Episode 95
FCG095 - Lets Talk Motion (feat. Alex Gollner)
“But I know After Effects”… I’ve said that a million times and if you listen to my logic about why people should at least give FCPX a try and apply it to my view of Motion, it makes no sense. On this episode I talk to my friend Alex Gollner and we start at the very basics for me to understand a little more about the effects generating tool at the heart of Final Cut Pro X and why we should ALL be looking at it a bit deeper.
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Featuring
- Chris Fenwick
- Alex Gollner - alex4d.com - @alex4d
- Guest Name - @twitter
Transcription
00:00.001: With our good friend Alex Golner.
00:00.001: Now, of course, what happens, of course, is that what it does is it takes the keyframes and stretches them out.
00:00.001: If layers could interact with each other, that would be cool in editing software.
00:00.080: I'll do title synchronous for T V shows and hopefully eventually for movies.
00:00.080: It's my ego or something like that.
00:00.160: you kind of have to sort of rethink, you know, Final Cut 10 is worth the journey.
00:00.160: Asking you to go to it for months now.
00:00.160: And I got to say, it's really cool.
00:00.160: hippies and adults and things like that.
00:00.160: but I was using the totally the wrong different tool for it.
00:00.160: I'll have a go, I'll film it.
00:00.160: But I didn't have it anymore because it had it left and gone over to the dark side and I didn't have Avid.
00:00.160: Well, it's real time and it's looping away, but I can't really do anything that I want to do.
00:00.160: And I thought, well, I got the feeling that motion was really much more comfortable with particles.
00:00.160: to make it do a very simple thing that when that very simple thing can be applied to clips in FileCut Pro, the FileCut Pro users will go
00:00.160: So those are the differences.
00:00.160: continue on every single frame or to animate over time.
00:00.160: So all the generators you see in the gen nearly all the generators you see in the generators palette were created using motion as well.
00:00.160: but you can use various controls in it for it to produce content of whatever star you want.
00:00.160: You can generate new media.
00:00.160: or twenty frames or whatever it is.
00:00.160: and you want to make it look like it's being put on so a a crystal line background, and the crystal background represents kind of a refraction of the background if you're maybe somewhat I've never done this
00:00.160: But in terms of, say, your T V station says, well, we're all about beautiful gems and shininess, and we want to make it so that there's a beautiful piece of uh crystal that's behind the person's name, that means the clip that it's over has to be able to refract through underneath.
00:00.160: The special markers will be your clue.
00:00.160: You have to add the marker first, and then you go to it and then you edit the marker, and that's where you get to change what kind it is, which I think is not the best kind of UI.
00:00.160: Or it's just immediately there.
00:00.160: And then File Cup Pro will not even play the first part of the animation and immediately go to the point from there on.
00:00.160: where there's a checkbox where you can say animate in or animate out yes or no, basically.
00:00.160: What happened it just turns I think it's um Final Cut is gone my copy of Final Cut is kind of going
00:00.160: Hey, it took fifteen seconds, or it took minus fifteen seconds, or I did it in you know, when I was yes, you have said that a few times, I will concur.
00:00.160: huge amount over the last twenty years, it'll keep on going down and After Effects will be totally fine.
00:00.160: Can't I just fix that keyframe, that one thing that makes it bump?
00:00.160: It's hard to leave that, which is, you know, ironically, it's exactly what people say to me about Final Cut 7 or Premiere or whatever when I try and tell them to g give Final Cut 10 a chance.
00:00.160: You know, the position tool.
00:00.160: what things like the magnetic timeline will do for you.
00:00.160: I've added some tag categories.
00:00.160: Piece.
00:00.160: It's a shock.
00:00.160: So I'm which means probably Sam's going to be back to take back the throne.
00:00.240: And he's got plenty of plugins that are all free.
00:00.240: Do you want to get together and chat about and chat?
00:00.240: But anyway, I said, I want to add I want to kind of pick your brain about like the absolute bare minimum of getting started in motion and understanding it better.
00:00.240: So think of a playlist almost like a light box.
00:00.240: Motion.
00:00.240: Speaking of sharing, you can also, while you're listening to a cut of music, you can hit a button and share it and send an email with some to somebody.
00:00.240: There's a lot to this that they're excited about sharing.
00:00.240: So, anyway, that's premiumbeat.
00:00.240: The show I missed out on because I was away at university, so I didn't know it very well either.
00:00.240: Yeah, I think one of my favorite uh British I'll call it animation, but it was uh the Gerry Anderson Super Marionation stuff from uh like The Thunderbirds.
00:00.240: it's kind of but yeah, you know, it's weird that they you know, you had Jerry Anderson and Sylvie Anderson who were both a couple of Americans, I think.
00:00.240: But um he's still alive uh Sylvia.
00:00.240: Let me make that apology right now.
00:00.240: No, what it was was um I was doing events and I was doing kind of stuff to do with conferences and I was doing title sequences for conferences
00:00.240: in ninety seven, ninety eight, ninety nine in After Effects.
00:00.240: As you may know with animation, of course, people do it on the ones and the twos and the threes.
00:00.240: Music, I can roll by you know, hold down whatever is the command key, and you can slip, and then you can do whatever you want, just every single clip is a different layer.
00:00.240: So I knew After Effects well enough, and I played with it a reasonable amount.
00:00.240: It's all wrong.
00:00.240: to make sure, 'cause hold down the command key and after effects and you can hear the audio and you can keep it totally in sync and you get it right on every cue right on the music.
00:00.240: you know, back in, you know, ninety eight and ninety nine I used to use a particle effects there, but they weren't really they're a bit slow and they weren't that great.
00:00.240: inside motion actually was the particle.
00:00.240: I flailed about and I got the result I want.
00:00.240: then this, then this, because I kind of didn't really know the software well enough to do it.
00:00.240: I know that was actually quite easy to do.
00:00.240: 'cause it really makes you look like you've done a lot of work and really it's done quite a lot of the work.
00:00.240: of saying I don't have to do a huge big motion graphics job that does a billion different things.
00:00.240: As an editor, I can think like an editor, but I as an sometimes as an editor I think, well, if I I'm like I was still originally a motion graphic designer.
00:00.240: I think the key was to start realizing well, why did Apple not put all the filters
00:00.240: Apple detective to do with what the hell they're doing, what their philosophy is, because they certainly didn't explain it in the level that will be useful for us at the time.
00:00.240: Template?
00:00.240: Well, I mean, I get I get that through power comes comple or through complexity comes power, and that's, you know, but
00:00.240: They've got the blur that's built into Final Cut Pro 10 is a simple straight blur, whereas there's nine seven different kinds of blurs in motion.
00:00.240: Well, there's various groups of people that would be good news for, but also bad news for.
00:00.240: As other people say, what is the documentation for unsharped masks?
00:00.240: And also you got the kinda cat who is being distracted by the bauble of special effects, going, Look, I can look at this, I can do that, as opposed to actually getting on with the bloody edit.
00:00.240: And it's very tempting to go down the rabbit hole when it comes to these things where you think, oh, this edit's not very working very well, but I can get the glint working perfectly on this title.
00:00.240: But they just make your plugins not very good.
00:00.240: is the key to then after that using motion to do motion graphics in general.
00:00.240: modify it.
00:00.240: then you want the middle stuff to have no effects on it whatsoever, and the last to have the one second that you had on the original two second clip.
00:00.240: And then there's the other four.
00:00.240: Exactly.
00:00.240: or on your comp anywhere connected to File Cut Pro 10, it is stuff that can be generated in real time and can generate what it needs to generate, like a shape.
00:00.240: Absolutely.
00:00.240: But I could have a file cut pro generator maybe that puts it onto a sphere, and then I could make it so okay, you don't have to have the texture map of the earth.
00:00.240: The shapes that are done in file the Apple supply generators are created in Motion as well.
00:00.240: associated with your project FileCut Pro ten, but you may want to make it so you can zoom in and out of certain parts of the planet and put coordinates in and animate between them.
00:00.240: conversations.
00:00.240: say the transition template.
00:00.240: You apply that to the incoming clip and maybe keyframe it or add a behavior which changes the amount of bluriness.
00:00.240: a transition from the outgoing video to the incoming video, correct?
00:00.240: transition is, is a thing again, you don't know the duration of when you're creating it because who knows how long the transition is when you're using the editing software.
00:00.240: on the on the outgoing clip, and then I would go to the actual clip, the incoming clip, and keyframe that from a bunch to zero
00:00.240: and then I would have to change my opacity between it, and then I would have to kick out a new piece of media that is both clips and the transition between them.
00:00.240: Hey, Premiere fans, I know, of course, you could just keyframe the blurs on an outgoing clip and an incoming glip in Premiere, as well as do it in After Effects.
00:00.240: but not people who are necessarily motion graphics designers who want to mess around with keyframes even in Final Cut Pro or even in Premiere.
