[David Mathis]

[Bill Davis] “While it’s true that there’s no true round-tripping between X and it’s the $49 add on Motion 5 – there is quite a bit of linkage between them. In X if you option click on any of the transitions, you discover that they’re really just published Motion templates, and they’ll open into the Motion app for tweeting or revision.”

I think there are a few transitions that will not open up in Motion but most will. Cannot recall at the moment which ones they are.

[Bill Davis] “From Motion, you can revise them at will, then re-“publish” existing (or newly created) motion files – so that they show up inside X via the Titles or Transitions browser.

A nice aspect of this is that whoever created the Motion file can enable or disable access to individual file attributes in a way that allows, for example, a Title designer to lock-off aspects of an overall design – perhaps to conform to a corporate stylebook – yet sill allow the editor access to changing other aspects such as text content or graphic element colors.”

Completely agree here and the ones I publish were designed to save time and prevent from constantly fiddling with settings. I just publish a few parameters and only ones that are necessary, otherwise minutes of twiddling turn into hours. 🙂

[Bill Davis] “I think a lot of current X users needlessly pass by Motion work, but it’s a pretty amazing program who’s price totally belies it’s capabilities.”

I love to think of Motion as an investment and not another “purchase” for this reason. It offers so much for such a small amount of money.

[David Mathis]

This is why I would also consider Motion as an essential and as a path of opportunity. Sure, a few things are missing in FCP X but being able to create something from scratch in Motion makes up for that. On occasion, there really is no need to buy plug-ins, guess that makes it a money saver as well. To me Motion feels like a solid investment, zero risk and excellent returns.

I see lemons in life as lemonade or a 4 door gas guzzling clunker that could fall apart on me at any moment. I prefer lemonade.

[David Mathis]

[Robin S. Kurz] “You could actually save even more (namely 100%) by simply learning the basics of Motion, since most of these and can be made in 2-20 minutes with medium Motion skills”

This is what I mainly use Motion for. Starting to build a texture overlay effect. I just took a few random texture photos with my smart phone, will add some more later. From there, I am going to put those inside their own group in Motion, followed by publishing out a few simple rigs. This will then allow a basic choice of textures, blend modes and how intense the effect is.

Going to build some custom generators and transitions later this month.
With that money saved, I could save up for a new camera lens set and other essential stuff.

[David Mathis]

[Andy Neil] “[Shane Ross] “Sorry, but that looks like a very messy timeline. I can see audio layered like that, but video?”

I don’t think you’re looking at it right, Shane. That IS audio layered on both the top and bottom. There are only two layers of video. The primary (night scene) and the connected day time story below.”

I was confused at first. I was thinking, “Why so many layers of video?” Looked at it again and realized it was audio, first time I seen where audio can be placed anywhere in the timeline.

[David Mathis]

Ronny, thanks for posting this. Always an interesting and great learning experience to read those type of articles. Just skimmed through it but going back to do a more thorough read. Hopefully more people will realize that FCP X is a great value and investment.

camera operator | editor | production assistant

Blackmagic Cinema Camera | FCP X | Motion 5 | Compressor 4 | Resolve 11

[David Mathis]

Hoping to save up for the Blackmagic URSA, looks very sweet and well within a reasonable price range. Always wanted a Red but out of my budget. The BMD 4K production camera looks very nice as well. Best part, Resolve is thrown in with it! Wait, looks like I am getting too excited, best to lay off the iced coffee.

[David Mathis]

I find FCP X to be more responsive, stable and launch faster under Yosemite, not to mention the “cancelling background task” message is now gone, unless something was rendering upon exit.

On the Motion side of things, occasionally get the beach ball upon launch but for a split second. Under the last version of Mavericks, it was there 5 to 10 seconds.

One issue I did run into, operator error, was installing an older version of Resolve and the camera utility that came with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, was prompted that OS 10.6 or later was needed. Downloaded the most current version from the BMD website and installation went smoothly. It was simply operator error on my part.

I have yet to load Red Giant Universe back into the system, so will have to report on how that goes at a later time. So far, so good.

I did a clean install from the ground up just to prevent any issues that are common when installing over a prior version of the OS, just go to love those glitch gremlins.

[David Mathis]

[Jeremy Garchow] “6 wrong left turns, make a 180.

Put that in your magnetic timeline and smoke it.”

Two wrong turns don’t make a right, but three lefts will. Put that in the secondary story line. 🙂

[David Mathis]

[Michael Phillips] “Do you think that Motion becomes part of FCPx at some point, and one might think (hope) that the lack of standalone development is about integration development?”

Building a custom effect in Motion for use in FCP X later, does make Motion a part of FCP X in that regard. I have always felt that the two should be separate applications, trying to go with a one size fits all approach does not always work.

[Michael Phillips] “On a similar note, you just have to think that Blackmagic will be integrating Eyeon Fusion into Resolve at some point in the future, and Fusion has some great graphics functionality – not to mention compositing, etc.”

I think the two applications should be separate. Not everyone will need to do high-end compositing. This could make for a more complex interface and likely introduce more bugs to troubleshoot, just my two cents.

[David Mathis]

At first I thought I was watching 60 Minutes for some odd reason. Sorry, just couldn’t resist. 🙂