Motion 5: Publishing Effects to FCP X

Posted on February 26, 2012 by Larry

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:

How to create a Final Cut generator (or any effect) in Motion
How to publish settings that can be accessed in FCP
How, and where, to save the file so FCP can see it

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

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Bill Sitkin says:

March 1, 2012 at 4:23 am

Be nice if the play button worked
Larry Jordan says:

March 1, 2012 at 8:55 am

Bill:

What problem are you having?

Larry
Ed says:

April 29, 2012 at 8:37 pm

This video doesn’t play…??
Larry Jordan says:

April 29, 2012 at 8:51 pm

Bill & Ed:

This plays on my system. How are you viewing this that it doesn’t work – hardware, OS, and Browser?

We want to be sure this plays for you.

Larry
Nick says:

June 8, 2013 at 6:09 am

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:

June 8, 2013 at 2:26 pm

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
Nick says:

June 8, 2013 at 7:32 pm

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:

September 10, 2013 at 4:35 pm

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

September 12, 2013 at 7:32 am

No
peter rudolfi says:

November 5, 2013 at 9:14 pm

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.