Problems Rendering in Motion 5

How are you outputting it? What format is your output, what are the render settings?

I just did a series of tests, and yep, there's some banding. Not sure what the fix is, but will be investigaing it, and contacting Mark Spencer about it, see if he has any suggestions. I tried exporting as ProRes HQ, premultiplied and now, ProRes 4x4, I only get different variations of banding. Very odd. Also, fill out the feedback page, let Apple know, they actually read and track those.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/motion.html

I, too, have had serious problems with gradient banding while exporting projects, and it does not seem to matter what the render settings are. I find that with the project still in Motion 5 (prior to export), the image looks perfect until you hit "play", then you can see the banding. Hit "stop" and the image looks perfect again. It's weird. And unfortunate. Thanks for contacting Mark Spencer; he seems to be the one --or one of the ones-- who would know what to do in this situation. I look forward to his response.

I'd be very interested to know if you ever found a solution to the how to stop the banding in Motion 5.

Unvelievable, but true.

I'll be sure to let you know if I ever come across a development, but for now, no gradients.

Thanks for responding,

Cheers,

Mike

I solved this issue by exporting via compressor using the Animation codec. Gradient heaven. It seems ProRes HQ doesn't cut it for extremely shallow gradients. If you take the perfectly exported Animation codec clip and compress that using ProRes at all the highest setting, you will see the banding return.

I have a fairly complicated Motion 5 project at 30fps that exported out of Motion with quite a bit of unwanted gradient banding. I took your suggestion and chose "Send to Compressor" and used the Quicktime Animation preset. Well, the exported video looks phenomenal (NO gradient banding AT ALL) --but Compressor changed it to 26.62fps. I opened it up in Quicktime and did a test export as an H.264 file at 29.97 fps, but the result was still 26.62fps and some of the gradient banding returned.

If Compressor would have left my frame rate alone the export would have been perfect. It LOOKED amazing! But it cannot be used of that frame rate. Have you experienced this at all?

NOTE: Is it possible that the new Motion update changed my Project Properties from 29.97fps to 30fps, which then somehow screwed up the frame rate when I sent it to Compressor? To tell you the truth, I am certain that I originally created the project at 29.97fps, since I am always using either 29.97 or 59.94fps in my workflow; however, post-update the project shows up clearly as 30fps in the Project Properties window. This is weird.

WOW. I get a similar result 😟

When exporting via compressor to animation my 25fps frame rate has been changed to 19.24?? What the...?

I've been working with someone on another forum and while we do not (yet) know why Compressor changed the frame rate, he did offer a solution:

Duplicate the "Animation" preset in Compressor and change the frame rate from 100% of original to your specific project frame rate (29.97 in my case), then make sure to set it to the "best" quality --it is lower by default. I tried this and it worked for me. Just know (as I recently learned) that the "Animation" codec requires a lot of horsepower to play --again, I don't know why-- so I used Quicktime to convert it to ProRes 422 HQ, which imported into and played just fine in Final Cut Pro X (use ProRes 4444 if you need to preserve any transparency).

I hope it helps! (If so, I don't deserve any credit. Someone else helped me through all of this)

That's a great idea about changing the frame rate from 100% to a specific number.

Also, I would try changing the key frames from the default of 24 to "All". If often fixes frame rate issues in my experience.

Can't try this right now but will shortly.

Yup. Keyframes to "All" is good too. I should have mentioned that.

Good luck.