Question about Generators & retiming - help!

Hey there,

I do lots of car ads and I just started exploring creating generators to make templates for the deal portions of the spots (where they show the car, lease info etc) and I'm running into a couple issues.

1) When I place a generator into the FCPX timeline, when I change the duration of the clip the whole thing stretches. I'd like the timing to remain consistent - is there any way to stop FCP from stretching the timing of the generator? I tried using the build in/out markers but it doesn't seem to work properly, unless I'm doing it wrong. I realize I could just make compound clips and cut those to length, but I'd like to eliminate that step if possible.

2) I have a text effect at a certain point that highlights the lease price as the announcer says it - but the timing will be slightly different in different commercials and I want to be able to control when the highlight comes in. I tried publishing the Timing parameter on the highlight action but it just publishes a checkbox that turns the effect on or off (and as a weird side effect totally messes up the formatting of the rest of the text). Is there any way to do this?

If you can figure this out it will make my job so much more streamlined

Thanks guys!

-Ben

I'm not sure if this is what your looking for Ben.

Put a marker on the Motion Project, at the last frame, and change it to a "Project Loop End" marker. When you trim the generator in FCPX it wont speed up or slow down, trimming it shorter will cut it as expected and making it longer will start the loop again from the start at the point of the marker.

"Build In" and "Build Out" markers are different. If you have an in animation and/or out animation on a template you can put the "Build In" and "Build Out" markers at the end/start of each animation respectively.

That way wen the template is trimmed in FCPX the centre section gets adjusted in time but before and after the markers remain consistent to the timing they were created at.

This worked, thank you!! Any idea about changing the timing of the highlight behavior? I could always edit the generator when I need to change the timing but it would be great to be able to stay in fcp.
Thanks!

It's hard to tell without knowing exactly what you have but publishing anything relating to timing is very limited. Perhaps instead of animating the parameters that make it up you could rig it to a slider. Then key frame the animation in FCPX at your desired timing. But again, I'm not entierly certain that's what your looking for.

Which behaviour are you using? I just tried adding the "Shine" behaviour. I extended the behaviour to the length of the project, changed the "Speed" to "Custom" and published the "Custom Speed" slider. Everything else is left as default.

This worked exactly as expected in FCPX, when the slider is moved the shine moves across the text, but when I add keyframes to animate from 0-100 nothing happens, this is the same (or appears the same) bug as has been in FCPX since day 1 in the "Text Inspector", it's the first time I have seen it in the "Title Inspector".

Animation in FCPX is very far from complete, but I'm confident that when they finish it this method will work, not great for the moment though.