Motion playback in real-time

What sort of templates - generators, titles?

Or are you exporting a composition to quicktime?

What is the duration in Motion timeline?

Can you post screenshots of what you see in Motion and in FCP, including the time indicators in each?

If, say, the duration is 10 seconds, as in the above example, are you saying that if you time it, playback takes 20 seconds?

I don't think there is an option in Motion to set playback speed. If I am wrong on that, I'm sure I will be put right soon.

Two observations that may be relevant:

1) If the animation becomes too complex, Motion may have difficulty playing it in real time.

To determine whether this is the problem, you can create a RAM Preview, and playing back.

A RAM Preview is like a fully rendered timeline (or portion of the timeline), and will play at full speed.

If that plays, you will know it is just a matter of Motion not being able, on that mac to play it all in real time.

2) A Motion template (title, effect, generator, transition) does not really have a duration, it is "elastic": when added to a FCP timeline, it will adjust depending on the duration set in FCP. For example, if your template was created as 10 sec, and the duration in FCP is set to 5 sec, it will play twice as fast.

There are many things that can affect playback speed in Motion, even simple projects.

Your hardware is probably the biggest contributor to playback problems - i.e., "older" graphics card, and/or limited VRAM. [Don't feel bad, "they" haven't built a machine yet that's Motion can't slow to a crawl!]

If you are using any external media, whatever codec is used for the media can take a hit on playback. Motion prefers ProRes, but the larger file size can also use up precious vram in a hurry... it's a coin toss.

If you have Layer thumbnails active, turn them off! Go to View > Layers Columns and turn off all of those options.

Adjust your Render settings. If you have Best or Custom set, reset it to Normal. You can use Dynamic resolution, but Full should be fine. The last few updates to Motion seem to have made this distinction useless. [And I'm still using 5.4.7...!!!]

[This can be kind of a big one:]

When you are playing back your project, turn off all Overlays (typically you can toggle ⌘/ to show/hide regular overlays and ⌥⌘/ for 3D Overlays.) [While I'm thinking about it — turn off Frame Blending too — frame blending is primarily used to smooth slow motion.]

If you're using an emitter, set the birth rate and life rather low while testing it out.

There's a Preference under the Time section for Playback control: you can uncheck Limit playback speed to project frame rate (not recommended, but if things are slow, this might give you a few extra FPS.)

In Preferences under Appearance, set the option to see the Frame rate (only during playback) so you can judge how fast the animation is actually progressing. [I think the max fps Motion will play is 60. With this option turned off, if your project is 24fps, Motion will still play it at 60. I personally don't like turning this off, but it may be worth trying out when things get a little slow.]

The best way to handle this situation is to simply run FCP at the same time. Every time you update/save your project, update the instance in FCP and play it there just to test it out. Motion will only create a RAM preview for as much RAM as you have to allot to it — FCP can render an entire storyline for playback.

HTH