Motion running slow at aprox. 10 fps set normally at 29.97

Get used to it... Motion isn't about creating video, it's about creating effects. As such, it's not all that concerned about playing back anything in real time. Motion can choke the fastest Macs to < 1 fps.

Motion is a memory hog. To render the project for playback, type Command-R. Depending on what's involved, it can take several minutes to render. If you're still running this on the Mac mini with 8GB, Motion may not render much more than a few seconds of project depending on the canvas size of the project. A 4K project will stress Motion more than a 720 project will. It is, however, recommended that you create projects of equal or greater size than the intended target (HD projects should be 1080, not 720, etc...) [8GB should be able to handle 10 seconds of 1080... (I really can't remember)]

What can you do to free up a few FPS here and there:

• You can turn off layers that are "finished" or not required for preview by unchecking their Layer

• Temporarily turn off extraneous filters [most of them have to rasterize the frame in real time]

• Motion tries to update the preview buffer in real time. You can sometimes help it out by going to Mark > Preview > Clear RAM Preview and let it start over from scratch.

• Emitters choke Motion faster than anything: turn the birth rates down to < 30, the lower the better

Turn it back up when you Save.

The Life of objects will adversely affect playback/renderings as well. If objects "live forever",

the number of objects Motion must "draw" increases geometrically as time goes on.

(again - keep the birth rate low as well if you need longer life.)

(Replicators are similar but to a lesser extent, depends on the number of "points" set)

• There is a Preference you can switch that will help out a little:

Preferences > Time, uncheck: Limit playback speed to project frame rate

• Command-/ turns on and off "overlays" -- toggle them off to play back

• (If necessary) In the Render Menu:

Turn on: Dynamic

Set the Resolution to Half or Quarter

Turn off: Lighting and everything below it (unless you need the feature)

• Turn off Preview under View > Layers Columns (always -- what a waste)

• Motion tries to update the preview buffer in real time. You can sometimes help it out by going to Mark > Preview > Clear RAM Preview and let it start over from scratch.

• If you don't need 3D, selecting the option for 2D Fixed Resolution for parent groups will keep Motion from trying to render anything outside the bounds of the canvas. When Fixed Resolution is not selected, Motion will "draw" every object anywhere in "space". In the case of emitters, it will draw objects thousands of pixels off the edges of the canvas; the group *grows* to the bounds of the limits of these objects and the rendering time will drop precipitously.

Sometimes it is actually faster to export your project to ProRes 422LT than to Render it (in project). You can create a file that you overwrite every time. If you have an SSD drive (internal or external usb3/thunderbolt), export to that.

For the details you listed, try unchecking the Filter first and play the project. If you get close to 30 fps (or more if you unchecked the speed limit option) you'll know that's the bottleneck (almost all filters rasterize a frame). The point of rasterization is that in real time is that the full frame of the "image" must be created, whereas other objects, only the region they occupy are placed in the canvas.

I use Motion for illustration as well as for motion graphics. Some of my illustrations cannot be played, they have a frame rate of greater than 5 minutes per frame. It's just something you learn to live with. Hope you hang in there!

I remember being in your same situation back when I first started using Motion. Unlike most entry-level software today (such as iMovie), Motion, Final Cut Pro X, and others aren't "magic". Before playing a Motion project, you will need to let it fully render out.

But if you knew all that already, I would say that Motion (and most other video-editing applications) is incredibly demanding on your computer's hardware. Even some of the "beginner projects" can be a bit intensive. I would try a few things:

1. Quit almost all other applications when editing to maximize performance. This isn't essential, but it makes a difference.

2. Try the "sudo purge" command in Terminal to clear out used RAM. (Google "sudo purge" if you're scared of terminal)

3. Download the app Dr. Cleaner from the App Store. I would do this one regardless. It's an incredibly helpful tool that I would highly recommend. It easily lets you refresh your RAM and clear out junk files. It speeds up your computer and makes your life easier.

I love Motion... I live in it and have for the last seven years (10 years experience come Sept. this year). It is a great app (even with its flaws, and there are a few).

