Apple Motion 5 Cookbook: With this book you'll be able to fully exploit the fantastic features of Apple Motion. There are over 110 recipes with downloadable content for each chapter and stacks of screenshots. A video editor's dream.

To launch Motion, click on the application icon on your Dock or double-click it from the Applications folder.

Upon entering, we are presented with a welcome window called the Project Browser. It can be divided into three sections. On the left-hand side, we have the option of starting with a recent, blank, or pre-existing composition (this is where we can find our preinstalled Motion templates). Since this is our first time here, make sure Blank is selected from the list, as shown in the following screenshot:

In the middle, we can choose between five projects. Motion Project is usually chosen when we want to start and finish our work solely in Motion. If we choose Final Cut Effect, Generator, Transition, or Title, we are telling Motion that when we save our project, we want to make it available in Final Cut. Depending on the type of project you select, it will save in the corresponding section in FCP X's Media Browser, as shown here. For now, make sure Motion Project is selected.

On the right, you can choose from a variety of different presets depending on the material you're working with or where you're exporting. Say your footage was shot in Europe with a DSLR camera. You could choose a Broadcast HD 1080 setting with a Frame Rate value of 25. The duration could match the length of the files you're bringing in and you could choose to display it as timecode, frames, or seconds. For this exercise, let's choose the Broadcast HD 720 setting with a frame rate of 29.97 and a 6 second duration. Press Open.

The Motion interface launches and we're ready to bring in some media to work with.

With a blank Motion project open, navigate to the File Browser by clicking it on the left-hand side of the interface, or press Command + 1.

Locate the movie file on you system that matches your project's settings.

With the clip selected, drag it from the File Browser straight to the Canvas window but don't release your mouse.

By default, as you hold your clip you should see yellow lines appear. These are called dynamic guides. You can turn them on and off by going to View | Overlays | Dynamic Guides. These guides can help you align your video directly to the center of the Canvas.

Wait until you see both the vertical and horizontal guides. When you do, release your mouse as shown in the following screenshot:

If your video seems too big, press Shift + Z to fit it into the Canvas window.

With a blank Motion project open, navigate to the File Browser by clicking it on the left-hand side of the interface, or press Command + 1.

Locate the movie file on your system that matches your project's settings.

With the clip selected, drag it from the File Browser straight on top of the empty group in the Layers tab.

Wait for the plus icon and release your mouse, as shown in the following screenshot:

The video should appear directly centered in your Canvas window, If your video seems too big, press Shift + Z with the Canvas window selected to make it fit.

With a blank Motion project open, navigate to the File Browser by clicking it on the left-hand side of the interface, or press Command + 1.

Locate the movie file on you system that matches your project's settings.

With the clip selected, drag it from the File Browser straight to the Timeline. Press the Shift key to help it snap to the playhead, but don't release the mouse.

Eventually a menu will appear asking us whether we want to composite or insert our images into the Timeline. Since there is nothing in our project, both options do the same thing. Choose Composite, as shown in the following screenshot:

The video should appear directly centered in your Canvas window. If your video seems too big, press Shift + Z with the Canvas window selected to make it fit.

With a blank Motion project open, navigate to the File Browser by clicking it on the left side of the interface, or press Command + 1.

With the .psd file selected, drag it from the File Browser straight to the Canvas or the Layers tab without releasing your mouse.

By default, a pop-up menu appears allowing you to choose from merging the Photoshop file, selecting one of the individual layers, or importing all layers.

Choose Import All Layers, as shown in the following screenshot:

If your video seems too big, press Shift + Z to fit it into the Canvas window.

You may notice that the Photoshop file has all of its layers contained within a group (named after the Photoshop project) of a group (the default group for the Motion project). It's good practice to release the Photoshop layers from the Photoshop group and have them solely within the Motion group.

With a blank Motion project open, navigate to the File Browser by clicking it on the left side of the interface, or press Command + 1.

With the .ai file selected, drag it from the File Browser straight to the Canvas or the Layers tab and release your mouse. You cannot see an Illustrator file's individual layers.

If your video seems too big, press Shift + Z to fit it into the Canvas window.

At first, everything looks fine, but as soon as we start scaling the file we'll notice some deterioration of the graphic. Press F1 to navigate to the Properties tab of the Inspector. Locate the Scale property and scale up the image by double-clicking on it and entering a new value. Keep scaling till you notice pixelation.

Vector-based images from Illustrator are supposed to allow us to scale up the image to infinity and beyond. The problem is the minute we put the file in Motion, it places the file into a pixel-based world. To have this infinite scaling opportunity, we need to tell Motion to not give this file boundaries or take away its fixed resolution. To do this, navigate to the Media tab and select the AI file from the list; use the following screenshot for reference:

Press F4 to go to the Media tab of the Inspector, and deselect the checkmark next to Fixed Resolution, as shown in the following screenshot:

Try scaling up the object again from the Properties tab of the Inspector and notice how crisp it looks.

