Installed plugin not working on Macbook Air

Okay -- if I understand what you're saying: you have two machines; you copied over all your FCPX projects from one machine to another. You copied your third party effects -- which **work** in new projects you create on the Air but NOT on the older projects you moved over.

Try this:

On the mini, open your project, find the Smooth Move effects and for each (that aren't working on the other machine) Save Effects Preset (just save the Smooth Moves). Give them each a specific name (SMove-ProjAbbrev-ClipLoc). Save them to a specific category (Alex4D EPs). [If you use time for ClipLoc, do not use colons or periods (unix thing) - use dashes or just format the time in HHMMSSFF.]

Copy the Effects Preset files to:

Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/ProApps/Effects Presets

on the Air.

Find the instance not working on the Air and go into the Alex4D EPs category and drop the corresponding effects preset (you can simply turn off the original until you're ready to delete it). If it works, the EP will load a working copy of Smooth Move on the Air with the saved parameter settings (as well as any keyframing you've done) you had on the older setup. You can then delete the older instance of Smooth Move that isn't working from clip in the Effects inspector.

Normally, you could just add a new working version of Smooth Move to replace the old one, but this Effects Preset method is a way to save and copy/duplicate your parameter settings from the older project versions. If everything is installed correctly, this should work to restore your settings. If your Smooth Move template is exactly where FCPX expects to find it, FCPX will load it and set the parameters by itself. If it fails, then you need to recheck all the installation steps (maybe you have duplicate or *trailing* spaces added to the file path parts that you may not be able to see right off.)

If the Effects Presets trick works, you can simply go back and delete them (then restart FCPX).

If you have any questions, get back... I have a feeling that if you clear up one instance of this problem, then all the rest of them will work out "by themselves".

If you had to create the folders: Motion Templates and Effects, you need to make sure they are:

Motion Templates.localized and Effects.localized (as soon as you enter the names, the '.localized' usually disappears [they are hidden]).

You can right click on the folders and "Get Info". Check the Name & Extension field - you can add the .localized there.

I'm pretty sure Alex4D does not require a specialized installer.

The path looks correct so long as the contents of "Alex4D" IS Alex4D Smooth Move (folder) containing: Alex4D Smooth Move.moef, Media (folder), large.png and small.png. [In most cases, the actual Motion template effect will not show the .moef extension but will have the Motion Effect icon.]

You might have to open System Preferences > Security & Privacy, select the Privacy pane and then select Full Disk Access. Make sure that Final Cut Pro is added the collection.

You might want to start with Motion Templates and work down and for each folder, check in Get Info that the folders have Read & Write permissions.

Repairing the XML references is a **last resort** and would only be done if your user folder names were different (case sensitive).

I checked out the template. Even though it is very old, there doesn't appear to be anything in the template that has been "abandoned" by Final Cut which would keep it from working in newer versions of FCPX.

Okay - I thought the two macs were nearby.

I was just looking at the original files for the template download. The Privileges for staff and everyone are set to Read Only -- they should be Read & Write (all of the permissions for templates I've made myself show R&W for all the templates.)

There is one other installation option -- install the template in:

Macintosh HD > Library > Application Support > Final Cut Pro > Templates > Effects.

Create the Alex4D folder, install the Alex4D Smooth Move folder inside.

The permissions change might solve this... The template itself is only about 6 weeks "younger" than Final Cut Pro X itself. Things were different then.

You have to set one up the way you want, copy, and paste attributes to the others.

Select the library and in storage location set Motion Templates to in library. Are you using transfer libraries to go between machines or moving a drive? If the former you can use this just for the transfer library.

Make sure the installation is *exactly* the same as it is on your other machine -- that includes Catogory folders and/or Theme folders.

If you're still having issues, then you may need to check to see if your User folders are named the same. FCPX stores the plugin referencess you use in project "database" along with the path used and the User folder is part of the path. If this is the case, there is a way to "repair" the references... but check out the other stuff first.

You’ll have to resort to copy and paste attributes. You might also try storing the plugin with the library, so when it gets transferred between machines it carries over with it.

I've actually seen this (rather frequently). Do you have a Shape Mask applied to the effect? This might just be a layout bug in the inspector where there are two "titlebars" for a single effect. It doesn't seem to affect the behavior of the app.

You might want to contact Alex about this.

Do you have the Alex4D category in the Effects browser? Is the effect in there on the MBA?

If you can take the drive back to the mini and copy the effect into the library there.