00:00.240: And also I can have a generator which maybe overlays some some content that all goes together.
00:00.240: And that is actually one that I've actually even even I have created some for some of my recurring clients.
00:00.240: and then had to stretch it out, and I realized, uh, the transition at the beginning is now proportionately longer.
00:00.240: In FileCut Pro 10, you when you create a title, it's its own separate layer.
00:00.240: So, when you open it, if you open a new title template, you'll see that there's a placeholder saying title background.
00:00.240: You can make it so that when the title appears, you can completely blur the background out.
00:00.240: No, and frankly, that's the thing about merchant is as soon as you start going down the rabbit holes and you have to tell me you have to pull me back.
00:00.240: That's why they work.
00:00.240: So the transition happens.
00:00.240: No, don't.
00:00.240: For some, it would be too long, depends on the kind of content you'd have on your title.
00:00.240: ten second thing animate properly on a thirty second twenty nine point nine seven frames per second time line.
00:00.240: or build out.
00:00.240: Mandatory means it'll always be that.
00:00.240: It's essentially just made of the in and the out, like I described.
00:00.240: what you'd have to do is make the whole template longer to allow for another bit of animation to happen.
00:00.240: So, you can't deal with the fact that you, Chris, as the editor, may want to say, Well, I want the first title to be in there for four seconds, the second one there to be two seconds.
00:00.240: And the amount of blur you do on that is adjustable because it's clever.
00:00.240: drop down, then I can do a hard cut between the page one and page two, which is actually acceptable.
00:00.240: Tell you that a couple of weeks ago, when I tried to contact you, I had spent like an hour and a half trying to find the opacity of the title to do exactly that.
00:00.240: And you've done some sort of thing where you've linked it to something?
00:00.240: So just trust me.
00:00.240: In the title, because I'm actually fading it in and out as the background comes on.
00:00.240: I learned about the link command, which I don't understand yet, but I understand that you're using it.
00:00.240: And that it's there, because that was the thing that took me an hour to like try and uh reverse engineer it.
00:00.240: And now I'm applying all of the things that I have said for the last year about Fannifat 10.
00:00.240: But it turned out the job to do was really small.
00:00.240: And you know, that's when I first started thinking about Final Cut Pro 10 as Final Cut Pro W for workaround, because eventually my plugin became the first workaround, the Final Cut Pro W.
00:00.240: that was very quick to do, you know, and I suddenly say, oh, I actually have a real reason to understand.
00:00.240: I want this to happen over a specific period of time.
00:00.240: And then in the motional time line, all you have to do is change the duration of this change, so it either happens slower or faster.
00:00.240: At the beginning of the behaviour, you want the clip to look a certain way, and by the end of the behavior, you want it to look a completely different way, or change lots of parameters about it.
00:00.240: Ripple Training's training about how to deal it's really weird.
00:00.240: which is essentially what I was doing with Auto Effects and what you do with Auto Effects.
00:00.240: 'Cause I know that stars I can make that explode and make that an overlay on top of my edit that I'm doing in File Cut Pro ten.
00:00.240: It it feels like that in my memory anyway.
00:00.240: In order to do a particle effect and add it and choose some parameters, that is of the job of fifteen minutes or less in After Effects.
00:00.240: the position of a person speaking as they move around and they're being motion tracked.
00:00.240: Now, of course, you can do that in After Effects as well, but it it's much more like a scripting language that does that.
00:00.240: So you can say, okay, when the type bounces it yes, I try to pronounce it in the American way, if you say math, of course.
00:00.240: Lots of people chose this show for that reason too.
00:00.240: And the CPUs eventually will make it.
00:00.240: because it was designed fifteen years before motion.
00:00.240: maybe stumbled across with a behavior, you can always select that little purple bar in the time line and go up to I believe it is object, yes, the object menu.
00:00.240: And down there it says convert to keyframes.
00:00.240: If you were actually you're doing okay with the behaviors for moving cameras around and but they they have weird kinks in them that doesn't quite work and you think, Oh, like I'm 93% there, but that last seven percent is taking me so long because the keyframes
00:00.240: It's like, well, yeah, that will work, but you're giving up a lot of the power of fun of a ten.
00:00.240: And I said, Well, can't we just keep the trims all separately in a separate bin?
00:00.240: You can do that, but that is not making the most of the the real time CPU, GPU, all that kind of stuff.
00:00.240: Obviously the uh Mike Matt's doors, the one I did for Mike in terms of uh the focus movie the uh coming out soon.
00:00.240: Bunch of Twitter stuff.
00:00.240: And on that account, he every tweet is a new free plugin, whether they're his or somebody else's.
00:00.320: You know, last week in a conversation with Andrew Koons, we were talking about the similarities of the arguments that I make all the time about, you know.
00:00.320: I know that it is how my effects work.
00:00.320: That I'm not really using my own words, my own logic, to make myself kind of get out of my comfort zone, possibly.
00:00.320: And learn this app a little more.
00:00.320: And I'm not going to turn this into the motion grill, but you're going to hear more about motion because I'm fascinated with the app.
00:00.320: And all of its real-time capabilities.
00:00.320: Also, I believe at the end of the week, I'm going to have the guys from Premium beat on, and we're going to go through it, and they're going to teach me all the cool tricks and stuff because as they've been telling me, there's
00:00.320: I do okay.
00:00.320: Exactly.
00:00.320: including NBC, who's doing NBC Live, and including Disney, every time they do stuff anything to do with Peter Pan, they have to hand over money to this hospital.
00:00.320: Yeah, I mean, it's weird that those shows are like an hour long and they went on for so long.
00:00.320: So we were using that as a as an example of my own personal reticence
00:00.320: But it showed it kind of taught me that I actually knew the principles of editing quite well, even though I didn't actually know the editing software because I knew about timing and telling a story.
00:00.320: So, knowing that, we used to do it that way.
00:00.320: Oh, we got this activity day.
00:00.320: And I never really got it, wasn't really comfortable with it, and I didn't particularly need it.
00:00.320: Oh no, I I know I should know this, but it it's real time, but I don't care about real time because I'm an Artifacts fan.
00:00.320: I got to the stage where I was still freelance m doing graphics for c for cl companies.
00:00.320: Trusted me enough that I'd done it enough times in After Effects that I thought, well, if he says it, he'll do it.
00:00.320: Fantastic.
00:00.320: about how to learn motion for me, how each of the various elements of it suddenly became worth learning and now they fitted into my mind, so I kind of got it.
00:00.320: And that took like the ten days between the twenty first of July twenty eleven and the end of the month.
00:00.320: days and then after a while I got they got more complicated.
00:00.320: how editors don't necessarily want all the controls that a motion graphics designer wants.
00:00.320: Even if on my iMac twenty seven inch iMac all the controls that actually don't fit in the inspector, then I'm thinking it's probably a bit too much.
00:00.320: which is what are they are in motion, all the filters that are in motion and make those filters available in File Cup with all the commands in File Cup Pro 10.
00:00.320: And you know what, maybe that's why Apple doesn't want to put all these controls in Final Cut, because they'd rather let Final Cut be a
00:00.320: I know what Unshot Mask does.
00:00.320: The funny thing is about making plugins first.
00:00.320: or a title or a transition.
00:00.320: I would say which to start with first?
00:00.320: But here that so you've got motion project, then the final cut effect is um you know, you get a clip and you want to have something happen to it.
00:00.320: It represents whatever video clip that you've applied the effect to.
00:00.320: And it is as the and then that special layer in it adopts the current clip.
00:00.320: Yeah.
00:00.320: But you may have an effect you may fight to a clip that's one frame long or ten or an hour long.
00:00.320: The brushes, the replicators, it's things that final cut, excuse me, that motion itself is generating.
00:00.320: So, the Filecut generator itself is not producing a file that's associated with the project, and a file corporate doesn't have to manage that file
00:00.320: like I used to do with File Cut Pro 4, 5 and 6 and 7, I go to the the things that Apple supply and then I find the editor for them and then learn learn kind of
00:00.320: Somebody's Luma mask.
00:00.320: it gets really, really so blurry that everything blurs out and then gets well starts off very blurred and isn't blurred anymore.
00:00.320: And I want to talk about that in a second because that was the thing that I was going to ask your help on.
00:00.320: or twenty minutes again, or maybe twenty minute transition is quite extreme.
00:00.320: And another one that represents the incoming clip as your what do you want it to do to it as it comes in.
00:00.320: but you can hide all the implementation details from the from the editor.
00:00.320: But getting back to your comment about you don't know how long it's going to be, this I have seen this happen because I have made like sort of a standard sort of title.
00:00.320: is that you see some text here saying type text here, and then you see a placeholder for the background where the clip is going to be.
00:00.320: Out, but it has to, weirdly enough, motion has to have the copy of the clip in order to blur it, if you see what I mean.
