How fast should a new iMac be with Motion?

8 GB RAM is way too little. Bump up to at least 16, if not 32 and you'll see an improved performance, but a bit. Also, not sure what GPU that iMac has, but if it isn't spec, or lower end, Motion of all things will bog down. And, I assume you're running on the internal drive (a no-no for video work, T'bolt or USB 3 ext for that), so verify you have at least 15% of its total capacity left as free space. Do you have a second monitor connected? What GPU does that iMac have?

But depending on what you're doing, Motion can bog the biggest, baddest computers to a crawl. To help out, go to the Render menu, top right. Make sure Resolution is set to something lower than Full, and Quality is set to Normal, if not Draft. Then in the rest of that Render menu, make sure all the things you don't really need at the moment are turned off (lighting, shadows, motion blur, etc).

Apple's posted minimum specs are just that, the bare minimum you can get Motion to run with, not what Motion runs optimally with. And 3D anything eats up computer resources like crazy.

Otherworld Computing is the best place. Best customer support, best quality, solid reputation, been around for years.

Apps must be in the Application folder, media and project files can live anywhere. You don't select that inside Motion. When you hit Save or Save As, you can specify where the Motion project file is saved to. Unless you're making FCPX templates, then those automatically go to (and must be) here:

[user folder] > Movies > Motion Templates.

That GPU you have should be fine, not the best, but good enough to give you decent performance, plus handle 4K video and full resolution 3D titles.

Be sure that your Mac and the drive are both USB 3.0 and NOT USB 2. Very important!

Al - With regard to "I see that OWC has a trade in option and I assume that means they send me RAM, I install and then I send them what's in my iMac and

save some money.", you are correct. Wrote this for anyone else that might not have used their system before.

The new memory will come in a plastic container wrapped in a bubble-shipping bag and you can use it for the return of your old memory.

In my case, I twice (okay, I can be a slow learner!) decided that I could sell my old memory on Craig's List but it never sold so now I'm sitting on several sticks of old Mac Pro and a couple sticks of what is now an older MacBook Pro memory. Lesson learned suggestion: Don't bother messing with it, just accept their return offer and move on. Most likely isn't worth the hassle of selling it yourself.

Glad to see you're on your way to doing 3D with Motion. I've seen some pretty spiffy 3D titles and that can really add to the interest of the video.