I am trying my best to learn Motion but I always have a problem with setting the length. It doesn't seem to matter where I set the prefs, the length is always 20 seconds after I save it. I drag the cursor to five seconds, save it as a template, go to FCP and the generator is 20 SECONDS! What in the heck am I doing wrong?
Thanks,
Tom
Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1), 3 GHz 8-Core with 32 GB Ram
Let me clarify. The content is 5 seconds in length but the project is 20 seconds. I am just doing a simple graphic ( show presented by). The words fade in and fade out as they should but 15 seconds of black is added. So if I try to trim the black out in FCP...the 5 seconds of the font is shortened. I am lost.
First, the duration of your "project" (title, generator, etc) from Motion is set by the Motion project length, not the media inside if you actual project is 20 seconds, that's what the default length will be when you add it to your FCP timeline. As for why the timing changes when you trim the clip in FCPX, it's because trimming of templates effectivelyretimes the template, so if you trim a 10 sec template to be 5 seconds, it's like retiming it to playback at 200%
Depending on what you are doing in your project you can either:
1. Just make a 5 sec. project in Motion with the animation you need.
2. If you need to adjust the timing of your animation may need to use special markers in Motion (build in/Build out) to preserve animation timing.
I'd highly recommend reviewing these sections of the documentation to get more comfortable with creating templates for FCP
WRT the project length, the setting in the prefs is for the default length of new projects. It has no effect on the current project. Unfortunately it also has no effect on new projects until you quit and relaunch Motion.
When you create a new project, in the project browser, it shows the length of the project that you're going to create. You can change it there.
If you already created the project and it's too long (or short), you can change the length of the project in a couple of places.
Select the Project in the layers list and show its properties in the inspector (or just hit cmd+j to select and show the project properties).
- Set the Duration to what you need.
Click the clock widget in the center of the tool bar. This switches between showing the current time to the project duration. When it's showing duration, double click in the frame/timecode and type in the new project duration. You can also switch between current and duration via the little downward arrow next to the frames/timecode display.
Thanks to all. These forums are the best.
Cheers.
Tom
Length of project. Help!