00:00.320: Then the titles come in, and then you can I can extend it for as long as I want because you're using this hold frame, which I have yet to figure out how to do.
00:00.320: By reverse engineering one of your lower third templates, I've learned an enormous amount about what is possible.
00:00.320: And sometimes you want it to be twenty seconds long and you still want the animation for two start two seconds at the start and two seconds at the finish.
00:00.320: and two seconds from the end, make sure everything's still, if I wanted to.
00:00.320: be it when if we're playing on a twenty frames twenty five frames a second time line, sixty frames a second time line, it deals with the frame rate as well, because people forget it's the frame rate as well.
00:00.320: What I suggest people do, if they want to find out about it, is look at the section marked, I don't know, build in and build out markers, because that's what it's associated with.
00:00.320: Well what is it why is it doing this?
00:00.320: And you see the type, and then in the type section of the marker, you can choose what kind of marker it is.
00:00.320: Well, what option what mandatory is, is that you is the way I described it.
00:00.320: screw this fancy stuff, there's no time to animate this.
00:00.320: I still so so my question to you, and I apologize to the people that are listening to this podcast who wanted to hear about Final Cut 10, because I'm going to go down a gigantic rat hole here.
00:00.320: Sirens sirens are blaring.
00:00.320: And of course I have some Alex Fordy uh titles here.
00:00.320: Okay, so I am going to let me think.
00:00.320: Which is my code word for my code name for anything that I'm just screwing around with, because I know I can throw that out.
00:00.320: That holds for a period of time, it goes away, but the panel stays, and then dissolves in a second page of text
00:00.320: and have a second hunk of text come and go.
00:00.320: is just use two uses of this plugin in File Cut Pro 10, because you can just choose not to animate out.
00:00.320: Exactly.
00:00.320: So Alex again, Alex's template, it's called Transparent Blur.
00:00.320: falls down as the name and the title dissolves away.
00:00.320: called animate in and animate out, and I can turn it on and off.
00:00.320: Yeah.
00:00.320: Checking on and off that animate in and out, and that actually gave me a solve for the thing because I'm willing to allow these two pages of text to do a hot cut between them.
00:00.320: I get it.
00:00.320: It's useful today.
00:00.320: But you can change make all those change changes happen very quickly by controlling the duration of the behavior.
00:00.320: Number one, out of the 25,000 people listening to this podcast, I'll start with you.
00:00.320: Taking small bites, and also because you would just go, Well, I only need this one effect, or this one thing, or this one title
00:00.320: and after these few hours of working on it, or initially it would be a day of making it work, but it eventually became, as I bragged about too much in previous podcasts
00:00.320: And it also, as I say, makes you think in terms of the not keyframes, but using behaviors to do things and getting things multiple layers to interact with each other.
00:00.320: choose some parameters and you then you control how the one springiness, like the springiness of one layer connected to another, in order to get a kind of feel of springiness or bounciness or gravity or
00:00.320: that kind of stuff.
00:00.320: We'll do it in CPUs now, and we're going to make it so and we know CPUs are going to get better.
00:00.320: closed but easily joinable motion group is that some people when they say they essentially say check out my motion work
00:00.320: I used no keyframes, so there, or I only used one set of keyframes, sorry about that.
00:00.320: Sure.
00:00.320: Thanks for indulging me because really this was just this is like I said, worst episode ever.
00:00.320: And thanks for being a part of this.
00:00.320: Cool.
00:00.320: So there's one for Detective, another one for Avid, you know, things related to Avid or Adobe, all that kind of stuff.
00:00.320: Alex, thanks for your time.
00:00.320: Uh we finished the recording, which was, you know, about an hour, and I think he and I talked for another hour and a half just about, you know, Final Cut and Motion.
00:00.320: Plenty of stuff going on there.
00:00.400: And it dawns on me that I say the same stuff about After Effects all the time.
00:00.400: Absolutely, yeah.
00:00.400: a bit like um ins like Rak Ralph Bakshi did in the late sixties, early seventies.
00:00.400: And I started it up and said, it's a real-time motion graphics thing, and I play with it, and it's
00:00.400: Right.
00:00.400: full size bitmap, which is kind of what After Effect's basic unit was, a full what you know, full screen bitmap that you then mess around with and add Photoshop filters to.
00:00.400: got it to kind of spout somewhere and a few other ones and then just moved the camera in 3D space between three different locations.
00:00.400: customize and trim it down and give a user the controls they're actually going to need.
00:00.400: You have to work out what Apple is thinking by their actions because they're not really going to explain it publicly.
00:00.400: a final cut effect, a final cut generator, a final cut transition, and a final cut title.
00:00.400: That's if you're doing something that has nothing to do with Filecut Pro 10 in terms of making plugins.
00:00.400: Although you can change a motion project into, I think, a final cut generator if you need to.
00:00.400: clips both pieces of media in, I would apply my Gaussian blur, you know, I would keyframe that from zero to a bunch.
00:00.400: whatever, it's great that you can do that.
00:00.400: It's not clear by looking at the UI.
00:00.400: And spe create a spe and this is in this is in your source ten second title.
00:00.400: Almost perfect, but not perfect.
00:00.400: Let me make this fit in this window.
00:00.400: You either work out how to do it in file in motion.
00:00.400: Okay, so at the very least, I could do a hard cut between the two pages.
00:00.400: I've just had a thought.
00:00.400: Change the opacity of the title.
00:00.400: So I'm just yeah.
00:00.400: Two-minute extravaganza that's 25,000 pixels wide by 10,80 pixels high, that's going to take these 5,000 people, the audience, and project them into a whole new world in a big, huge conference where people come all over the world.
00:00.400: behaviors in motion, and that's we could talk about that for like a whole hour easily.
00:00.400: to be reminded that behaviors can be converted into keyframes if you so choose.
00:00.400: Just to let you know, if if you go to join up the not secret Illuminati version of the motion kind of Facebook group, but the actual
00:00.400: At LND, he says that's a common uh abbreviation for London, at LND FCPX.
00:00.480: In After Effects, but I look at motion, I realize what it can do, I see people that are using it really well.
00:00.480: Pretty strange, but we kind of thought, well, we'll do it in CinePak, and the codec could only just about manage doing that because, of course, the computers couldn't really play back video very well that well in those days.
00:00.480: The same day or the next day, could you give us a video of what that looked like?
00:00.480: One second long, you end up with quite a lot of layers.
00:00.480: Okay, I'll do this thing.
00:00.480: But then, you know, version 4 comes out and I still don't really get it.
00:00.480: I'm like, you know, like, I even get confused at the first opening screen where it's like, I don't know if I want to open
00:00.480: So there's a bit of that going on.
00:00.480: The advantage is that if you use keyframes to do some of these things, it makes them less if you produce an effect by changing values using keyframes in motion, you can do, and the keyframes are there.
00:00.480: They'll work if the person has made the clip the right length.
00:00.480: So that's the main thing.
00:00.480: Elements that all go together in themes.
00:00.480: What happens?
00:00.480: Transparent blur title.
00:00.480: But those special markers force the first the stuff before the special marker at the beginning to be in real time, however long the title is eventually applied to be, and at the end it has to be exactly everything after the marker.
00:00.480: Now, so the one I'm interested in is the Alex4D transparent blur.
00:00.480: Just a few of the colonies are not fallen into place yet, but we'll sort them out soon.
00:00.480: Completely intrigued by what is there, and I am seeing, like, I am rewinding the script of this podcast by one year.
00:00.480: Settings wise and a few other bits and pieces in motion.
00:00.480: But if you know, if you're like me and you're like, you know, mister I I I what the line I always say, I have a lot of keyframes invested in After Effects
00:00.480: Well, I've been trying to organize my blog in a slightly clearer way, and I've tagged quite a lot of my articles to make it so that if you like one article on a certain subject, you could find the other ones.
00:00.480: That'll be, I believe, November twenty first of twenty fourteen, if you're listening to this on the Internet, much, much later.
00:00.560: They got their effects, they got their blog.
00:00.560: Between somebody who is like stuck in Premiere or Final Cut 7, I'll say I apologize to all my friends who use Premiere.
00:00.560: To getting into motion more.
00:00.560: Well, um are you okay with that for our agenda for this conversation?
00:00.560: And of course I I started up again, I think, oh well, 'cause I knew I knew felt I s knew about motion graphics relatively well 'cause I before Final Cut I actually used Fi um Art Effects to do motion graphics and then I edited a video in Art Effects, which is a s silly idea.
00:00.560: Understanding the best way of using motion to produce a tiny little plug-in thing.
00:00.560: Lean, powerful tool.
00:00.560: procedurally using software as opposed to using real media.
00:00.560: What you want with the transition is instead of having one special placeholder inside it that represents the video clips applied to, you see two special placeholders inside the transition project the final
00:00.560: And with some text on top, because what it is, is it takes whatever clip it's below it, and it you can use it if you want.
00:00.560: Oh, here we go.
