What are some good visual effects programmes for the Mac?

Hard to answer without knowing what kind of effects.

One of the biggest bargains anywhere is Motion5…$49 from the Apple Store. Although it has a different type of workflow that AE, it can do much of what AE can do…and probably some stuff that AE can't. Go to Mac Break STudio and see some of its capabilities demonstrated in the Mark Spencer/Steve Martin tutorials.

The biggest limitation (which would also be true with AE) is that you need Pro Res 44444 or Animation to export alpha channels with video files and FCE does not support those codecs. Or does it? Because by purchasing Motion, you also get the Pro Res codecs and Animation. Will FCE be able to work with them if they're in your QT library? I think so but am not positive. I'd check with the FCE gurus in that discussion forum.

Good luck.

Russ

Russ H wrote:

Or does it? Because by purchasing Motion, you also get the Pro Res codecs and Animation. Will FCE be able to work with them if they're in your QT library? I think so but am not positive. I'd check with the FCE gurus in that discussion forum.

So I half answered my own question. FCE will respect the alpha channel in a PR 4444 file. But from the limited testing I was able to to, there doesn't seem to be a way to export it ( or other flavors of PR) as a PR sequence. It renders as AIC, which is fine. FWIW, it can always be exported as Pro Res via QT Conversion, but why bother?

However, I now have to say – despite what I said in my first post – that I'm not 100% percent certain that the all the codecs will be available by buying Motion. I'm like 95% sure, the more I think about it. But I have too much NLE and graphics "stuff" on my systems to test it conclusively.

Russ