[Mark Spencer]

Sure you can – select the media in the Media tab of the Project pane, then in the Media tab of the Inspector, click the Replace Media File button.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Work in short play ranges and render if you need to play back in real time – lower resolution and quality levels should help. More RAM would help.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Motion loads all video into RAM for playback. 1920×1080 ProRes is going to eat up your ram very, very quickly – you’ll likely not get realtime playback unless your clip is very short. Clear your ram cache (under the Mark menu) and set a short play range. The math is something like 8 bits/pixel x 1920 x 1080 x 30 for total bits needed for one second – which I think comes out to around 2MB per frame, or 60MB per second of video. 10 second of video would be over half a gig of memory – you get the picture.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Sure, you can just drag in your proxy image over your current layer, wait for the hooked arrow, and release the mouse – this will swap out the asset but keep all filters, masks, behaviors, keyframes, blend modes, etc. I’d recommend that your proxy have the same dimensions as the full quality version or you’ll have to deal with scaling issue.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Yes you need the transparency to have an edge to work with. Glad you got it figured out.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Shouldn’t be the issue – really can’t tell without seeing the project

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Select them all, then choose Object > Alignment and choose your option. The dynamic guides help as well.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Sure, just apply the same tracking data to the mask.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

If you have poor quality with ProRes HQ, then something else is going on. You may not be evaluating the image correctly, take a look at this article:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/motion_text_in_fcp_spencer.html

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Mark Spencer]

Your stock graphics card is probably the culprit. I would try again rendering out of Motion using ProResHQ.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net