Free Tips and Tricks

1. When replacing dropzones with movies make sure they have enough duration otherwise the drop zone will go black when the movie ends.


2. If you replace a movie that did not have enough duration to fit the length of the dropzone, it may look like the new movie does not have enough duration as well because the length might not have reset, extend the out point to resolve.


3. Sometimes shortcuts don't work because you are in the wrong window, seems to defeat the purpose to click with the mouse. So 'cmd ~', that's Apple tilde (next to the z key) for you and me, to switch windows or panes then the shortcuts will work. If you continue to tap the cmd ~ key Motion will cycle between all open projects as well, which is great for copying and comparing.


4. How to crash Motion and how to avoid it when opening a project. In the 'file browser' double click the layer name and hit the spacebar to start playback, nothing opens and Motion crashes, why?. When double clicking the project to open it you actually double clicked the name and opened the project and went into rename at the same time, when you hit the spacebar to play the project, you renamed the project to nothing (spacebar). Motion has a project open that you just renamed, no surprise it crashes, to avoid this never double click the project name, only the icon.There is a difference in the way Motion reacts to the renaming of a project that is open, Motion 4 deletes all your objects and Motion 3 either deletes all your objects or crashes, but all is fine when you open the project again in Motion 3 or 4.


5. What graphics card do you recommend? and what card do you use at motiontemplate?. I have the ATI Radeon HD 4870 which has 512mb of vram and is one of the best graphics cards you can use with Motion. Here is the link to the card at Apple.


6. If you want to duplicate an object with it's behaviors and filters at the same place in time use 'duplicate'. If you want to duplicate an object with it's behaviors and filters at a different place in time then position your playhead at the new location and copy and paste. This is because Motion always copies what's selected but pastes to the playhead location, so we have the best of both worlds.


7. If you want to copy a movie or create a project with the same look, place the movie in the project and build your graphics on top matching the movies content and timing. When finished turn off the movie and your project should have the same look and feel as the original movie.


8. If you need to use a Photoshop document which includes layers with styles in Motion, turn the layers with styles into smart objects in Photoshop and they will import correctly into Motion


9. If you need to grab an object from another project, open that project, select and copy, switch projects with cmd~ and paste. Positioning your playhead before the paste will avoid unexpected results.


10. If you hold the 'alt' key when clicking the disclosure arrow in the layers pane, the group will open and all subgroups as well. The same works for collapsing down a group as well.


11. 2 great shortcuts for working efficiently in Motion 4 are CTRL ALT R & CTRL ALT S, these toggle the reflections and shadows on and off. Toggle off to work then toggle on to check reflections and shadows, toggle off to work again.


12. When you are updating a template it can take a long time to save if the original template had the quicktime preview ticked so it is updating that as well and there is no way of turning it off. Try opening the template and 'save as template' again (turning the quicktime preview off), rename and you will have 2 versions one with the quicktime preview one without. The one without the preview will update quickly.


13. Adobe After Effects - To replace a placeholder, video or image in the timeline, select layer in timeline - hold 'alt' key on keyboard and drag new media from project window on to layer. If you have the same number of layers it worked, if you have a new layer you might have released the 'alt' key too soon or missed the targeted layer in the timeline, undo and have another go. It works best if the frame sizes match but you can always scale the new layer to fit.


14. After Effects CS5 & Motion4 - You can now use your native Apple Motion projects directly inside Adobe After Effects, import the Motion project into After Effects and use as you would any other asset as After Effects deals with it as a video. If you want to update the Motion project, select and 'edit original', change in Motion, save and it updates in After Effects as well. This used to work before but got disconnected in one of the updates from Apple or Adobe so it only works with Apple Motion V4 & Adobe After Effects CS5, Still looking for a work around on Motion5 and After Effects CS5.


15. Motion V5 - It can be heavy on processing when working with a template in FCPX that has reflections so publish a rig with a check box and 2 states, 0% reflections and your max% reflections. Turn the reflections to 0% when editing the template then turn back to your max% when finished. That's why our templates have this published feature for templates that include reflections.