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Is Motion 5 not ideal for long projects?

hi

I've recently bought Motion 5 after ignoring it since the first version as i found After Effects more useful. I thought I'd give it a go on a 1 minute long project containing still photos, text and a little video and audio. Everything was fine until constant crashing has forced me to revert back to After Effects. I've only created about 20 seconds of the project which is now unusable. I'm using a iMac (late 2008) with 8gb ram.


Is Motion not Ideal for longer projects like this? I really wanted this to work as Motion is much nicer to use.


Thanks


Drew

iMac 21.5, Mac OS X (10.7), iPhone 4 16GB

Posted on Dec 13, 2011 6:59 AM

Reply
9 replies

Dec 13, 2011 7:26 AM in response to Curnsie

Just to define what causes Motion 5 to hang, just there, I made 4 or 5 edits then dragged the payhead back to preview the edits and then hit the spacebar to play. Hang. Hitting the spacebar seems to be the event that cause 90% of the crashes. This happens every 3 or 4 minutes. Spinning beachball of death.


Is my iMac not powerful enough or should I use the internal harddrive to edit. At the moment I'm using a Raid 0 server connected via gigabyte ethernet with causes no problems with FCP, FCPx, or After Effects...


Drew

Dec 14, 2011 1:46 AM in response to Curnsie

imho, a minute isn't 'long', but how complex is your project, in terms of layers, movements, particles, replicators etc etc ... ?


plus you can 'support' M5 efforts by using its preffered codecs & sizes ... if M5 has first of all has to transcode a highly compressed h.264, non standard sized 'video', then a lot of muscle strength is lost ....


my (simple, I have to confess) projects run smooth on my tiny C2D, 8GB MacMini ....-

Dec 14, 2011 1:55 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

Karsten

I would classifiy it as fairly complex - I've used a style similar to the credits of the Sherlock Holmes movie. Most media is photos max size 1800 px wide @ 72dpi. All video is ProRez LT. There are a lot of layers and movement - in 3d space. No particles or replicators.


I've come to the conclusion thats its too memory intensive for Motion 5, so I've resorted to recreating the project in After Effects. Its a shame, because its more time consuming to create the same features in AE. In Motion I could edit to the timing of the audio track I'd created. I can't do that in AE as easily due to the lack of realtime playback - I have to create Ram previews to check everything.


Thanks

Drew.

Dec 14, 2011 2:17 AM in response to Curnsie

Curnsie wrote:

... so I've resorted to recreating the project in After Effects....


if the drill doesn't work, use a hammer 😁


I assume it gets too much in detail (and beyond my skills and knowledge) to do a 'remote diagnosis' of your system - all I can say, my system is 'as out of the box', I don't dare to de-locate apps, I don't use symLInks (anymore ...) to bind folders on external drives, my drives are hfs, some fw some usb (booo!), my intHDD always ( ... most always ... ) offers at last 20 Gigs free, all updates, blablabla ........-


The memory management of FCPX is a m... offers room for improvement, and it could be the cause for delays some users note here ... as you. on the other hand, many users use it without flaws ... as me. it eats RAM, but that's no issue in your situation.


sorry for being of no help ... 😟

Dec 14, 2011 2:37 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

Thanks again. My system is also 'as out of the box' with the exception of an extra 4gb ram, and my internal harddrive has over 400gb free.


One last thing I might try is moving the project and media files to my internal HD and see it that helps. I'm always reluctant to use the same HD as the System OS resides, but if it works...


if the drill doesn't work, use a hammer 😁


lol


We call a hammer a 'persuader' in Ireland!

Dec 20, 2011 12:02 PM in response to Curnsie

I don't recommend moving your project files to your internal harddrive. I would leave them on the external drive, as long as its a fast drive.


I have had the same problem with Motion 5 freezing after I hit Play, but it only happens when I immediately hit Play after making a change. I know it might sound silly, but give it a good pause before hitting Play. This has worked for me.


Also, have you unchecked some of the playback options in the upper right corner? Try turning off lights, shadows, depth of field, etc. unless you absolutely need to have them on to effectively work on a certain area of your project. Those settings can and will drastically reduce playback, and understandably so. You can always turn back on any of those settings before final export. Or how about a RAM preview? I agree that always having to RAM preview to see anything in After Effects is annoying, but sometimes --not always-- this is necessary with Motion 5 too.


Another thing you can try is to truncate layers once the object has left the screen. Even though you cannot see an object once it's no longer "in" the canvas, if the layer still exists in the timeline Motion is still going to process all of it, which puts an unnecessary strain on your system. For example (though I know you don't have particle emitters in this particular project), setting particles' life-cycle so that they die off once they leave the viewable Canvas area is a good idea, because Motion will still process them otherwise, and this is a waste of resources.


Let me know if you have any luck.

Dec 21, 2011 2:28 AM in response to ACE001

ACE001 wrote:


I don't recommend moving your project files to your internal harddrive. I would leave them on the external drive, as long as its a fast drive.



I agree. I didn't bother trying this in the end.



I have had the same problem with Motion 5 freezing after I hit Play, but it only happens when I immediately hit Play after making a change. I know it might sound silly, but give it a good pause before hitting Play. This has worked for me.


Also, have you unchecked some of the playback options in the upper right corner? Try turning off lights, shadows, depth of field, etc. unless you absolutely need to have them on to effectively work on a certain area of your project. Those settings can and will drastically reduce playback, and understandably so. You can always turn back on any of those settings before final export. Or how about a RAM preview? I agree that always having to RAM preview to see anything in After Effects is annoying, but sometimes --not always-- this is necessary with Motion 5 too.


It seems to be the complexity of the scene. I'm using motion to edit titles for FCPx without issue. Pausing would be good, but I'd constantly forget!


Thanks for the suggestion on turning off playback options. I hadn't thought of that.


I've completely recreated the project in AE now, as I couldn't risk wasting any more time to be honest - I've already lost 3 or 4 days. I've come to realise that for £34, Motion 5 is ideal for creating and editing simple titles for use with FCPx. I'll stick with AE for the more complex stuff - as yet AE it hasn't crashed once on the same project.


Thanks for the reply.


Drew

Dec 21, 2011 7:43 AM in response to Curnsie

Well I'm glad you were able to finish the project nonetheless. But don't give up on Motion completely --it really is good for a lot more than FCP X titles. I have just recently started learning After Effects, and while I like how deep the program goes, Motion is just so much faster (and far more intuitive) at a great many things.


Here is a link to a recent demo reel project I completed in Motion, an example of something more than titles:


http://vimeo.com/30900691


It's not the most amazing thing you've ever seen, but I think it adequately shows that Motion can be used to create more than just animated text.


In the end, whichever program you choose to work with (or both), best of luck!

Dec 21, 2011 7:49 AM in response to Curnsie

I should say that Motion relies heavily on your graphics card. I have a late 2009 iMac, and while I have 16 GB of RAM I just have the factory-installed graphics card, which isn't exactly a beast. If you have a model from the year before, I suspect your graphics card might be what's slowing you down so much. Just a thought...

Is Motion 5 not ideal for long projects?

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