00:00.560: Some flexibility.
00:00.560: And you know you you want to take two seconds to start it and two seconds to finish it.
00:00.560: And the idea is that what Moch what File Cut Pro will do when it gets that special template and it look finds a special marker that's two seconds in, and say, Okay, I need to play the first two seconds in real time
00:00.560: That's the screwy thing as well.
00:00.560: So what kind of what kind of template have you got left?
00:00.560: the rest of the title is then concertinated or squished horizontally.
00:00.560: you will have in File Cut, you have the chance to do the build in of the title, however it's animated on, like the blurry bit floating on and the type slowly appearing or blurring or what happens to be.
00:00.640: The flow of cameras in motion felt much more like it was built with cameras in mind, whereas, of course, After Effects wasn't either.
00:00.640: And then when File Corrupt Pro ten comes out and five point five file and motion five is out, I think I really need to do a plug in.
00:00.640: And then and I'll tell you about that in a moment, but that meant that I started off with tiny chunks of not motion graphics, but stuff I knew I would be making into a plugin
00:00.640: So I credit special marker two seconds in, credit special marker two seconds from the end.
00:00.640: Maybe in the marker section there should be add different kinds of markers actually in the command.
00:00.640: So what happens is kind of have to open up one of my titles to understand this, but what happens is if you change the marker to being optional, that build in optional will mean that
00:00.640: There's no quick way of modifying this template to do what you want it to do.
00:00.640: And then it holds for because of the hold keyframe, which we've been talking about, it holds for as long as I want it to, and then because I can stretch it out, and then in the last two seconds, it the panel
00:00.640: And because of the presence of, and what did we call those?
00:00.640: And the blurry background stays the same.
00:00.640: Yeah.
00:00.640: is you're trying to force it to the old way of thinking, just like saying to an Abbott editor, or is it a first and a half?
00:00.720: But apart from that, we're not going to go into too much detail because it's really great.
00:00.720: Type standard text at it.
00:00.720: And you can't because I've in my title I've actually got control over that opacity, so you can't change you can't keyframe it anymore.
00:00.720: To break these things down into the tiniest little steps.
00:00.720: No, I mean, if that's your journey and your way there, I mean absolutely.
00:00.800: I want to learn motion better.
00:00.800: So, the guy who wrote Peter Pan, when he died, he left the rights to this hospital.
00:00.800: I'll just bodge it, have a go, and the client will probably think it's really cool, and I'll produce something that looks quite looks like I've actually positioned every single one of those particles in three D space.
00:00.800: So a generator generally, just like in File Cut Pro, is a thing that creates its own stuff.
00:00.800: What's it called?
00:00.800: I'd only wa you have to deselect everything and make sure the markers apply to the whole timeline and not to an individual layer.
00:00.800: Now is there a way and it when you say no, everybody's going to go, Fenwick, you've wasted five minutes of my life.
00:00.800: I've had so much sweetie since then, my brain is rattled and I don't know how to do this anymore.
00:00.800: Sorry.
00:00.800: CPUs, kind of multi-core CPUs.
00:00.800: Thank you very much.
00:00.880: which is the major a major children's hospital in London, which received the which has got a special rights.
00:00.880: I think I've got too many controls here.
00:00.880: Because what is it?
00:00.880: opacity of one of those clicks, so one starts showing through onto the other.
00:00.880: A modular thing because you're not you know, i if I wanted to do a blur dissolve and after effects, I would have to take both
00:00.880: That I can use over and over and over and over again.
00:00.880: And I like to think other plugin makers have learnt a lot from me too.
00:00.880: No, don't.
00:00.880: And then it animates out with with the uh with the with the panel.
00:00.880: Yeah.
00:00.880: is that there is functionality even in Alex's plugin that I overlooked.
00:00.880: The idea is that you can make it so that and I know math math is quite scary for people who specifically chose their job in order so they don't have to know math
00:00.880: And so thanks, Chris, for helping me hear that.
00:00.960: He said, I thought we were just chatting for the first 20 minutes.
00:00.960: In the interest of, you know, learning together.
00:00.960: who animated kids' T V shows in the seventies and eighties.
00:00.960: And but he's other the other characters have names and stuff.
00:00.960: all of which, of course, I've made available through plugins in on Alex4D, blah, blah, blah, whatever it's called.
00:00.960: And it was a few weeks ago when I said, Hey, are you available?
00:00.960: It almost feels like there is a moment in time, a very early moment in time, where I have to make a hard, fast decision.
00:00.960: So if you are not if you want to like get in and utterly finesse a emotion that you've that you see or that you've
00:01.040: They were involved in maps.
00:01.040: It's very unhappy about that.
00:01.040: This is the kind of thing that even maybe if I actually everyone could see what I'm doing and point to all the things in motion, I couldn't actually quite explain.
00:01.120: Here's my story about motion and my attitude towards it.
00:01.120: We begin this conversation with Fenwick trying to learn a little bit more about motion.
00:01.120: So we're both in agreement that Motion 5 and its current point dot release is very powerful.
00:01.120: I I was bragging that I had figured out how to right click on uh I believe one of your titles or somebody else.
00:01.200: Hello, hello, good morning, and welcome to another episode of Final Cut Grill.
00:01.200: I had a very nice evening out.
00:01.200: I want to have all these options.
00:01.200: So the Final Cut Generator is a full screen thing in Final Cut that does not have a clip associated with it?
00:01.200: Old.
00:01.200: Oh, you yeah, you want oh, you want the type to go, but you w essentially what you want is the type to the background
00:01.200: I get that it's powerful.
00:01.200: Anyway, that's just more philosophical core differences.
00:01.280: Here, I got to open it back up again here.
00:01.280: Build in or build out, yeah.
00:01.280: I mean, essentially what I'd have to do is create a you'd create a new version in which you choose to not animate the title to so yeah.
00:01.280: in FileCut Pro 10, layers don't interact with each other very well at all.
00:01.360: Let me pause on that.
00:01.360: I could do this very basic thing in some editing software and I could just select it and choose it.
00:01.360: Although, of course, you can have external media to these things if you wanted to.
00:01.360: How do we actually control how do we get access to that?
00:01.360: The thing about it that's very interesting is it's not just here, the pin comes up, the words drop in, you've programmed into it.
00:01.360: No, do, no, don't, do.
00:01.360: So check it out if you want to get into all that.
00:01.360: Now I do.
00:01.360: No, I'm you know, as I've said to before, the thing that really made me get into emotional was the fact that I had a t a job to do.
00:01.360: How shall I describe them?
00:01.360: And it turned out to be really good at working with future until the way the Macs were going to going going to be.
00:01.360: Without using the keyframe.
00:01.360: Yes, you can edit an entire piece using the position tool in Final Cut 10, but it may very no, I won't say may, it will behoove you if you under if you begin to understand.
00:01.440: So it's kind of um well, they used to do funnily enough, when I last talked to him, he talked about stuff he used to do
00:01.440: And also, everything's too fat.
00:01.440: Um I did not notice that I could animate in and animate out each half of the
00:01.520: So there's the wrinkle.
00:01.520: Reverse engineer them.
00:01.520: Now there are certain situations when you're editing away and you've only got a two-second shot and you know you want the title to not go over edit boundaries, you just well
00:01.520: That it is an option.
00:01.520: Everybody talks about Alex Golner.
00:01.600: We got all these boring business types and they want to show that they're quite ha they had a good time and we gave them a bit of a perk and they went and did go-karting.
00:01.600: Okay.
00:01.600: So there is that flexibility.
00:01.600: And I don't think that I think that's a great conversation, but I don't think it's a legitimate one to have in an audio podcast.
00:01.600: Here's how I describe how you do that.
00:01.600: There's one called, um, uh, oh, I think it's plug dot plug4d.
00:01.680: When you go to play a song, there used to be this pop-up window that would always cover part of the page.
00:01.680: But then when I got I tried a couple of jobs thinking, okay, well, the 3D, the part the particle generation is really cool, because there were particle stuff, obviously, in the in various plugins in the After Effects.
00:01.680: But I will say that from okay, so we can get all wrapped up in Fenwick's lower third nightmare here.
00:01.760: I I just want to see if there's another what I thought I was going to try and do is maybe you could actually animate the you could keyframe the opacity of the face of the type when it's inside the title.
00:01.760: So that's a bit more about the conceptual framework of motion because it was designed much more recently.
00:01.760: So one of the categories is detective.
00:01.840: What is the difference between a project and a yeah, so yeah, I'll open it up now.
00:01.840: So Motion project is essentially equivalent of your after a flex project.
00:01.840: Okay, so in this one, if I type in blur, blur-colored glass, I don't think it's that one.
00:01.840: Like, I can make it come in from the top or the bottom or the left or the right.
00:01.840: And again, I want to apologize because this really this whole this was all about me to begin with.
