Gareth Randall
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Taliesn,
I’m not sure how helpful this is, but I have upgraded from OSX 10.5/FCS2 to 10.6/FCS3, and I don’t find Motion 4 to be dramatically more stable than Motion 3. It’s a *bit* more stable, but it’s still quite flakey and I can usually rely on it to crash several times a day, especially if I’m adjusting parameters quickly. Not enough to be unusable, but it could be a LOT better.
The apps and the OS are always fully up to date, so the bugs aren’t down to using outdated versions. Trashing the prefs has never helped me either. Unfortunately, the main advice you will ever get about problems in Motion is “make sure you’re using the latest updates, and trash the prefs”!
Since it seems to work fine for some people and not others, I’m guessing that perhaps the hardware you’re running it on makes a difference to stability. Maybe the fact that I’m using a 4-year-old MacBook Pro rather than a more powerful desktop system with more RAM and a beefier graphics card is what’s causing the flakiness. Just today I’ve found it impossible to export a fairly simple 3D project in Best mode with lights, shadows, DOF and motion blur turned on – it hangs on the first frame and then crashes. Only way around it is to either switch off motion blur and shadows, or (if you want motion blur) export in Normal mode with shadows off.
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[Noah Kadner] “Think of Motion as your effects generator, not your editor. “
Although cutting between multiple cameras in the same 3D project is a standard motion graphics technique, isn’t it? So it’s not much of a leap to think that if you can cut between cameras, you should be able to mix between them as well.
Can you mix between cameras in AfterEffects?
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Hi Paul,
One way to make the background transparent is to apply the Color Key filter (in Filters>Keying) to the fire clip, then use the eyedropper to sample the black. This will tell Motion to “key out” (remove) the black parts of the clip and let the layers underneath show through. Once you’ve done this you will probably want to tweak the result, either by adjusting the Tolerance slider, and/or adding the Matte Magic filter as well.
Alternatively, depending on the precise effect you want to achieve, you could apply the Luma Key effect instead of the Color Key, and set it to Key Out Darker.
Even more alternatively, you could forgo any filters altogether and try simply setting the Blend mode of the fire clip to something like Add, Lighten, Screen or Color Dodge. Any of those will drop the black background out and composite the fire clip onto your background, although each will give a the resultant composite a different “feel”.
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Thanks Paul, but sadly there’s nothing in either of the Aux TC tracks.
Having Googled around, it seems that this is a longstanding issue with no solution. Given that the TC is embedded into the file, you’d think that if FCP can read the video and audio with no problems, it would be able to read the TC as well.
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You could do this with either the ParticleMetrix plugin, or one of the techniques for breaking up an image described by Patrick Sheffield in his book “How To Cheat In Motion”.
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You’re shooting from behind someone who will have 4 screens composited in front of him (in a line or something), and he will push each screen to a different corner of the frame?
If I’ve interpreted that correctly, then depending on the exact look you want you don’t need to use cardboard strips or even need to motion-track, you can just keyframe the motion of each individual screen or use a motion path.
Take at look at this trailer for our very own Stephen Smith’s FCP training DVD (which I can highly recommend!) About 19 seconds in you’ll see Stephen doing a very similar sort of thing to your screens idea. This is done entirely with keyframes in FCP, there’s no motion tracking involved at all.
If you want the speed of movement of each screen to mimic the movement of the guy’s hand exactly, then you’d motion track the end of one of his fingers or something like that, but you don’t need to use a 4-point track for that, a straightforward 1-point track will do.
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Yeah, a bit unnecessary I thought (to put it politely).
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[Nick Falangas] “Absolutely not what I am looking for. Come on guys, I am looking for some serious high quality 3D spinning particles”
There’s nothing in that Red Giant video you can’t do in Motion. Break it down and the impressive-looking bits at the start and end are just very basic camera moves through a fairly simple 3D particle system. Yes, you’ll have to experiment and put some work in to get that “organic” look to the particles but it’s all completely doable in Motion. Get the 15-day trial of ParticleMetrix and start playing with it.
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[Mark Petereit] “She’s watching it on a cheap netbook she bought on sale at Best Buy, utilizing a TFT LCD spec’ed to the lowest bidder.
Which one do you think is going to look “right”?”
Except, I’ve seen this problem on high-end Windows systems too.
Specifically, I’ve captured something as a DV .avi in Premiere Pro in Windows, then exported it as a DV QuickTime. Played back in QT for Windows, the resultant .mov looks soft and fuzzy. Played back in QT for Mac, it looks fine. There’s nothing wrong with the file itself, logic suggests it’s something to do with the way it’s being handled by the QT player software. The video always looks perfect on an interlaced monitor, regardless of whether you’re playing it from PC or Mac.
I’ve also noticed issues with projects captured, edited and exported as DV entirely within OS X. Playing back the final files in the Mac QT player, the video can look slightly soft compared to playing the same file in VLC. Strange.
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[Noah Kadner] “As long as it’s a MacBook Pro with a recent graphics card “
Just to be clear, you don’t have to check the age of the graphics card; as long as it’s a MacBook Pro rather than a MacBook, then Motion will work. I am using Motion 4 on a first-gen MBP from 2006 with the stock graphics card.