Motion 5: Publishing Effects to FCP X

The open secret of Final Cut Pro X is that all its effects are Motion 5 projects. This means that you can use Motion to create custom effects for use in Final Cut.

Motion can create a Final Cut generator, title, transition, or effect — and allow FCP to adjust the settings of the effect without returning to Motion. This can be a huge timesaver!

Part of that process we’ve used for a long time: create the Motion project and import it into Final Cut. What’s new with the latest versions of FCP and Motion is that now you can save a Motion project directly into FCP’s Browsers and you can share the controls of the Motion effect with Final Cut.

This nine-minute video describes:

NOTE: This is an excerpt from a recent webinar on Rigging, Widgets, and Wonders in Motion 5. You can buy the complete webinar now and download it from our store or, for only $5.00 more, get all my training via my new subscription membership.

TRT: 9:01 — QuickTime movie


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15 Responses to Motion 5: Publishing Effects to FCP X

  1. Bill Sitkin says:

    Be nice if the play button worked

  2. Nick says:

    Larry

    I just got a copy of Motion 5 to go along with FCPX, I love the program so far.

    I am having a problem with publishing out of Motion and into FCPX no matter what template I use in Motion
    they all show up in FCPX with a red screen indicating that the media files are missing.

    Have you ever ran into this problem.

    • Larry Jordan says:

      Nick:

      When you are saving your Motion project, make sure to check the “Collect media” checkbox.

      The red indicates that the media is not stored with the template.

      Larry

  3. Nick says:

    Larry

    Thanks for the quick response, I looked into using the Collect Media checkbox.

    It is only available if I open a Motion Project, when I open a Final Cut Generator and go to Save As the
    Collect Media option is not there.

    When I save the “Final Cut Generator” template as described in your video above, my motion project
    shows up in FCPX in the generator menu with a thumbnail that has images from my project but when I add them
    to the timeline in FCPX I get the Red Screen.

    • Meg says:

      Nick, were you able to resolve your issue?
      I’m having the same problem.

        • Path says:

          Anyone got a solution to this problem (Red screen in FCPX)

          Whichever type of Motion template I try to create, and even some i bought, has this problem. The template looks ok in the effects thumbnail, but when mouse-overed it turns red. Same goes if one is placed in the timeline.

          All the templates that I’ve encountered this problem with have the “Published Parameters” missing.

          I’d appreciate any tips to why this is happening.

          • LarryJ says:

            Path:

            The red screen indicates that media is missing – either because it wasn’t installed properly, or has been moved or delete since installation.

            If you are having this problem with templates that you purchased, it is probably an installation issue. I suggest contacting the publisher for tech support.

            Larry

  4. Hello Larry- What everyone including yourself glosses over is that when first setting up a Motion 5 project in order to publish a rig with widgets one needs to select a template from one of these 4 categories: effect, transition, generator or title. If one selects instead the Motion Project Category there are publish options there but I can’t find where those control parameters show up in FCPX once published. They are certainly not available in the effects, transition, title or generator Browsers.

    Thank you for the clarification.

    • Larry Jordan says:

      Peter:

      You are exactly correct – and thanks for pointing this out.

      When you FIRST create the project, you need to select where you want the finished effect to be stored.

      Thanks,

      Larry

  5. Andreas says:

    Hi Larry

    Thanks for this it’s great! Can you please help? I want to publish just part of a motion template (from MotionVFX) to FCP i.e. in the middle of a template there is a piece with a cool lower third i would like to publish as a title strap. Is this possible and if so can you help me with it?

    Thanks for all the wisdom you make available.

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