templates made in motion 5

I have a question. I tried to make a "fog" simulator in motion 5 and exported it as a FCPX template. When in FCPX the fog generator that I created looks pixelated and has ripples like a very low quality. Is there something I am doing wrong in the export to FCPX? Thanks in advance.

Do you have the FCPX "Playback Quality" set to "Better Performance"? If so it should still appear clean when the playhead is parked but perhaps have issues when playing back.

Maybe posting comparative screen shots (or single frame exports) from "Motion" & "FCPX" would help, or even uploading the template.

Thanks for the reply dave. I just did some investigating and the generator plays fine in FCPX. It is when I export it to a quicktime movie that the quality of ONLY the generator I created gets distorted. I am a beginner in every sense of the word so not sure what all the settings should be. So to be clear,I can use the generator I created from Motion 5 that I exported as a generator and it looks great in FCPX......but upon export from FCPX to my desktop does only the fog generator portion of my video become pixelated and have "digital ripples" through it. Thanks again Dave.

Are you exporting directly from "Share", "Export Media"? If so what codec and does it play fine in the FCPX timeline if you render it?

I think I may have figured it out. I created the fog generator 1080p and tried to use it in a 720p movie. Because I just used it in a 1080p movie and it was fine upon export. I guess I learned from this. Like I said, most of my learning has been trial and error. Thanks again dave.

Here is the video I wanted to use it in. In the beginning it was supposed to be fog but I changed it cue to my "fog folly" LOL. I shot this on a flip camera but a couple days ago got a DSLR so im excited. Here is the link to the video

Something is strange there, 1080 templates should work fine in 720 projects.

If your in Motion and select "Project" in the "Layers" panel, then the "Project" tab in the "Inspector" you'll see a heading "Snapshots". The default snapshot is set to operate on both 720 and 1080.

Any chance you could post a screen shot from the exported video that's distorted I'm curious as sot what's going on.

Right but I was trying to play it at 60fps upon export when the generator was 23.98fps. I dont have the original video anymore but do you think it could happen due to the frames per second thing i mentioned?

Definitely, no need to bother with as screen shot. All depending on content, templates can sometimes play fine at any frame rate regardless of the Motion settings. But more often than not this isn't the case.

If you create the template in Motion at the same settings as you intend using then it's surefire.

But if you create them at 60fps (highest possible) far more often they will work in all frame rate projects, so if flexibility is important this is the key, but even then it's important to test them.

I have a half a dozen or so templates that sit on a drive doing nothing because they don't translate in frame rates well.

I just remembered, Motion VFX released a free app a while back that converted Motion template frame rates for you. I never used it so don't know how well it works but could be worth looking into.

aghh. I have that FPS converter.....Thanks again dave. I am just now stepping into the world of DSLR with a canon t3i and a 50mm f1.4 lens so I may have more questions in the future. It really is nice to have this community of people who have varying levels of experience willing to help each other in their goals. This community has really helped me. Thanks much Dave. Maybe you know the answer to this question. I bought a mac running Lion and found out the hard way about the audio popping upon export in FCPX. I downgraded to snow leopard a while back and wondered if they ever fixed that bug where there was popping in the audio. I bought lion and can upgrade if I choose to but fear the popping thing. Have you any experience with what I am talking about?

That's interesting, I've never had audio issues with FCP X in Lion. What exactly are you experiencing?

I understand the physics of audio but in practice it has always been my weak point, I would still have noticed something like that and I've never experienced it either.

I'm definitely not the guy to help solve/explain it for you, hopefully Ben can get you somewhere.

The audio popping issue is frequently related to using MP3 audio files in FCP X - the same was true of FCP7 and earlier.

It is always a good dea to convert any audio files to WAV or AIFF before use for which I usually use Compressor, although if it started in your iTunes library you can make an AIFF from there and of course there are loads of other ways of converting ...

I see. Thanks simon. Since I downgraded back to Snow Leopard I don't have to do any converting and don't have audio popping. BUT, I can't live in the dark-ages forever so I guess when I upgrade i can just convert to wav in my converter. Thanks for the input.

@ Ben, I had a mac book pro running snow leopard using FCPX. In November I upgraded to iMac running Lion and began to experience clicks and pops in the audio of my videos. Many forums indicated that many people experienced this problem and the quickest thing for me to do at the time was downgrade back to snow leopard due to my inexperience with video/audio. I went to the apple store and they said it was a known issue between Lion and FCPX and their solution was to downgrade me as I had projects to finish. Anyway, months later I am still running snow leopard and just didn't know if the bug was fixed in Lion but as simon indicated it may be my use of MP3 formats. On snow leopard I just use the audio files as is from my itunes/sound library with no converting. Maybe this is not the way I should be going but my inexperience sometimes catches up with me. Thanks for everyones help in this matter.

Actually MP3 is fully and officially supported in FCP X, unlike in 7. It's a rare bug I've found for popping in X, and seems to have been fixed in 0.4 or 0.5, from what I've been researching. And it happened to various file formats, not unique to MP3 like in 7.

I use MP3s from my iTunes library daily and never had any problems.

Where you using the latest version of Lion and FCP X at the time? Just curious if you'd made sure of that.

If SL is working for you, stick with it. But plan on upgrading to Mountain Lion and FCP X 10.0.5 when ML is released. Two guys I know running the developer release of Mountain Lion tell me FCP X is much more stable and a bit snappier in ML.

wow thats great news Ben! No, in fact is was the first release of Lion at the time but I switched back so quick that I didn't wait for any updates. Great news on ML, I have been seeking this info for a long time now. Thanks man.

I'm pretty sure if you were on 10.7.4 and 10.0.5 you'd not have those issues.

I bet your'e right. Ok so i guess the big question is : If what I have is working for me right now, should i just wait until Mountain Lion to upgrade or should I do Lion in the time being?