Launch Motion and select the Swarm template category. Under the Swarm category, select the Swarm-Menu template and click Open a copy.

Move your playhead to 5 seconds.

What you really want to do is select the background, but because of all the foreground elements it's difficult to get to. Press X for expose.

Notice how all your layers have been separated in the Canvas, and can be easily selected as you hover over them with your mouse. Find and select the Background Menu, as shown in the following screenshot:

The Canvas view goes back and the background is selected.

From this chapter's exercise files, open the 01_05 project.

There are three gradient layers in this project but in the Canvas we only see the You can see me layer. Select this layer and drag it underneath the I'm hidden too layer without releasing the mouse. Make sure you see a blue line with an icon and not the plus symbol, as shown in the following screenshot. If you do, drag with your mouse slightly to the right and then release your mouse.

Notice that you can now see the I'm hidden layer being displayed. Select the I'm hidden too layer and drag it above the I'm hidden layer.

The I'm hidden too layer should now be seen.

From this chapter's exercise files, open the 01_06 project by double-clicking on it.

There is one group that contains a circle and a square. Click on the Library tab.

Select Filters | Distortion | Bulge and compare your results to the following screenshot:

Notice how the bulge only affects the rectangle. Press F3 to open up the Filters tab of the Inspector. Adjust some of the parameters to get a feel for what it does.

Select the Bulge filter and drag it from Rectangle to Group. Notice how the bulge now affects both the circle and the rectangle, as shown in the following screenshot:

Delete Bulge by selecting it and pressing Delete.

Select the Circle layer and press F1 to go to the Properties tab of the Inspector.

Drag the Scale slider to the right up to 150, or double-click on the scale number and manually type it in, as shown in the following screenshot:

Go to the Edit menu and select Undo until you get back to 100.

Select the group and press F1 to go to the Properties tab if needed. Drag the Scale slider up and notice how both the circle and rectangle increase in size, as shown here:

With a blank Motion project open, navigate to the File Browser by clicking it on the left-hand side of the interface, or press Command + 1.

Locate a still image file on your system that is large enough for your project's settings.

With the still selected, choose Import from the top of the File Browser.

Select the still image in the Layers tab and press F1 to go to the Properties tab of the Inspector.

Adjust the Position, Rotation, and Scale settings of the still to your liking.

Click the reset arrow at the top of the Transform section to reset all of the properties, as shown in the following screenshot:

If your photo was larger than your project's properties, it may now be larger than your Canvas. Motion's default method when importing photos is to scale them down to fit the project. When you reset a still image, it goes to its original scale value. If this is the case, all you need to do is scale the photo down until it fits nicely in the Canvas window.

With the photo selected, go to the Window menu and select Show HUD:

The Head Up Display (HUD) is a semi-transparent floating window that shows certain properties of a selected layer, filter, or behavior. In certain instances, it provides us with quick access to some of the most used parameters of the current selection. In the case of this still, it gives us Opacity and Blend Mode. Adjust the Opacity value to around 80. Go to the Edit menu and choose Undo.

With the still selected, notice the bounding box around your photo. If you can't see it because the photo is full-frame, press Command + - to zoom out on your Canvas. We can manipulate several Transform category properties directly in the Canvas, and this bounding box allows us to do just that.

Drag any side corner of the image and scale the image down. Notice how the image doesn't scale uniformly unlike how it did in the Inspector. Press Command + Z to undo.

Hold down the Shift key and grab the side corner again. Notice how the image scales uniformly. Press Command + Z to undo.

Press F1 to open the Properties tab of the Inspector. Hold down the Shift + Option key and click the side corner again. Scale the image downwards while paying attention to the Inspector. Notice how the scale updates. Also notice that by pressing Shift + Option not only does the object scale uniformly, but it also scales from the center.

From this chapter's exercise files, open the 01_08 project.

There are two groups in this project; a text group and background. Press the Space bar to play the project.

This animation was done with behaviors, which we'll explore in Chapter 3, Making It Move with Behaviors. Simply, one text layer fades in after another. Before fixing the timing of the text, you may have noticed that the text appears off alignment. Click on the Disclosure tab for the Text group and click on the THREE layer and Shift + click the ONE layer. From the Object menu select Alignment | Distribute Vertical Centers. Your text is now distributed evenly.

