bass the need for doubling up.
[Charlie Austin] “-In X, you can move audio clips in subframe increments, not just the keyframes, the clips. This makes cheating dialog and cutting music really precise, way better than 7.
“Agreed! No question–an improvement.
[Charlie Austin] “-The fade handles on each clip are awesome. While I am used to being able to just throw a dissolve effect between adjacent audio (and video for that matter) – in X you need to create a secondary storyline to do that, which isn’t that big a deal really – grabbing the fade handles is super fast and gives you much finer control than in 7. Just right click to change the fade type.
“Agreed. I like those.
[Charlie Austin] “-Keyframes in audio clips really are 1000 times better than 7. Really easy to grab/select/add/delete and they move where you want them to. They’re way too fiddly in 7 for me.
“I use the faders a lot, and not the key-framing tool. But I agree, they are fiddly. I prefer a control surface for mixing as you can be controlling several tracks at the same time. I can be bumping DIA and dropping MU simultaneously.
[Charlie Austin] “related to keyframes… In X you can do range based audio level changes. To dip MX under some DIA in 7, you can switch gears, grab the fader and play through the section and mix it, or you need to either create 4 keyframes and then grab the level bar thing and lower the audio between them, or cut the MX clip on either side of the dialog, add dissolves (or not) and lower the section.
“Some nice advantages. Of course, if you want to use a control surface, you are SOL.
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[Herb Sevush] “I use it all the time, my compositing needs are modest and AE is a full course meal, but other than fade outs I almost never use the behaviors – like most people I use keyframes because it turns out that this old way of doing things is actually necessary. As a revolutionary compositor Motion is an utter failure, as a simple editor’s compositor, titling and masking tool it’s great.
“Yes and no, for me. Behaviors can be interesting to start with and most of them can be instantly converted to normal key framing. Things like gravity and repel are a little different, but can be very interesting to use. What was really revolutionary about it at the time of its introduction was that it used VRAM heavily, which created instant previewing. Nothing else was doing that at the time, and it put it miles ahead, in certain areas, than even AE. That’s easy to forget now that everything has caught up or passed by. At the time, though, it was pretty cool!
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “FCPX, a year and a half in, has all the industry presence of its effects backbone motion. motion that no one ever cared about outside of ripple training.
Which is to say, utterly none.
No clients request it, it appears on no jobs boards, it features in no post houses, in a schrodinger’s cat sense, if it wasn’t discussed to the extent that it is on this forum, it might as well not exist as a means to be paid to edit.
“Aindreas, you keep attacking Motion as if no one ever uses it or cares about it. I’ve just got to disagree with you. Its not AE, but it is a really terrific tool, particularly when combined with FCP6-7. My suggestion is that if you stop seeing it as a competitor to AE and start seeing it as a complex and fairly advanced Titling and masking tool that sits inside FCP 6/7 via round-tripping, you’ll recognize its utility. Avid does something similar with Avid FX. I’ve been grateful to Motion many times.
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[Tim Wilson] “[Chris Harlan] ” If I could conbine the two, at this stage of my development, I would build all my sellects in Avid, do a cut in FCP7, fine tune with Avid, make revisions with FCP7, and then fine tune again with Avid. Also, I’m not a Colorist, but I like the color tools in Symphony quite a bit. ”
Can’t you do this? Especially for straight cuts, handling projects between FCP 7 and MC/Symphony is pretty smooth. Just a variation on offline and online.
“Oh yeah. Certainly. I’ve actually been doing that as part of my re-aquaintanceship with Avid. I’ve been using the Boris translation tools to do so. As a practical sustained procedure, however it has limits. It doesn’t work with AMA, so the time and disk space involved in transcoding becomes an issue. And, once you get involved in plugins there are all kinds of potential translation issues. If you stick with Continuum only, you do pretty well–IF you have the same version installed on each piece of software–but other plugins become an issue.
Still, I have a good time bouncing things around between all three programs, and when I don’t have a looming deadline and its on my dime and not the client’s, I’ll continue to do so.