00:01.840: So instead of having to have the most expensive Macs and PCs using Cozer After FX, eventually the cost of CPUs we know has gone down.
00:01.920: And then the the only app I had, I didn't actually uh you know, I'd use Premiere back in ninety two, ninety three kind of time
00:01.920: How come this ten second thing is working properly at different lengths?
00:01.920: Each half of the animation.
00:01.920: And then I cut to a second instance of the plugin.
00:01.920: And I was doing it not because I wanted it to do something flashy.
00:02.000: Yeah, this is his like fourth time on the show.
00:02.000: So he used to do that kind of stuff too.
00:02.000: I figured out how to right-click on it and go into it and modify it.
00:02.000: The thing about that, if hey, kids want to go inside and start reverse engineering these things, the thing about that stuff is
00:02.000: Optional means that there'll be it'll add a checkbox to the control and say and add a build in.
00:02.080: So, Alex knows Final Cut 10 and motion very well.
00:02.080: Hello, sir.
00:02.080: So I don't know.
00:02.080: At scaling something I'd take 10 seconds to do at 25 frames a second, it's really good at making that
00:02.080: What of course you could do this may not work.
00:02.080: Thank you.
00:02.160: I thought, oh, okay, I'll play with this particle generator.
00:02.160: I couldn't actually do it in a predictable way, but I just played around until I kind of got it.
00:02.160: So Motion Project is your general purpose.
00:02.160: Well, okay, so you you're touching on something here when you started talking about crystalline because the the the effect that I was having problem wi uh the problem with, uh, which I can't I'm trying to find your old
00:02.160: It is interacting with the background.
00:02.160: And that's the first breadcrumb.
00:02.160: You're convinced that the rest of the world's going to fall into this 25-frame thing, aren't you?
00:02.240: com.
00:02.240: Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:02.320: The new website came out finally.
00:02.320: I know they've been working on this.
00:02.320: So in other words, that is what motion used to do before version five comes out.
00:02.320: If the title is controlling it, then you can't Final Cut Pro 10 can't be controlling it.
00:02.320: You're just you're saying I want it to happen well, you are saying you want the change to happen over a specific period of time.
00:02.320: Uh I just don't remember all the hard times.
00:02.400: Go check them out.
00:02.400: But I knew I knew After Effects well enough to do that.
00:02.480: I do.
00:02.480: I see people who are using it for great things, some of your stuff included, and I'm thinking, I really want to learn this more.
00:02.480: The plugins if you make do your stuff, if you make your plugins using keyframes
00:02.480: You have the outgoing clip in a layer, you have the incoming clip in a layer, and then what you can do is you could say, well, say I want the my transition to be
00:02.480: the build-in mandatory or optional, okay, because of the build-in optional, there is actually a feature in Alex's plug-in
00:02.480: Essentially, what it allows you to do keyframe-like things, but you aren't you aren't saying
00:02.480: Again, this is episode number 95.
00:02.560: You know, the Premium Beat blog has tons of content in it.
00:02.560: Very cool.
00:02.560: I won't give you a storyboard for it.
00:02.560: I don't really know what to do.
00:02.560: So that's what a file cut effect is.
00:02.560: I don't know.
00:02.560: Because what happens is you add a marker and you go, okay, well, I've added a marker.
00:02.560: Got it.
00:02.560: I think I'm gonna have to Can you hear me still?
00:02.640: I had a vague plan, but I didn't actually do a proper storyboard and didn't plan it properly and say, okay, in advance, I really want it to do this.
00:02.640: I want to change my mind at any stage.
00:02.640: You might create a FileCut Pro effect that is ten seconds long, and that's the default.
00:02.640: Fair.
00:02.720: But they're using something else.
00:02.720: I know what the radius of the blur is and how to do all that kind of stuff.
00:02.720: It's lots of different things.
00:02.720: However silly the and straightforward they are, making a plugin in motion first.
00:02.720: Transition is the least useful one to really learn from.
00:02.720: And or maybe it's the second time you're showing the same lower third on that person and you're just reminding people who the hell they are and you don't really want them to look at it.
00:02.720: So you can actually convert something there.
00:02.720: All right, take care.
00:02.800: And he goes, Yeah, sure, let's meet at X time, whatever.
00:02.800: So, anyway, that's what we're talking about today with our good friend Alex Golner.
00:02.800: And then I went freelance from the conference company.
00:02.800: And motion can go, oh, well, we don't have to care about real time or we don't we do real time, we don't care.
00:02.880: Jerry and Sylvia Anderson.
00:02.880: I can't create, you know, 70 or 8.
00:02.880: So I kind of did that with in general you can learn from that.
00:02.880: If you look in motion and look at the timeline and see the thing that makes it so how shall I describe it?
00:02.880: But I have been using the same excuses that all of the editors that I have talked to that say, I don't want to learn a new user interface.
00:02.960: But anyway, the Mac was fast enough to do it.
00:02.960: So if everyone before okay, stop the podcast, immediately get this open, get the no, perhaps it's not a good plan.
00:02.960: And I'm not and I'm not saying I want to be clear.
00:03.040: Um yeah.
00:03.040: I'm and also for lunch, the one of the people I was l having lunch with is the woman who works at the Great Almond Street Children's Hospital.
00:03.040: Yeah.
00:03.040: But the idea is that you can make it so that if type can kind of break apart or bump into things and layers know about each other, and you can define those relationships.
00:03.040: Now of course, that makes lots of sense in two thousand three and four when you're saying that's the future of technology.
00:03.120: I'll explain what titles are a little bit more because they're a little bit more complicated than you might imagine.
00:03.120: And then it's got some text there, and it blurs the panel, and then it holds for as long as I want it to, and it goes away.
00:03.120: Then yes, you can bake in, convert all those behaviors to keyframes, and then you can make that fix if you need to while you're learning.
00:03.120: Anyway, Alex, once again, thanks for joining us and being a part of the show.
00:03.200: Then of course then I they simplified because it's very easy to make plugins with billion parameters motion and then make the File Cut Pro and people looking and go
00:03.200: So I could say, well, I can create two transitions that fit this mood.
00:03.200: Anyway.
00:03.200: I was starting a brand new project today before you called.
00:03.200: Essentially, it's four seconds and uh six frames long in PAL, so twenty five frames a second.
00:03.200: Alex, we should wrap this up.
00:03.280: And then if you need additional power, you can open up this little toolbox.
00:03.280: This is really confusing.
00:03.280: I think my fi I don't even know what my first File Cut Pro 10 plugin was.
00:03.360: Whoops, not that, not that clicker.
00:03.360: I know that I know everybody knows you as Alex4D, but what's the newest thing on your website that people should be checking out?
00:03.440: I want to learn it better.
00:03.440: You if you're searching for cuts of music for a job, you can put those all into a playlist and then share those with somebody.
00:03.440: And you're like, I'm about to go to bed.
00:03.440: No, no, no, I got you.
00:03.520: And then I get motion and say, Okay, I'm gonna his motion.
00:03.520: So if you put it on a ten minute clip, those keyframes will happen across a ten minute clip.
00:03.520: But let's say 10 seconds.
00:03.520: Cool.
00:03.600: So speaking of animation, I want to talk to you.
00:03.600: So we were doing it kind of weird colours because we had control of the screen.
00:03.600: In other words, they do it either twelve and a half frames a second or they do it twelve frames a second or six frames a second, depending on the budget.
00:03.600: Okay.
00:03.600: And this is the one that I was saying that you have created, you've used what's called a hold frame.
00:03.600: I don't.
00:03.680: Hello, Hanson.
00:03.680: And you just go buh b you know.
00:03.680: If they make it a two-second clip and you were working with a two-second clip, then you know your keyframes work well in two seconds and then
00:03.680: So th then you get into some tricky stuff.
00:03.680: It's just different settings.
00:03.680: I can say, okay, now I want to see a little bit more finesse out of that, or whatever.
00:03.680: I just want to go to the trim.
00:03.680: So if you click detective, you'll see all the stuff in which I've kind of sneakily looked inside Final Cut Protein and what I've discovered.
00:03.760: And so I contacted Alex today and I said, hey,
00:03.760: You have to follow the breast to the breadcrumbs yourself, handle and grettle.
00:03.840: Good friends of Funnel Kek Grill.
00:03.840: But then he then he did kids' T V shows and stuff like that.
00:03.840: That was effectively the idea.
00:03.840: Which is attitude, isn't it?
00:03.840: So in Final Cut, if I drag that motion excuse me, that Final Cut effect, I actually put it onto my clip.
00:03.840: I could actually make it do whatever I wanted in between, but I know what will happen in between.
00:03.840: I'm only saying that because if you look at if you open up the the template and look at it and go
00:03.840: Everybody, your name gets dropped everywhere I go.
00:03.920: And I had After Effects right there, and I was doing stuff on it, so I thought, Okay, well, I'll go back to After Effects.
