Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Lots of good points already made here but I would add that Shake was (and is insofar as it still works fine) a completely different beast to either AE or Motion. It was never meant to be a motion graphics tool unlike the other two, so things like fancy particle stuff are much better done in AE with plug-ins or Motion with the built-in stuff.
Conversely neither AE not Motion can even begin to approach the compositing power of Shake – we’re talking a completely different league, based partly on the fact that it’s a nodal compositor rather than layer-based, allowing for much greater complexity and speed in compositing.
I have to add too that Motion 5 at its new price point is simply one of the best value apps around – amidst all the flack that Apple have taken for FCPX they have genuinely hit a home run with Motion 5. In addition, the real-time capabilities of Motion have for me always meant that it’s a faster way to work than AE, while AE’s scripting power means that ultimately it still trumps Motion overall – for now!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
I don’t believe there is an option for this at the moment. I think you are meant rely on the search function in the effects and templates menus for finding the things you want.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Tom Brooks] ” I may have been jumping between FCX and Facebook”
MBP 2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo, 2GB 667 MHz DDr2 SDRAM, OS 10.6.7.
I’ve found that the issues come when anything else is open in the background, in my case that’s been Safari. No Safari, no problems or none that I’ve noticed. Safari plus Motion 5 leads to rapid meltdown via extreme lagginess.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Michael Garber] “Do you know the best methods to deal with it in the timeline if you don’t need to use all 4 channels at any given time?”
If you go to the Inspector for your 4-track clip, either in the Browser or a clip already edited into the Timeline, you can use the Audio/Channel Configuration pane to enable or disable tracks as you please – (much better than FCP7 in this case!).
[Michael Garber] ” 4×3 anamorphic 720×486 footage. FCPX sees it as regular 4×3 footage”
Yes, this is an issue – see the thread about this below. Anamorphic scaling doesn’t appear to be implemented yet, though someone has suggested that if you run your footage through Compressor you can flag it appropriately, but I haven’t tried this yet so I don’t know. I am hoping that in future this will be an additional option in the Inspector/Video/Spatial Conform pane which is currently limited to Fit, Fill or None – none of which address the anamorphic issue. For now, you have to edit your footage into the Timeline, apply a 133.33% X scale, which you can then copy and paste (Opt/Cmd/V) onto all your other clips. Seems crazy but I haven’t found another way of doing it. It does suggest that the anamorphic timeline settings are not actually anamorphic but rather square pixel!
I don’t use markers much so I haven’t explored that side yet. Finally, I can’t explain why Up Arrow is not working for you – it seems to work fine here. It does annoy me a great deal that it’s got a kind of “slinky” dynamic behaviour that is obviously meant to be cool and funky but actually slows you down quite a bit, especially when you expect the playhead to move instantly.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jiggy Gaton] “Can someone list the steps to accomplish this, starting from + new project. thx so much…”
Here you go:
– Select File/New Project and choose the appropriate settings for your needs;
– Select a clip in the Browser and add it to the timeline – at this point you can use either W, D, or E;
– Use the back arrow to get you back to the head of the timeline clip;
– Select your second layer clip in the Browser;
– Use Q to add it over the top of the first clip (to which it will now be connected);
– Select the overlay clip and hit Ctrl/V to open up the animation editor;
– Toggle open the controls for the Opacity and drag the little silders at each end inwards until you have the fades you want;
– Hit Ctrl/V again to clsoe the controls;
– Select the Inspector for the overlay clip and set the Compositing Mode to whichever blend mode takes your fancy.That’s it. You have to do all that stuff with the opacity sliders because it doesn’t appear that you can add a transition to an overlay clip (as I’m calling it though I know I shouldn’t). You could always keyframe the opacity from with the Inspector but it’s easier to do on the Timeline I think.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
I’m pretty sure there is no “fit to fill” – it’s certainly not mentioned in the manual and there’s nothing in the UI that looks like it and certainly not in the Retime menu.
The way I’d to a fit to fill in FCPX would be to edit in the new clip over the top of the old one (using Connect – Q), apply a 100% speed effect, then drag the handle at the tail of the clip till you’ve got it to fit the old one. Finally use Opt/Cmd/Down Arrow to overwrite the old clip on the primary storyline to keep things tidy.
I’m sure someone else can think of a quicker way …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
It’s surely an astonishing irony that a piece of software that everyone is calling a glorified iMovie aimed at kinds in their bedrooms and completely unsuitable for professional use is giving professionals such a hard time in getting to grips with its basic concepts – no criticism intended of iMovie, FCPX, professionals or kids in their bedrooms 😉
It seems that non-primary storylines (Apple need to sort out their descriptive tags better there’s no doubt) can only be made from material that is not already in the primary storyline. If you want to make a range of clips into a new storyline then you need to lift them out of the primary storyline – Opt/Cmd/Up Arrow will do this easily and of course constrain the movement to a vertical one only.
Unfortunately, I can find no way of naming them and I also don’t think you can get them into the Browser, any more than you can get compound clips into the Browser, though it would be a big help if you could do both.
Hence I think non-primary storylines are really just meant to be temporary working arrangements of clips rather than higher order organizational building blocks. That said, I am finding them to be a genuinely useful addition to the toolset.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “It remains to be seen.”
Which bit – the great bit or the terrible bit? 😉
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “This is almost an oxymoron! :)”
Isn’t all of FCPX an oxymoron – great but terrible?
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Tony Silanskas] “press Command + D to duplicate it”
Ach, of course, I was being an idiot, thanks for putting me right.
[Tony Silanskas] “they left all the iMovie stuff in there”
I can’t help agreeing with you but there is a reasonably well-substantiated claim going around that FCPX shares none of the original code of iMovie. See for example this excellent article:
https://www.dvcreators.net/what-does-the-guy-who-led-the-original-final-cut-pro-revolution-think-of-the-final-cut-pro-x-release/You have to wonder why so many of the fine details seem to “betray their iMovie origins” (the Project pane most of all, but also less important but no less significant pretty much all the icons used throughout the application), and why you would write completely new code to reduplicate something in a supposedly completely different application designed for a completely different user group, but hey whay do we know?!
[Tony Silanskas] “continuing the discussion”
Hey, thanks for starting it – please keep the ideas coming, they’re very helpful.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com