Exporting from FCPX

Hi guys, I just joind up to this site recently and have learned so much all ready but I have a question I can't find the answer to so may be some one can help.
I was wondering if you can send a clip from FCPX directly into Motion without having to render / export it first? I have herd you can do this with adobe and was hoping there was a way with FCPX.

Thanks

Kaato.

I worked with Adobe Premiere and After Effects for over 10 years and the thing that annoyed me most was the way Adobe's Dynamic Link worked, and refused to evolve. It was and still is a very one way thing.

Others here have a better understanding of how Final Cut works and will be able to help better on whether what you want to do could ever be possible, as I believe it was in previous versions.

For now you could right click on a clip, "Reveal in Finder", open the source clip in Motion, trim it in there, do your work and export it out for import into FCP. To be honest that's almost as good as Adobe's Dynamic Link gets anyway.

To take that a little further, instead of exporting it out from Motion, you could rig and publish the work you done to it and apply that to the edit directly in FCP, with the possibilities of making adjustments if desired. Also for applying it to other clips too.

This is 1 of the 2 main reasons why I changed to FCP with the release of X and Motion 5, a big part of this is because of the direction Apple are going with on how the apps interact. I.e. forgetting about round tripping in the favour of creating effects, templates etc. in Motion for the use in FCP.

I don't know how round tripping went in previous versions of FCP, it does work really well in Avid Media Composer. But with Adobe, it doesn't happen. While it is a nice thing the benefits offered by creating your graphics work as a template ready for use directly in FCP is well worth re-training your workflow thinking for.

The round trip in legacy versions from FCP to Motion was really great as I could bring a Sequence (Timeline in X) directly to Motion will all the video/audio edited into place. It was a great way to work in some projects.

Motion 5 has some additional editing tools, but it's not the same. We're all hoping Apple restores the round trip like it used to be. No reason they can't. Even if they just let Motion read Final Cut's FCPXML exports.

For now, launch Motion and open a generic project. File > Import As Project, highlight one or more movie/graphic files, that will create a Motion project with all that stuff in it ready to go.

I like the idea of Show In Finder, and opening that video in Motion, that's a neat trick.

The round trip in legacy versions from FCP to Motion was really great as I could bring a Sequence (Timeline in X) directly to Motion will all the video/audio edited into place. It was a great way to work in some projects.

Did the edit sit in motion as layers where you could adjust the edit points? And did any work fully round trip and translate in FCP. If so, while I'm a big fan of the idea of creating effects/templates to work directly in the NLE that would be really worth while bring back.

In Adobe you can get a full Premiere sequence into After Effects that will then translate back to premiere, but just as one big long clip (a bit like viewing an FCPX timeline in the project library) which is pretty much useless. Or you can open a Premiere sequence in After effects and get the individual layers to work with, but obviously there's no gal time playback in After Effects and any changes won't translate back to Premiere unless set up to appear as before, as 1 big long clip like the FCPX project library.

Yes, it worked just like in Adobe.

I recommend everyone who wants this back fill out the Feedback form in both FCP X and in Motion 5. A link to it can be found in the File menu of each app. And Apple does in fact read and track these. If enough people request something, chances are we'll see it.

I'd like to see it back too, but for me only fully interactive, I see anything else as just trying to push the boundaries of a liner workflow, I think it's just another relic from 32bit computing.

Avid has a nice payoff with full interactivity, you can open any clip from the MC timeline in Avid FX, do the work you want and when you go back to MC it is there waiting for you, that could be very useful but I could never get on with Avid FX, it's a bit bland.

For general use I'm still preferring the templates route.

Thanks for all the comments and feed back, it helped a lot!
I will send feedback to Apple right away requesting the Round Trip be brought back to FCPX. To me it sounds like it could save so much time with the work flow!

I love we can make our own stuff for direct use in FCP X, but it's still not a round trip taking an FCP X Timeline into Motion. Two different animals. Fill out those feedback forms!

I did Ben, it's another tool in the box. I also mentioned that I'd like to see an enhanced version, fingers crossed on that one.

I've been looking into this a little. In the past I've had little contact with XML, just getting Avid sequences into After Effects via Premiere. The restrictions that related to this have now got me thinking.

As FCPX and Motion 5 now share the same render engine, if Motion was able to read and write FCPXML could the FCPX project be opened in Motion 5, worked on, saved as FCPXML and reopened in FCPX with no restrictions what so ever?

In theory it seems that way, but if motion templates/effects were used in that original FCPX project could that be a big issue?

Final Cut Studio round trips were all seamless, background XML transfers. In fact, you could import an actual Motion project file directly into FCP legacy just like a clip, and continue to modify it in Motion with live updates in FCP legacy. Very similar to how titles, effects, generators, effects work now in X.

The same could be done now, and is being done in the background for our Media Browser templates. Generic Motion projects just can't do it yet.

At this moment, though, Motion has no FCPXML import/export function. I fully expect the functionality to return, as it's very important.

Thanks Ben,

Here's my pipe dream.

For motion to deal with compound clips like pre-comps and to open FCP projects in Motion, do work, go back to FCP and continue to edit.

Or even better, for FCP to have a window layout option to switch between edit and graphics mode (FCP and Motion).

Fill out the feedback form, tell Apple we want to take Timeilnes to Motion, and generic Motion projects into FCP X Events/Timelines.

That makes 2 of us! lol

NocoDave wrote: Thanks Ben,

Here's my pipe dream.

For motion to deal with compound clips like pre-comps and to open FCP projects in Motion, do work, go back to FCP and continue to edit.

Or even better, for FCP to have a window layout option to switch between edit and graphics mode (FCP and Motion).