00:03.920: I said, well, I'll play around, and it rough if I roughly get the result of what I described, not too specific, but it looks like I've done a ton of work, cool.
00:03.920: It's an interesting question.
00:03.920: Absolutely.
00:03.920: Now, of course, you probably wouldn't want to do that, especially if you were saying, okay, this is the CEO of the multinational corporation whose name it is, and it completely blurs out, then you wouldn't want to do that.
00:03.920: It's a title template.
00:03.920: So on the I'm going to go I'm going to go to the final cut here, open up the titles tool.
00:04.000: They first told me about this at NAB, so they've been working on this for a long time.
00:04.000: Nothing's in the right place.
00:04.000: But what we're talking about here is using motion to make things easier for editors
00:04.000: Now, this is one that I we have actually adopted it for one of our clients, and they love it.
00:04.000: Build in mandatory, build in optional, build out.
00:04.000: So there, that comes in, that changes
00:04.080: Okay, and it's because it's kind of the same thing.
00:04.080: I don't think I've ever done that.
00:04.080: My question to Alex was, can I, somewhere in the middle of that, change the text?
00:04.080: Just like with the most edits, you know, which it's true also with the making plugins.
00:04.080: In motion, it really is about making lots of effect layers interact with each other in lots of flexible ways by using math.
00:04.160: I want all those controls.
00:04.160: Okay, so so like generators would have like um shapes
00:04.240: That's kind of what this episode is about.
00:04.240: I, because they repeat them every once in a while, you just go, wow, that's
00:04.240: It's a really weird thing to say.
00:04.240: Yeah, so instead of having one instant with Vanaka effect, you want the the effect the video effect, like say blurring, to apply to a whole clip.
00:04.240: It actually makes the background lower third section of the screen blurry, which is very cool.
00:04.240: Well, if motion is controlling the opacity of the type.
00:04.240: I was thinking, No, I have to get that one star explosion and I have to get that star and make it explode and get some parameters
00:04.240: Yeah.
00:04.320: So essentially, the background comes on, and while it comes on, I'm slowly fading up the
00:04.320: We're counting down to 100.
00:04.400: And I thought, well, okay, well, I got a DV camera.
00:04.400: I'll just say, Well, we'll be flying around in three D space and then some of the logos will just fly by or pop up and we'll move from place to place in three D, and it'll look really cool.
00:04.400: This is too heavy.
00:04.400: Say yes, as a star like the earth with stars.
00:04.400: So you effectively create your own blur dissolve.
00:04.480: And did that in the evening and we'll visit my parents in uh for lunch.
00:04.480: I can't I didn't get the feeling I could c I couldn't precompose.
00:04.480: I kind of I understood the principles behind it, but I just thought, well, that may be so, but I don't care about that.
00:04.480: And then below that.
00:04.480: And okay, number one, are you happy now?
00:04.480: So that's why After Effects isn't a real-time um app.
00:04.480: And I just want to say as we kind of wrap up here that if you do experiment with the
00:04.560: So it it gets included in Studio One, I guess, Mild Cut Studio, the first version.
00:04.560: On this camera, I was much more comfortable in animating cameras weirdly, and I I thought
00:04.560: Good news in terms of, hey, wow, I've always wanted to do this specific thing.
00:04.560: And what that is effectively from this conversation's point of view is a motion project, but it's got a special layer in it.
00:04.560: I mean, obviously, you can, that kind of transition I'm talking about, which is in the case of doing a blur, if you hey.
00:04.560: And actually, that's going to be very useful on some of the projects that we do.
00:04.640: And there's some great functionality of it, but I'm realizing
00:04.640: So he didn't even know he was being recorded.
00:04.640: Yeah.
00:04.640: But the key, I think, to
00:04.640: So you're kind of jumping ahead there about getting into themes.
00:04.640: Or I suppose if you're say you're a celluloid editor and it's nineteen ninety three and somebody says use Avid
00:04.720: You might have to let go of some of your old baggage.
00:04.720: They're considering Final Cut 10, but they look at it and they go, there's just too much to get over the wall.
00:04.720: It's like, oh, never mind.
00:04.720: You can make it set at any length.
00:04.720: Well, inside a final cup sorry, a motion template, the title template, what it really is, is an effect template
00:04.720: And then as it comes up, a name and title dissolve in.
00:04.720: And in NLEs, they don't interact in it very well at all either.
00:04.720: I don't want to use this ripple and rolling stuff.
00:04.800: Um so I like that.
00:04.800: Okay.
00:04.880: I almost feel like I shouldn't be able to count this as a full episode, but it's interesting, you know.
00:04.880: I've been watching more tutorials.
00:04.880: Say, for example, if I say I had a texture map of the whole map of the world that represented the earth
00:04.880: I don't want to keep everybody too long.
00:04.960: I've been talking about it and teasing about it.
00:04.960: But they went on to do, of course, um Space nineteen ninety nine as well.
00:04.960: So that was a kind of the first bit of my kind of Alex the
00:04.960: It was much more as I was trying to help arguments with people saying it doesn't even do this.
00:05.040: And I had it all in my head, so even though I was rendering at quarter resolution and selecting bits.
00:05.040: There don't seem to be enough things in the menus.
00:05.040: So really what that is, are two categories.
00:05.040: Anyway, the the hold keyframe is very cool.
00:05.040: Um I don't know what's going on.
00:05.040: Whereas in this case, the idea is you click this layer, click that layer
00:05.120: So for me to get the effect that I wanted, I want to be able to animate in on the first instance of the plug in, but I turn off the animate out so it doesn't
00:05.120: So it's a kind of badge of honor, at least amongst some some people, that they're producing really good results.
00:05.120: Anyway, thanks for listening.
00:05.200: This is 095.
00:05.200: Oh, I don't know about that.
00:05.200: And also it's so slow and it's not working properly.
00:05.200: I'm all the best people have.
00:05.200: So I need to describe this because this podcast is becoming awful.
00:05.200: All right, so I hope you enjoyed that.
00:05.280: I just um went to a birthday party by uh featuring an 84-year-old animator.
00:05.280: So that was on my After Effects world.
00:05.280: And then I really got to know motion well and why behaviors were good and how to link them all together and then how to publish them and then how to make plugins out of them.
00:05.280: If you suddenly go, oh, actually, yeah, this is telling it to it's so good, I want to show it to the world.
00:05.280: And then you can choose at what point you change the
00:05.280: So what that's why making plugins first or understanding how plugins work and applying them and doing things to your clips is a way of saying, oh, I can know how to do that.
00:05.360: We have this great application, Motion, which I know is important to the ecosystem of Final Cut X.
00:05.360: And what was funny is I didn't realize until after the end of the interview that
00:05.360: And I didn't have too much of a plan because I knew in what it was on that job
00:05.360: And what you're saying is that whereas
00:05.360: I'm going to buy you a T-shirt that says, I don't know if you know this, but I'm kind of a big deal, Alex4D.
00:05.440: I would say that effects are the one to kind of one of the ones to learn from in terms of learning motion through doing a funnel cut plugin.
00:05.440: But you want to make it so sometimes that can be applied to some text that's only four seconds long, but you still want it to start take two seconds to start and two seconds to finish.
00:05.440: So that's one of the tr difficult bits that Apple had to deal with.
00:05.440: No, what happens is you double-click the actual marker itself.
00:05.440: In terms of what happens is those two seconds or wherever you put the marker, that's going to be in real time.
00:05.440: It is a little pane that comes up from the bottom.
00:05.440: Is it still working?
00:05.440: And I will say that I learned about hold keyframes in this lower third template
00:05.520: So, anytime anyone wants to do a version of Peter Pan,
00:05.520: It was much more like this is a thing.
00:05.520: Right.
00:05.520: So I add a marker and then I double-click on the marker.
00:05.600: I thought, okay, I'm going to be doing
00:05.600: Another clip can move the person as the newsreader moves their head from left to right or reposition the camera.
00:05.600: So not a huge change, no new plugins or anything like that, apart from
00:05.680: Absolutely, sure.
00:05.680: So let's break this down a little bit.
00:05.680: Don't click on that thing.
00:05.680: And it is a good way to kind of, like you say, reverse engineer, sort of delve into something.
00:05.680: So what you do is you can go to market as a motion graphics designer.
00:05.680: Make sure my title doesn't do anything between two seconds in.
00:05.760: So was this a personal challenge of yours or you just didn't have access to anything else?
00:05.760: So you can create the star generator, or you can choose star, circle, square, rectangle, and that kind of stuff.
00:05.760: But so you with the design of my template
00:05.760: No, let's see.
00:05.760: But I will say that I'm in
00:05.760: But if you experiment with the behaviors, I have been schooled recently
00:05.760: I mean that's really good if you want to bake something in and you're not too sure about your real control over things.
00:05.760: Just Fenwick wanting to pick your brain, but I appreciate your time in doing it.
00:05.840: We're huge fans.
