[Justin Mrkva]

Well, if Final Cut creates a copy of the effect when you use it, how come in the past when I renamed an effect in the Motion Templates folder, in Final Cut, the effect showed up as missing?

That said, that gave me exactly the idea to solve it! 🙂
In essence, here’s what’s happening:

1. Final Cut makes a copy of the effect, some sort of cache maybe? (clearly it’s doing something, because it’s rendering the old version)
2. Final Cut tries to read the effect from the Motion Templates folder anyway.
3. If the file is there, it doesn’t bother updating from the file (So, um, why was it trying to read it? lol). If the file isn’t there, rather than fall back on the cache, it fails. (So, why is the cache even there?).

This behavior is the key. It FAILS if the file isn’t there. Therefore, here’s the sequence to force an update:

1. Rename the template (add a “-renamed” or something to the end of the folder containing it
2. Launch FCPX and load the project. You’ll see missing effects panels.
3. Quit FCPX, rename the folder back to the original name
4. Launch FCPX and load the project again. Presto, effect updated!

I’d like to see this become easier, as immediately previewing the “effect” (pun intended) of changes like this could be extremely useful at times. Still, good to know it’s at least possible to get it to happen, even if it is a bit “workaroundish.”

Thanks for the help! 🙂

[Justin Mrkva]

An interesting question, although my project has no audio, so it shouldn’t affect it…

[Justin Mrkva]

So you’re saying you actually get better performance without the RAM preview?

[Justin Mrkva]

You can convert between shapes and masks, there’s a MacBreak Studio episode where they explain it a lot better than I could here. But to get you started, just add an Image Mask to your layer and drag the shape you created onto the mask, then turn off the shape layer so you don’t see the shape itself.

There’s more to it then that, but trust me, just watch the video. 🙂

[Justin Mrkva]

That’s what I figured unfortunately, I was hoping there was something that could be done about it though. I’ll probably send a bug report to Apple when I get the chance.

As for Motion not doing what you’d expect, I just discovered a glitch where I RAM-previewed, re-enabled the effect, re-exported, and the resulting render didn’t include the effect. So it’s doing some sort of caching but then not refreshing. C’mon, Apple!

Also, MacBreak Studio is awesome. You’ve probably heard of it… 😉

[Justin Mrkva]

Thanks for the advice, I’ve already done those. Quarter/draft/everything off, using ProRes422 footage, no particles, etc… on a simple project with just the video and maybe 1 or 2 effects I can get 30fps, but anything more starts to bog down.

I’m less concerned with the time taken to generate the preview, though, as the fact that, despite it having been rendered to RAM, it still seems to slow down trying to play it back. Render quality or complexity of the project shouldn’t make a difference, it’s just playing back an image sequence. Instead, complex projects slow down the RAM preview’s playback frame rate, even with everything in the project deselected (to avoid drawing extra things in the window). It seems to defy logic.

I also have the little preview panes in the Layers list disabled, in case anyone is wondering.