In the following screenshot, you can see the order of our number layers in the Timeline. We want to change the order of the layers by fading in the first layer, followed by the second, and the third. We're going to make our first change in the mini-Timeline. To hide the Timeline temporally, go to Window | Timeline. Select the THREE layer, and from the Mark menu, choose Go To | Selection In Point. We want ONE to begin at 1 second. Select ONE and drag the layer's in-point value until it reads 00:00;01:00.

Move your playhead to the beginning of the Timeline by pressing the home key or Fn + ← on a laptop. Play the animation. While the ONE layer now fades in at the same time as the THREE layer, you'll notice that it cuts off at the end. Drag the ONE layer's out-point in the mini-Timeline so it lasts till the end of the project.

Let's finish the rest our work in our Timeline. Press Command + 7 to toggle back to the Timeline.

Let's move the THREE layer to where the TWO layer ends. Drag the THREE layer while holding down the Shift key. Wait for its in-point to snap to the TWO layer's out-point and then release the mouse.

Make sure nothing is selected by pressing Shift + Command + A. Type 2, followed by the return to move to the two-second mark. Select the TWO layer and press I to trim its in-point to the playhead.

Press the home key and then the Space bar to check if the timing works. Use the following screenshot to guide you:

Launch Motion from the Dock or the Applications folder.

From the left-hand side of the Project Browser, choose the Skyline template folder.

Select the Skyline Menu project, and from the bottom-right hand side, choose Open a copy.

Press Shift + Z in the Canvas window to fit the project and press the Space bar to play it back.

The project starts off with a radial background where buildings and a ribbon grow from offscreen to onscreen followed by a few titles fading in over top of them. After reviewing, we've decided we'd like to change the color of our background, the color of the ribbon, and put in some text to suit the project better. Move your playhead to an area where you can see all of your elements onscreen, or double-click in the Time field and enter 3.25.

In the Layers tab, reveal the content of the Background Group by clicking the disclosure triangle. You will see a single layer that is a still image; it has a radial gradient, as shown in the following screenshot:

Since this is a still image from another application, we have to add a filter to change its color. Press Command + 2 to go to the Libraries tab of the Inspector. Go to the Filters category, select the Color Correction folder and locate Colorize (use the following screenshot as your guide). Drag it to the Background Elements layer. Press F3 to go to the Filters tab of the Inspector. Control-click the Remap White value and select a blue color of your liking.

Let's repeat this step for the ribbon. Click the disclosure triangle to close the Background group. Click the disclosure triangle to reveal the content of the Graphics group and the Ribbon group, as shown in the following screenshot:

The Ribbon group is composed of three rectangle objects that have behaviors animating them onscreen. While we can locate the original rectangle shapes and tweak their color, it's a lot easier if we add a filter to the group and change the color for all the elements within that group. Press Command + 2 to go to the Library tab. Go to the Filters category, select the Color Correction folder, and locate Colorize. Drag it to the Ribbon group in the Layers tab, as shown in the following screenshot:

Press F3 to go to the Filters tab of the Inspector. Right-click on the Remap White value and select a yellow color of your liking. Repeat this step for Remap Black with a slightly off yellow color from your previous selection.

Click the disclosure triangle to close the Graphics group. Open the Text group. There are five text elements, one for each text line onscreen. To change the text, select the Title here group. Press F4 to go to the Text tab of the Inspector. At the bottom, change Title info here to Motion 5. Repeat this step for the subtitle layers. The following screenshot shows the Format Pane tab in the Inspector for the Subtitle group:

With a blank Motion project open, go to the Motion menu and choose Commands | Customize. For those of you who use FCP X, the following interface should look very familiar:

The keyboard is currently using the standard shortcuts that ship with Motion (shown in the next screenshot). In order to make changes, we need to duplicate the keyboard. Click on the Keyboard Set menu and choose Duplicate. Rename the keyboard to your liking.

Click on the letter A. Notice that in the Key detail field, all the commands associated with A show up. One of them is Record Animation. Notice that it's color coated, allowing us to see what category it belongs to under Command List. The A key in FCP X is the selection tool. Let's remap our keyboard to reflect that in Motion.

Click on the Record Animation field in the No Modifier column and drag it out of the box until you see a puff of smoke; now release your mouse.

In the Command List, choose Tools. Locate the Edit tool and drag this to the Key Detail | No Modifier section of A. Now, click Save.

Test out your newly-mapped keyboard by hitting T to activate the Text tool followed by A to jump back to the Edit tool.

With a blank Motion project open, go to frame 10 of your project by clicking Shift + the right arrow.

Press Command + 2 to open the Library tab.