00:05.840: So you kind of, as I was saying, as I said to you before, you kind of have to make it so you
00:05.840: But the reason why I say that is that if you can make your motion graphics so flexible that it can be applied to a clip in an effect,
00:05.840: You might want to start with a title first because you get quick results quite quick.
00:05.840: And that's how lots of people start off.
00:05.840: There we go.
00:05.840: Yeah, yeah.
00:05.840: In other words, add the separate separate thing.
00:05.840: I'm not saying one way, I don't think that one way is wrong or better or worse or anything like that.
00:05.920: Wow, that'd be really cool to have UnshotMask in File Cut Pro.
00:05.920: Yeah, the clip that was in File Cut Pro 10.
00:05.920: So that's what a transition is.
00:05.920: What happens is some title some titles like to interact a little bit with their background.
00:05.920: It's sped up or slowed down to make sure you can play that bit in real time.
00:06.000: And you have to try that in a long time.
00:06.080: There's also an uh probably the favorite feature that I've come across so far, and I've only been scratching on the surface, is the ability to make playlists.
00:06.080: The cat didn't have a name, but we do know who the cat belonged to.
00:06.080: Yeah, that really is the beauty: is that you can.
00:06.080: Versions one to four were creating motion projects.
00:06.080: I'm learning.
00:06.080: Maths.
00:06.160: I had the kind of Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat kind of stuff.
00:06.160: And I kind of thought, okay, I'm going to learn um I I might as well use After Effects because I know how to
00:06.160: It's obviously Apple's version of After Effects.
00:06.160: I was producing very simple plugins for the first few
00:06.160: And the crazy thing about that means
00:06.160: Okay, this is the one I was mentioning that comes up from the bottom.
00:06.160: No, I can still hear you.
00:06.240: And then I think, well
00:06.240: I can add an effect that would please the mood.
00:06.240: Sorry, I couldn't resist that.
00:06.240: It was probably audio only transition.
00:06.240: I I learned motion the wrong way around.
00:06.240: GPUs are ain't no fang.
00:06.320: Just me kind of picking Alex's brain.
00:06.320: I've I've seen um I've seen you use the hold frame
00:06.320: So you have to choose a length in motion.
00:06.320: Oh no, it totally didn't work.
00:06.320: Okay, number two.
00:06.320: And I know it's late and you probably have a real job to do in the morning.
00:06.320: Thanks for going to iTunes.
00:06.400: It's like, yeah, well, you know, I feel really comfortable.
00:06.400: It doesn't have a f it doesn't isn't associated with a file that's on the hard drive.
00:06.400: What happens is you create a special marker at two seconds, and create a special marker at two seconds from the end.
00:06.480: We're going to get to that because I actually discovered that in one of your plug-ins because I was trying to
00:06.480: Which kind of blows my mind, but
00:06.480: We're going to do something good for 100, I hope, if I don't totally fail.
00:06.480: So thanks for listening.
00:06.560: I've been watching more of Mark Spencer.
00:06.560: And I thought, wow
00:06.560: So let's talk about the five different choices that you get when you first open up motion.
00:06.560: So make sure nothing's selected only.
00:06.560: So this only works in certain projects.
00:06.640: So that was probably version three.
00:06.640: And then the other four are special cases that are allowing you to use Motion to create stuff that works in File Cut Pro ten.
00:06.640: But what it is, is essentially a special motion project with two placeholders in it.
00:06.640: Very good.
00:06.640: And so that's using the the optional
00:06.640: Yeah.
00:06.640: We called those the
00:06.640: I'm kind of realizing I really sort of have to use those same words about motion.
00:06.720: In the UK, uh a show called um Henry's Cat, which is the story of a cat a cat whose name didn't he didn't have a name, but it was called Henry's Cat.
00:06.720: I don't know.
00:06.720: No, I mean um
00:06.720: And then somebody while doing After Effects and doing that as a freelance, somebody said
00:06.720: Chris, pull me back from the rabbit hole You know, but yeah.
00:06.720: It's more that as long as you know that what you're doing
00:06.800: How are you doing tonight?
00:06.800: Yeah.
00:06.800: So then moving down the list of five choices here, there is the final cut transition, and that's really just to build
00:06.800: Exactly.
00:06.800: What the hell?
00:06.800: So suddenly that job of three or four days or five days working in After Effects is like, well
00:06.800: That's silly.
00:06.800: Right.
00:06.880: I know what effectively what the animation will be, and I'm only just doing the ramp preview because I know what it's going to do anyway, just to confirm it.
00:06.880: And that's very straightforward.
00:06.880: Let me go new project.
00:06.880: And on the second instance, I don't use the Animate In checkbox, but I do use the Animate Out checkbox.
00:06.880: And now that's the thing about behaviors.
00:06.960: But if you look
00:06.960: Yes.
00:06.960: Right.
00:07.040: We were doing twenty frames a second, eight hundred by six hundred.
00:07.040: But my idea was
00:07.040: You can't particularly do anything in it that interacts with a Final Cut Pro, but you don't particularly care.
00:07.040: And where do I find those markers?
00:07.040: Okay, so like I've seen this, I think I've seen it in some of your plug-ins, I've seen it in some of Mark Spencer's plug-ins.
00:07.040: Okay, you know what, though?
00:07.040: But yeah, that was the plug in for doing the frame counter and the you know, property of yeah, he talked about it in the a recent Ripple training.
00:07.120: So I know they're stoked about this.
00:07.120: It's a kind of more basic level.
00:07.120: And the client goes, Wow, you seem to have done a ton of work there.
00:07.120: Very kind of straightforward, I suppose.
00:07.120: Okay.
00:07.120: So I know that's a bit of a
00:07.120: And then he's also started a new like Final Cut user group in London.
00:07.200: I was talking with Andrew Coons the other day, and he we were talking about the similarities
00:07.200: All the best all the good people do, exactly.
00:07.200: It's been a year since I made this thing, so I kind of have to learn it all over again.
00:07.200: It's there.
00:07.280: If you have not noticed, go to PremiumBeat.
00:07.280: Well, what you do is you keyframe or maybe add a behavior to your blurriness, you apply that to the outgoing clip
00:07.280: So in type, do you have build in, build out and project loop end?
00:07.280: Maybe I'm just wondering if uh Skype is uh no, no, during the dissolve the the d the uh blur part goes wonky.
00:07.280: Mathematics.
00:07.280: It's shocking, though, when people like Wes Plate and other people who are famous to meet are actually using my name.
00:07.360: So suddenly, all the pieces fell into place about what motion was
00:07.360: You might want to make it three frames
00:07.360: What does optional and mandatory mean?
00:07.360: It's just a matter of time.
00:07.360: I always enjoy talking to Alex.
00:07.440: So anyway, tons of capability.
00:07.440: Yeah, because it's very tempting.
00:07.440: Same thing about the the
00:07.440: We'll be back Friday with another episode of The Grill.
00:07.520: So, now we're going to join our good friend Alex Golner, and we're going to take a little deep dive into
00:07.520: I mean, they went on to do Sylvia, maybe.
00:07.520: And what does the unsharped mask mean anyway?
00:07.520: Yeah, so that's a way of doing a blur dissolve.
00:07.520: Edit that been out.
00:07.520: The way that motion works, and I won't go into too much more detail, is you create a special marker in the time line two seconds in.
00:07.520: That's no good to me.
00:07.600: And all I've done is just a straight publisher what those are.
00:07.600: But sometimes you don't want it to be stretched out, you want the beginning to be the same one second.
00:07.600: And you and I have talked about that before in the past.
00:07.600: And also with Dynamic Link, you don't actually have to at least
00:07.600: Because what happens is that you, when you choose and create a new title template,
00:07.600: Unfortunately, yeah, I say, Oh, I just did it in an hour, it was so easy.
00:07.600: I just think in terms of all those four or five frames at the end of my clips over there in that separate bin.
00:07.600: Thanks for leaving the stars and the comments.
00:07.680: So if that sounds odd.
00:07.680: This owns the owns Peter Pan.
00:07.680: I couldn't put the anything into sub things.
00:07.680: I've got one little bite-sized chunk
00:07.680: Do you want a project?
00:07.680: That middle section will be scaled depending on the length of the title.
00:07.680: Who cares in nineteen ninety five, ninety six, who cares about that?
00:07.680: No, it's like it's like a final ten editor saying just use the P key and go into position mode.
00:07.680: So um
00:07.760: Yeah.
00:07.760: Correct.
00:07.760: That makes sense.
00:07.760: This is the worst podcast ever.
00:07.760: Right.
00:07.760: So
00:07.840: And now they have this slick little player at the bottom.
00:07.840: So
00:07.840: I know it is ridiculous, but
00:07.840: There's the motion project, which means I'm going to create some animation and do some motion graphics using motion.
00:07.840: It was designed by a third party and Apple brought it in and they're kind of Aqua Hire.
