Motion 5 to Final Cut 7 Import Problems

Question

Hello!
I am driving myself nuts with a project mixing Motion 5 with Final Cut Pro 7. I am using 1920 x 1080p settings in both programs with 23.98 frame rate settings in both. When I export from Motion (as either an image sequence or a self-contained MOV file) and bring the finished piece back into Final Cut Pro 7... the footage refuses to line up. The timing is off, and it appears that the scaling is off as well.
I've checked Distortion on both clips, scaling, Speed settings... everything I can think of. Tried cutting & pasting to new sequences. If I line it up to match at the beginning of the clip it's off by a few frames in. If I line it up for the end the same thing happens. Either way it's 128 frames long... what's going on here?
On top of that, if I take the footage from Final Cut, export it, pull it into Motion, do NOTHING to it, and render it back out to a file and import that into Final Cut Pro 7... it is significantly darker.
Any ideas??

Answer 1

QT 7 shows two frame rates: the actual frame rate (FPS) and the frame rate you're getting while it is playing back the video (Playback FPS) -- that will tend to be variable especially if QT has to work really hard to play the file.
Anyway...
Watch your canvas (and/or export) render settings in Motion (and probably FCP, as well). Normal is not Best (duh). Normal in Motion 5 is okay for FCPX effects, they'll be rendered in FCPX anyway and I think that FCPX always treats it as Best, but for exporting video, I'll always set it to Best (higher quality image resampling; antialiased intersections and particle edges; and probably most importantly: sharper text). You can set the render settings when you Export by going to the Render tab in the export dialog and setting the Render Quality to Best. If you're exporting from Motion (any version) *for* FCP (again, any version) your export settings should be some flavor of ProRes. [Unless there is a lot of very high motion in your video - OR - you require transparency, ProRes LT is almost always acceptable to use, especially if you need to save disc space.] The *default* export from Motion 5 is ProRes 4444 (this is the only variant that supports transparency). Even though this is the Highest quality ProRes, it is not the same as the render quality settings in Motion since those determine how well (and precisely) the animation in Motion is rendered to whatever file format you choose. ProRes is the "native" format for FCP, period.
In FCP, your render settings might be for lower resolutions while playing back (unlimited RT, etc...) When you get these resolution variations going for playback, nothing is guaranteed to line up. So, when you import your Motion export [ ], render everything in the FCP timeline and see how they line up. Chances are everything will be perfect. (PS - this phenomenon can also occur in FCPX until everything is rendered especially if proxy media is being used.)
... um ... there is this one thing, though, that just came to mind. Under certain conditions (you'll need to check with somebody else about this, I was never really sure what the deal was) , you might actually be getting something like 1888 x 1062 resolution from your project... that *might* cause some alignment issues.  It seems to me that there was a "difference" between some of the "Broadcast" 1080 HD settings and the actual 1920 x 1080 HD option... (but I can't  remember specifically, and it doesn't seem to be an issue in FCPX. It could be worth checking into if you continue to have alignment problems.)
[PPS: "Self-contained MOV" doesn't really tell us anything. MOV is just a "wrapper" and the format could be anything from Animation to XDCAM. "Image Sequence" is also ambiguous since there's a huge difference between JPG and similar formats that don't support transparency and are "lossy"; and PNG and other formats that do support transparency and are "lossless". In video, it's always best to go with the least lossy options... ]