Navigate to the Content folder near the bottom. Select Particle Images | AquaBall and click on the Apply button at the top of the window. The following screenshot shows the AquaBall image being added to the tenth frame in the mini-Timeline:

There are two default preferences at play here that we should be aware of. The first is that when you import a layer into Motion, it will always get added at the playhead position. When you're first starting to use the application, this can be very frustrating. Second, this was a still image and, by default, if you drag it 10 frames to the left, you'll notice it matches the length of the project. Let's change this now. Select the AquaBall image in the Layers tab and press Delete.

Go to the Motion menu and choose Preferences. Click on the Project tab.

Under the Still Images & Layers settings, notice that Default Layer Duration is set to Use project duration and Create Layers at is set to Current frame, as shown in the next screenshot. Set Default Layer Duration to Use custom duration and set the length to one second.

Set Create Layers at to Start of project.

Let's close the preference window. With your playhead still at 10 frames and the AquaBall visible in the Library tab, apply it to the project again. Notice its length and where it gets added, as shown here:

Go back to Motion | Preferences and change back the preferences to their defaults.

Launch Motion. Select a Motion project, set Preset to Broadcast HD 720p, Frame Rate to 59.94, and Duration to 20 seconds. Choose Open.

Go to the Motion menu and choose Preferences. Click on the Project tab.

Under the Still Images & Layers settings, notice that Default layer Duration is set to Use project duration. Change Default Layer Duration to Use custom duration and set the length to one second. Close Preferences.

Press Command + 1 to navigate to the File Browser and locate the Chapter 1 exercise folder.

Turn off the Collapse Image Sequences icon on the lower-right corner of the File Browser so you can see all the photos. You should see 20 photos displayed; change from icon view to list view, as shown in the following screenshot:

Make sure your playhead is on the first frame of the project. Click the first photo and Shift + click the last one.

Drag the photos into the Timeline and try to align it with your playhead while holding down the Shift key. Wait for the pop-up window, and choose Sequential, as shown here:

Press Command + 1 to close the File Browser and F5 to close the Layers tab. Drag upward between the Timeline and the Canvas to get a better view of the Timeline:

Change the Layer view in the Timeline from Small to Mini to fit more layers on screen, as shown here. Scroll down on the right-hand side to see more of them.

Press Shift + Z to fit the Canvas to the window and the Space bar to play it back. Notice how every second a photo appears until the project ends.

Go back to Motion | Preferences and change back the preferences to their defaults.

Launch Motion. Under Composition, select the Pulse category and choose Pulse – Open. Click Open a copy.

The project has three groups comprising of various elements from the project. Press Command + 1 to close the File Browser and Command + 7 to close the Timeline, so that we can have a little more room to view our Layers tab.

Let's play back the project to get a feel for it. Press the Space bar. This project consists of four different views of our animating circles and pulses.

Let's look at this project a bit deeper. Go to the beginning of the project. Click the disclosure triangle for the Text Elements group, as shown in the following screenshot. Notice how the group is slightly less highlighted than the Camera Light Graphics and Background Elements groups. This indicates that at the current frame, this group doesn't exist. We get further confirmation of this by looking in our mini-Timeline and seeing the Text Elements group start a lot later. Press Shift + I to move to the in-point of the group.

Notice how the group now becomes highlighted but the Subtitle layer does not, as shown in the following screenshot:

Drag your playhead forward until you see the word Subtitle onscreen or go to frame 273. Notice it's now highlighted. Hit the disclosure triangle for the Subtitle group. Notice that there is a Sequence Text behavior on the text. (We will be going in depth with behaviors in Chapter 3, Making It Move with Behaviors, but right now think of it as what's causing the text to animate in). Sometimes when we add filters, masks, and behaviors to clips, our workspace in the Layers tab can get cluttered. We can easily turn off the visibility of these filters, behaviors, and masks at the bottom of the Layers tab. Press the gear icon (shown in the following screenshot) and notice how the Sequence Text disappears. Press it again so you can see it.

When we work, it's also advantageous to solo elements in the project. It allows us to focus our work rather than worry about hundreds of items. To see the layers in the Text Elements group by themselves, select it and click the square within the rectangle icon. Notice how the graphic disappears and the text moves slightly to the side. Click it again to unsolo it.

Close the Text Elements group and open the Cameras Light Graphics group. Notice there are four scenes in this group that correspond to the four circle and pulse animations that take place over time. Get a feel for when each scene starts and stops by looking in the Layers tab and in the mini-Timeline for when a group is highlighted.

Twirl open scenes four through one by clicking the disclosure triangle for each of them. This may cause some of the layers to go outside the view, and in order to see them you have to scroll. Instead, click the icon at the bottom-left of the Layers tab with the little head on it. Drag the slider to your right to resize the layers.

Close the Camera Lights and Graphics group.