Even before 3D, Motion could bring any computer to its knees under the right circumstances. That said, *most* projects do not tend to get that heavy and previewing or just playing a project is usually "comfortable" (15fps and up - you just have to realize that you might be looking at your project at half speed).

For 2D, your outfit should be fine. If you're going to upgrade your hardware, then my advice skews much higher. You would be looking at the high end iMacs (or perhaps a MacBook Pro) 1) for the video card* and 2) for the processor**. SSD HDs are easy and relatively inexpensive to put together. I would recommend the 1 or 3 TB Fusion drive for your internal HD (at least it's part SSD). With USB 3, you can put together a very fast external SSD drive - just by the 2 1/2 inch internal drive and a USB3 enclosure (prices for enclosures have come down to around 10 bucks on sale) and 500GB SSDs are going for around 160 or so on sale (and there are frequent sales). Add them as you need them. There are preferences in Motion under the Cache tab: Autosave Vault and the section on Retiming files. If you add SSDs, change these to locations to the SSD. [If your Mac mini is the 2011 server, you have a thunderbolt port. You can add a Hub like the Akitio, OWC, Elgato, or others that will provide USB3 ports for your machine. Adding an external SSD would help with performance considerably. USB2 or even Firewire 800 is going to be too slow to make a difference even with an SSD drive.]

* the more vRAM you can afford, the better performance you'll get in the short term and a longer lasting machine in the long run. As time goes on and features are added to FCPX and Motion, there is a good chance they latest updates will require more than the minimum hardware that's required for the current versions. This has already happened when 3D text was added requiring "at least" 1GB vRAM when the versions before only required a minimum of 512MB. The hardware/software cycle for Mac software limits a life of the machine to about 5 years (give or take). [Even the Mac OS operating system eventual "deprecates" that hardware... again.. at around 5 - 6 years or so — it's quite the clever racket er, scheme.]

**Processor: the i7 series (or whatever the currently fastest chip is) runs as a virtual 8-core machine. This has been benchmarked to be notably faster than the 4-core i5 and below. With the higher end GPUs, this is pretty much not an option (and if it is, then it's worth the difference in cost!)

A desktop will always be faster than a laptop even with nearly equivalent specs. [A lot of people enjoy working on their MacBooks...]

I would recommend a minimum of 16GB of RAM. If you buy an iMac with 8GB, order a 16GB upgrade from Crucial and add the RAM yourself - it's easy - there's a "back door"! (You'll save a chunk of change doing this your self).

My problem, when buying hardware, is that I'm also a musician (Logic Pro and Native Instruments synthesizers) and I have tons and tons of sample files (about 500GB or so) that must reside on my internal HD. The SSD sizes offered are not large enough. Preparing video on my internal drive is pretty much out of the question. I have a series of external drives attached to my machine, three of which are SSDs (and a few rather inexpensive but large traditional drives for storage regular kinds of storage). Adding the SSDs "changed my life".

Take these suggestions as just that. Assemble the best package you can arrange, but allow for external SSDs. The gpu vRAM is of paramount importance. Whatever you get here will most likely determine how long your investment will carry forward.

And don't just take my word for it — get as much advice as you can! Do some research and learn as much as you can.

Monkeyman230 wrote:

I remember being in your same situation back when I first started using Motion. Unlike most entry-level software today (such as iMovie), Motion, Final Cut Pro X, and others aren't "magic". Before playing a Motion project, you will need to let it fully render out.

But if you knew all that already, I would say that Motion (and most other video-editing applications) is incredibly demanding on your computer's hardware. Even some of the "beginner projects" can be a bit intensive. I would try a few things:

1. Quit almost all other applications when editing to maximize performance. This isn't essential, but it makes a difference.

2. Try the "sudo purge" command in Terminal to clear out used RAM. (Google "sudo purge" if you're scared of terminal)

3. Download the app Dr. Cleaner from the App Store. I would do this one regardless. It's an incredibly helpful tool that I would highly recommend. It easily lets you refresh your RAM and clear out junk files. It speeds up your computer and makes your life easier.

1. is good advice.

2 and 3 ARE NOT!!!!

macOS handles memory on its own. You should not use purge, and most of all you should NEVER use any program with "Cleaner" in its name!