00:07.920: Who cares?
00:07.920: See, the problem is, if you look at my template, it's only just over four seconds long.
00:07.920: It blurs out the background because it's fancy.
00:08.000: So it fades up, the first hunk of text comes in.
00:08.000: And also you only can only have whole frames at the beginning and end.
00:08.000: Yeah.
00:08.080: I mean, I think the thing about all those controls, I let's say, for example,
00:08.080: And it doesn't have to be full screen, it can actually have transparency.
00:08.080: Right.
00:08.080: What you're saying here is really good, because what you're saying is that I can
00:08.080: That's the important thing.
00:08.160: And also it's for people who think in terms of motion graphics who think I can brand
00:08.160: Oh, the type will just go.
00:08.240: If you're not familiar with Alex, I'm sure you can't be if you listen to this show, alex4d.
00:08.240: And I got to say, I learned some things that I did not know.
00:08.240: Oh, that's very cool.
00:08.240: So that's my first little bit of philosophy working out about the what motion was to File Cup Pro and
00:08.240: And then and then the effect happens on top of it.
00:08.240: But then so then the last of the five choices here when I first start is the funnel cut title.
00:08.240: I know that's a it doesn't make much.
00:08.240: Right.
00:08.240: But After Effect's core way of thinking or the way of doing things is like, well
00:08.320: Yeah.
00:08.320: Now you don't have to, it's just there.
00:08.320: You have to say, okay, let's say the ideal title is ten seconds long, which
00:08.320: I'm going to turn the sound down
00:08.320: And you can use one behavior to make lots of changes all at once.
00:08.480: I can get it so shiny and beautiful and like
00:08.480: Because the weird thing is, even though
00:08.480: That causes it.
00:08.480: It's the kind of thing I have to look into somebody's eyes and say, okay, you.
00:08.480: I learned it from the plugins out to the motion graphics.
00:08.560: And then as new versions of Motion came out, so version two, oh, new version, I'll try it.
00:08.560: Do you want a title?
00:08.560: Yeah.
00:08.560: Yeah, so you instead of me thinking, Okay, I have to have to create a a
00:08.640: Instead of it being the basic level being a
00:08.640: And so I my attitude was, okay, if I get jobs in which I can a particle based on movie through three D
00:08.640: In other words, you'd make it so it's possible for the editor themselves to choose whether to have that build to animate in or not.
00:08.640: I overlooked the capability of
00:08.720: In other words, animation for
00:08.720: Anyway, sorry to go into all this diversion, it's just more, anyway, the story.
00:08.720: I want to do Unsharp Mask.
00:08.720: Oh, what am I doing here?
00:08.720: You know?
00:08.720: And that would be very useful, especially with audio.
00:08.720: And he's doing some cool stuff.
00:08.800: So I thought I'm just going to call Alex and like pick his brain for a little bit.
00:08.800: So you can crack in a two and a half in a three and a half minute video, and the each shot is about
00:08.800: So the shape generator or clouds that in other words, stuff that's generated
00:08.880: Yeah, no.
00:08.880: I always do it in PAL because I don't know.
00:08.880: 25 will take over.
00:08.960: They were just saying, It's the new future of uh post production
00:08.960: So first off, why when would I use a motion project?
00:08.960: I'll call this Trash Me.
00:08.960: I tried to do something.
00:08.960: I haven't quite worked out to unlock that.
00:09.040: I mean, I would say the
00:09.040: Yes.
00:09.040: That might be the solve to my question I had for you, which I haven't gotten to yet.
00:09.040: I got to say.
00:09.120: This real time business, it's not worth it because it doesn't have all the things I'm used to doing.
00:09.120: I remember you know, which in practice, you know
00:09.120: And that's the same conceptually
00:09.200: That's very cool.
00:09.200: Again, it's just something that lays over your video.
00:09.200: So, what I would advise you to do
00:09.200: We want people to be able to try things out and see their effect immediately by dragging a slider.
00:09.200: You are now the I think you've been a guest even more than Sam Mestman.
00:09.360: And we thought, okay, the trade-off is only twenty frames a second, but as it's animation
00:09.360: Whereas you and I know you don't actually have to do that.
00:09.360: Do you want an effect?
00:09.360: com or excuse me, at plug4d.
00:09.440: From my point of view
00:09.440: You can get results quite quick by playing with learning how to make titles first.
00:09.440: I didn't want that.
00:09.440: Say you had ten seconds, the ten second title.
00:09.520: Wow.
00:09.520: That didn't really work.
00:09.520: And I've really got to think more carefully about it.
00:09.520: But when we I know that when I first open it up
00:09.520: No, it was uh
00:09.520: Whereas in here, I am actually just generating a tool
00:09.520: But the point being
00:09.520: You know, it works with GPUs really well.
00:09.520: Or at least in a way that I understand.
00:09.600: Could you come and film them doing the go-karting?
00:09.600: Why is it a mask?
00:09.600: I can't tell you how much I appreciate that.
00:09.680: Either
00:09.680: So what a final cup
00:09.680: So motion is really good at scaling
00:09.680: You can't even have, you can't control audio transitions properly on this thing.
00:09.680: So essentially
00:09.760: I've got it right there and I can apply it directly to a clip.
00:09.760: So if you don't have a title project up, then
00:09.840: Which is pretty str
00:09.840: Wait, where did the marker go?
00:09.840: You know, he's got a new group, a new Twitter handle.
00:09.920: com because I've been asked
00:09.920: That's how you can if for anyone's interested, that's how our adjustment layers work, what they are a special
00:09.920: Fantastic.
00:09.920: You don't want the animation to distract them.
00:10.000: And um totally different kind of animation than we talk about normally, isn't it?
00:10.000: I really know Photoshop very well.
00:10.000: But what you can do
00:10.000: Hey, it makes sense to me, and I'm looking right at it.
00:10.000: But thank you for
00:10.080: I got the one of the basic units that was actually a peer to that.
00:10.080: And I thought, okay, well, this is a good act from that point of view.
00:10.080: In one of our other
00:10.080: But the point is, is that you really need to
00:10.080: I'm using my same words against me.
00:10.160: To cross dissolve between the two halves?
00:10.240: How did I do this?
00:10.240: We just know due to Moore's law
00:10.320: We've talked about it before.
00:10.320: There's no mask on it.
00:10.320: That's all generated made using a motion template as well.
00:10.320: But it's good to think of it in terms of being
00:10.320: I'm sorry about that, folks.
00:10.400: I think that's when they first included it.
00:10.400: I actually and then instantly that one those three or four days
00:10.480: And I every few months I kind of
00:10.480: I was going to ask you about that because
00:10.480: I just wanted it to kind of whoosh in in a second or whatever.
00:10.480: And the rest of the
00:10.560: One that represents what you want to do to the outgoing clip as it goes away.
00:10.560: You know, and it's
00:10.560: Would there be a way for me to take that plug in
00:10.640: Exactly.
00:10.720: Later, later.
00:10.800: I used to love that as a kid.
00:10.800: So the word build as in building, build in.
00:10.880: Let me
00:10.880: You know, I don't want to bother.
00:10.880: So the question is, why didn't Apple do that?
00:10.880: If you can one audio track could dip the other audio track or
00:10.960: I had a thing
00:10.960: Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
00:10.960: Okay, and then I double-click on it.
00:10.960: And essentially, the answer is
00:10.960: And that especially applies to moving cameras around in 3D.
00:11.040: But that's what worked for me.
00:11.120: Okay.
00:11.120: Because that's the thing in
00:11.120: There's loads of things that if
00:11.120: And that's
00:11.200: And then you get to kind of clash those kind of things.
00:11.280: So I
00:11.280: The funny thing is you well, there's two ways of doing it.
00:11.360: Say, for example, you've got a person's name.
00:11.360: I'm so.
00:11.360: It works with
00:11.440: So you can overlay it on top of things, just like the shapes.
00:11.520: But um
00:11.760: So what I did is I got a particle generator,
00:11.760: Right.
00:11.840: And then
00:11.840: So there is a motion project.
00:11.840: So what happens is you click the checkbox in File Cup Pro,
00:11.920: But again,
00:11.920: It's to
00:11.920: Like, I want to learn motion.
00:12.320: So
00:12.400: But of course, in motion, you can choose which areas of the screen blur.
00:12.400: So
00:12.400: Can I just keep all my trims over there?
00:12.480: Rat hole warning.
00:12.480: Yeah, no, it does not work.
00:12.560: I mean.
00:12.560: It was brilliant.
00:12.640: Because the funny thing is that that's quite
00:12.720: Well, firstly,
00:12.800: All right.
00:12.880: And that's just
00:12.880: It's about ten seconds long.
00:13.120: com.
00:13.200: Okay.
00:13.200: It's just.
00:13.360: And luckily the clients
00:13.760: Now the question is, well,
00:13.920: He's got a f