Motion FCP titles not working in FCPX

… most probably because versions of M5 and FCPX don't match…

… which isn't easy to find out - example: M5 v5.4.2 asks for v10.4.4 of Final Cut…

Easiest way: update both apps to the latest (it's free) - done

(a compatibility list from Apple would be helpful…)

Generally:

An 'older' version of FC can not open plugins from a 'newer' version of Motion…

maybe Board member and Motion master fox_mahoney chimes in - he found a method to 'hack' the XML aka needed versions of plugins…

Check your version of FCPX. If you moved a previous copy out of the applications folder to some other location (or drive) and updated from the App Store, sometimes it updates the backup copy instead of the one in your applications folder. (It's happened to me!)

Motion templates for FCPX are automatically saved by Motion to the appropriate location from your user folder here

~/Movies/Motion Templates/[Effects, Generators, Titles, or Transitions]/[a given category]/Template Name

If FCPX cannot find it — any chance you're using more than one User Account?

Are you creating a "Motion Project" and saving it into the Titles folder? (With or without a category folder.) If there is a file mismatch (Titles end in .moti, projects and generators in .motn), FCPX won't open it as a Title.

[Thanks Karsten — here you go:]

I maintain a compatibility list here:

https://fcpxtemplates.com/fcpx-motion-compatibility/

There are also instructions for "backdating" a Motion template to work with older versions of Final Cut.

As long as there is nothing in the template that FCPX won't "understand", you should have no problems. Example of something FCPX will have a problem with: 3D Text in all versions of FCPX before 10.2. There are occasionally new features in Motion that will cause incompatibility with older versions of FCPX, like the Fill filter, Shapes that use Size/Width and Height (older versions of Motion used individual control points) and a very few other things like this (they're usually mentioned in the Release Notes — and you'll find links to those pages on my page.) So far — following the "rules" I outlined, I've had a 100% success rate backdating templates to an appropriate former version of FCPX. I have to do this on a one by one basis working with somebody else since I always stay "current" with both FCPX and Motion.

What happens if you backdate a template and there are incompatibilities? No more than you're experiencing now. FCPX will simply not let you use the template, or if "marginal" you may experience something that won't work right in the template. FCPX won't break [so far, in my experience]. It's worth a shot.