Getting acquainted with the Motion interface
Motion is an application that is incredibly deep and rich in features. Teaching its ins and outs in a chapter, let alone a whole book, is nearly impossible, but we can get your feet wet and teach you enough to make you dangerous (in a positive and creative way!). For users of past versions of Motion, the interface hasn't received quite the intense overhaul as FCPX did, but has still gotten a bit of a face lift. Let's take a look at the Motion interface before we tackle any real exercises.
Getting ready
If you haven't purchased Motion, open up the Mac App Store application and purchase it for $49.99.
How to do it...
1. Open Motion. Like FCPX, it's a big app, so it takes a few moments to get cranking. You'll be brought to the Project Browser window, which lets you pick from a variety of types of projects as well as presets:
2. Make sure the Motion Project icon is highlighted. The presets on the right are fine for now, but if you know you want to incorporate a Motion project into an FCPX project later on, your best bet is to try and pick the preset and frame rate that matches your FCPX project.
3. Click on Open. The entire empty Motion interface comes into view. There are four major components to the Motion interface, in addition to a toolbar much like the one found in FCPX. Each section is highlighted in the following screenshot. (If your interface doesn't look like this screenshot, select Window | Revert to Original Layout.)
i. Section 1: This window pane consists of three major tabs, the File Browser (Command + 1) , Library (Command + 2), and Inspector (Command + 3).
Bringing media into Motion differs greatly from how it is done in FCPX. Instead of having to go through an Import process, users merely have to navigate in the File Browser to the folder on their computer containing the media they want to use. You can then drag media right into a project, bypassing any sort of so-called importing. As convenient as this sounds, just be careful with your media management as moving or renaming items could cause Motion to lose track of them.
The Library tab contains virtually all of Motion's bells and whistles. While FCPX has titles, transitions, and effects, Motion has its own set of tools such as behaviors (think of preset magical keyframing techniques), replicators, particle emitters, and more.
Lastly, the Inspector tab is pretty much exactly the same as it is in FCPX, but be prepared to (usually) face a far greater number of parameters to tweak!
ii. Section 2: This window pane consists of three tabs as well: Layers (Command + 4), Media (Command + 5), and Audio (Command + 6).
The Layers tab will display the list of all the objects (the term Motion is used for basically all elements—pictures, clips, text, and so on) currently being used in your project. Often objects are put into groups to consolidate the view as complex motion graphic project usually have dozens upon dozens of objects to them.
The Media tab shows a list of all possible media readily available for a project. It is most similar to the Event Browser in FCPX. Clips can be dragged into this window without having to be added directly to a project first.
The Audio tab functions fairly similarly to the Media tab, but for audio only. It also gives some basic controls over the audio properties.
iii. Section 3: This window pane is the timeline of Motion. Most of the time is spent in the standard timeline view (Command + 7), although you can also hide and show timelines strictly for keyframes (Command + 8) and audio (Command + 9) .
iv. Section 4: This window is the Viewer and has the same function as the Viewer in FCPX. The one thing to be careful about with this Viewer window is the Zoom level. When starting a new project, it always defaults to 100 percent, which is not what you usually want as your will unlikely be able to fit all the pixels within the Viewer at full size.
4. Click on the Viewer Scale button above the Viewer and choose Fit to Window. You can also do this with Shift + Z, identical to the command in FCPX:
