Motion exports darker to FCP

Hi everyone,
I sent one track of video from FCP to Motion and added a spotlight effect linked to an audio behaviour. It looks great when I render/preview in Motion, but when I go back into FCP, it looks very dark, almost as if I had applied a completely different filter to it or changed the blend mode (which I haven't).
I tried exporting directly from Motion but I end up with the same dark footage...
The clips were shot with Canon HF10, and compressed Apple ProRes 422.
As far as I know, the preview and output shouldn't look THAT different... does anyone know what I am missing here?

Well first I couldn't find this spot light effect until you told be it was in the image units. Now I know.
Spot light is creating an Alpha Mask when you apply it. To see what I mean take an single image and put it in a new project. Now switch to viewing the Alpha Channel (shift a) the whole canvas should be bright white. Add the spot light effect and adjust the controls and see how it effects the Alpha Channel. Press Shift C to get back to all the color channels.
I'm not sure what the effect you want to get is but, if you have it working then great. One way to lighten an area (as if a narrow focused light were shining on it) would be to duplicate the image and use a mask to define the area to be effected (draw a sort of cone shape to start). Then adjust some of this layers image values by adding filters like Levels or try something like Bloom. You can set this layer's blend mode to Add to increase the effect. Try feathering the mask as well.
o| TonyTony |o

Similar Messages

Motion export to FCP

Hi,
I was wondering how you should export a audio-behavioured project in motion (imported directly from FCP) to FCP again, without making a quicktime movie of it, which would take LONG time! Will you could make a .xml og something? - something which wouldn't take severel of hours...
hope anyone out there knows a soultion!
thanks!

Why would you export anything at all? Why not just import the Motion project file directly into FCP? And when you say "imported directly from FCP" do you mean you sent your clips from FCP to Motion? If so, if you select the Embed checkbox (selected by default) the Motion project will already be in your FCP timeline.

Motion exporting to FCP

Hi,
I was wondering how you should export a audio-behavioured project in motion (imported directly from FCP) to FCP again, without making a quicktime movie of it, which would take LONG time! Will you could make a .xml og something? - something which wouldn't take severel of hours...
hope anyone out there knows a soultion!
thanks!

Simply import the Motion project file and edit it into the FCP timeline.

Green Screen in Motion – export to fcp? Send to from FCP?

Hi I have footage from two different cameras with way different lighting on each subject (interview style). I did not shoot this, only trying to fix it.
I am editing them in FCP and would like to know the best way to get them to and from Motion... There are jump cuts between each person speaking so each camera has to be keyed independently.
Should I highlight clips from the same camera and export as a QT movie? Should I highlight and send to Motion?
Also, when I was doing this before the clips were not transparent... Is there some setting in Motion that I am choosing incorrectly?
Thank you for your help...

Don't export out of FCP at all then. Just open the color corrected-rendered-exported-as-native clips in Motion. Apply your keying and matting. You will export the processed clips out of Motion using ProRes4444, RGB+alpha.
There is no tangible gain trying to process individual, trimmed shots. If you apply the color correction to each scene, you will have a long clip that can be edited-cut-trimmed just like the raw clip, just be sure to keep the audio unless you're confident in marrying the tracks. That's just my preferred method.
If you have already trimmed your scenes (the clips that go from start to stop) into individual shots, you can assemble them into a sequence, maybe add some black between them, nest the sequence, and apply one color correction to the whole sequence. This, of course, is useless if you're already locked into or tied to timecoded edits.
All of this advice is based on my theory that complicating anything in FCP unnecessarily is not just asking for trouble, it practically assures disaster.
bogiesan

Motion Project clip in FCP clip does not export

Dear All,
I edited one clip from FCP 06 sequence with Motion Project and replaced the original clip with the motion project version. I did frame blending effect on the original FCP clip, which had 25% slow motion applied (constant) through FCP. After the clip was replaced with the new one, I exported the whole sequence from FCP to a couple of formats through Compressor (a custom DVD and a custom H.264 formats), the fragment where the Motion Project clip supposed to be did not show the effect of the frame blending. However it shows fince on the timeline in FCP.
I will appreciate any suggestions,
Izabela

Hi Izabela,
Did you render the Motion effects in FCP prior to sending to Compressor? Are you using the 'Send to Compressor' (Not that that is wrong, it's just so I know your workflow)?
If it's just the Frame blending that is a problem for you just check your sequence settings in FCP. With the sequence window selected do Cmd-0(zero) to open the sequence settings. In the Render Control tab under Master Templates and Motion Projects, change the Quality to Best and tick the box underneath.
Now check to see if the Motion clip has become unrendered. If not, double click it and in the viewer goto the Motion tab and change the scale then back to it's original setting (just to unrender the clip). Now rerender the clip and retry your send to compressor.
Pi Digital

Motion projects appear darker in FCP.

motion projects appear darker in FCP.
Any clue what could I be doing wrong for this to happen ?
L.
dual xeon 3ghz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I tried to switch between all the various options (render RGB, 8bit yuv, ....) of the render. But did not notice any significant amelioration if any at all.
here's an expample of how he quicktime player renders the image as intended and fcp doesnt.
http://homepage.mac.com/laurentbriet/.Movies/motionFCPcolorchange.png
L.
dual xeon 3ghz, nvida 7300, 3Gb ram Mac OS X (10.4.8)

DVD burned looks darker than FCP video on ntsc monitor

I use a broadcast ntsc monitor to color correct video from FCP via a cinewave capture/output card. My footage was shot mini-dv. Everything looks great on ntsc monitor. I finished the show, color-corrected rendered and all is good. I export mpeg 2 using the mpeg-2 export option from FCP, playback on computer, looks good. I used dvdsp 4, simulator looks good. I burn dvd and view it on same monitor as I was color correcting on. NOW, the dvd looks darker, the contrast is a little heavier, overal levels are muddier and darker. I try another dvd player, same thing. Different monitor - still dark. I take it home, and try it on 2 other dvd players, and it looks perfect on my tv at home.
I've been doing some research, and I thought this might be one of those IRE setup issues, but from what I've read, it looks like if it were an IRE issue, my video on the dvd would appear washed out and brighter, not darker. Again, it looks great on 2 set top dvd players I've tried, as well as the built in apple dvd player on the powerbook screen. On two other set-top boxes, it appears dark and muddy.
Anybody have any experience with this problem?
IRE, or something different?
Thanks

I've been doing some research, and I thought this might be one of those IRE setup issues, but from what I've read, it looks like if it were an IRE issue, my video on the dvd would appear washed out and brighter, not darker. Again, it looks great on 2 set top dvd players I've tried, as well as the built in apple dvd player on the powerbook screen. On two other set-top boxes, it appears dark and muddy.
It sounds like it may be DVD Player or television set-up related. If it behaved the same way on each player/tv then it could have been related to encoding settings, gamma etc. - did you double check the set-ups to make sure?

Exporting video from FCP scrunches it.

When I export my video from FCP it gets scrunched. Imagine that you start with a square and you export it and it comes out like a vertical rectangle. It looks correct in FCPs image and wireframe box, but it is not correct according to the title safe boxes. When I play the exported video it includes black space on both sider of the video. What can I do? I set the Motion project presets to NTSC DV (720 X 480) and FCP sequence settings to NTSC DV (3:2) (720 X 480) and I don't have the Anamorphic 16:9 checked. How can I export this without scrunching or squeezing it?

Welcome to the family.
You can only go through your settings very carefully, one at a time. If the sequence is DV, the clips are DV, and the export is DV, the resulting file will be DV. Our experience around here is this question is 99.9% user error caused by the fact that FCP's various settings are weirdly conflicting with common sense or other parts of the process.
Good questions to answer: Why are you exporting out of FCP and where are you viewing this exported file?
bogiesan

Problem rendering Motion 2 project in FCP 5.0.2

I have mutliple projects done in Motion 2, imported into FCP 5.0.2 timelines.
All projects are in NTSC DV, 720x480 format.
I am having a problem with rendering in FCP. I have one project that is a mostly static screen with one animated element, which renders fine except that it imports shifted a few pixels to the left. It's not just as simple as "move the imported file to the right to fix it", because it is actually rendering as if the entire screen in Motion were shifted over, so things at the left edge in Motion are actually cropped out in FCP.
Also, I have a problem in other where some (but not all) photos that I have cropped and scaled show up scaled and cropped completely differently in FCP (some even randomly change their scaling and cropping randomly in the middle of a move, even though in the Motion project they did not change.
So...any suggestions? I am not in charge of purchasing so I don't have the immediate option of upgrading, so I am hoping that is not the only way to fix this.
I could render out all my motion projects, but they all have transparency that is meant to layer of video in FCP and I'm not sure the best way to export (with alpha channels?). I could also redo my entire project in Motion, but I'm a week from my deadline and I need to sleep some time
Thank you for any help.

Try upgrading your system to 5.0.4.. it fixed a lot of bugs.
Jerry

Does motion 5 works on FCP 7 or not?

Hi. I have a very simple question: Does motion 5 work on FCP 7 or not? I've been loosing my time and patience trying to send clips from FCP to Motion or create Titles on Motion 5 to import into a FCP project... nothing works. I can't find any clear answer to this anywhere. My oldest version of motion use to work on perfect harmony with fcp... How can something so simply become so complicated?
Motion 5 manual is ridiculos on explanations about FCP titles creation.
Thanks

You cannot roundtrip out of FCP 7 to Motion 5, you will need to use Motion 4. FCPX and Motion 5 have thrown out the concept of roundtripping. Templates in Motion are now designed to behave as plugins within FCPX removing the necessity for leaving FCPX at all (for most puposes.)
If you need to continue using Motion 5, then you should probably export ProRes 4444 out of FCP (and as for sound, make sure the sound is turned on for the canvas -- there is a "speaker" icon under the left corner of the canvas next to Show/Hide Project Pane.)

Exporting text from fcp

I have a lot of separate text boxes in my sequence. Since I can' t do a spell check in fcp, I was wondering if i can export all the text boxes out as a plain text document to do a spell check.
I tried exporting as a xml document, but navigating through all the tags was quite a problem.
TIA for any suggestions.

Usual workflow is following.
1. Put all Text-generator clips to one track
2. Export sequence to XML
3. Launch TitleExchange, point to exported XML and say where to put converted file.
Exporting to STL you'll get text file like that
+00:01:27:26 ,00:01:29:26 ,They had this idea that+
+00:01:29:30 ,00:01:30:31 ,behind scary+
... which you can open in any spell-checker.
We use TitleExchange to bring subtitles from FCP to DVD Studio and back (in case we need subtitled DVD and Betacam output)
Though, this may be much expensive way of checking spelling (135 Euro per TE licence).
There are lots of subtitle software, I only wanted to mention a way of exporting text from FCP with help of subtitle processors.

Can the exported video from FCP X play in WMV?

(1) Can the exported video from FCP X play in WMV?
(2) If not, can I convert with the help of Compressor 4 to make it to play in WMV?

No to both. You need third party software to create WMV. Telestream has tools for this.

Media Offline when Exporting back to FCP from STP. Lesson 10 in APTS book.

Hello, I am going through the Apple Pro Training Series Book by Martin Sitter found a road block in Lesson 10. The topic is conforming at that seems to work decently (except for garbled text in the right side of the Conform tab). My issue is when trying to export back to FCP. I choose to Send Files to FCP sequence. A new sequence is created in the selected project as expected. The audio is fine, but instead of using the video from the correct sequence, it seems to be trying to use clips from the older sequence. Additionally, all the video clips show up as Media Offline. I can reconnect media, but the problem is that it is the wrong video sequence. Oddly, in STP the video looks perfect. Is there an error in the metadata? can this be fixed or prevented? Thank you

Barreltone,
I am exporting back into Final Cut Pro via Send to Sequence. I have been exporting from the browser of FCP (sequence), and not the timeline (clips). I'm going to try that tactic, and see if that works.
DG

Help! Exporting tracks from FCP to pull into a Compressor 5.1 mix

Hi all
I'm having difficulties pulling audio tracks out of FCP 6 into Compressor to create a 5.1 mix for a DVD, and wondered if anyone could offer advice.
Our sound mixer has given us stereo and 5.1 WAV tracks, which I've laid into separate sequences under picture. (I would love to drop his tracks straight into Compressor, but they have messy heads, and include 2-pops, so I'm first aligning them with the video track in FCP.)
When I export the stereo tracks, I create a stereo mix, getting one AIFF file, which goes into Compressor's 2.0 process to create an ac3 file. All well and good.
But how should I export the 5.1 tracks? Bear in mind that I don't want to do any kind of "mixdown" in FCP, which I'm afraid is happening. The tracks are laid in this order: L, R, C, Lf, Ls, Rs.
This is what I did:
In FCP, set in and out points where I want to trim the audio
In Audio Settings for the sequence, set all 6 tracks to Dual Mono and level at 0. (I can't help but suspect this is where I'm going wrong...)
Export - Audio to AIFF, and set export to "Channel Grouped". This gives me six separate AIFF files. BUT! Files 1 and 2 are blank (although they have the correct duration), file 3 (which I expected to be track 3 - center) has M&E but no dialog. Track 4 (LFE) has all the dialog! And 5 and 6 also sound blank.
Now, if I set Audio Settings to 5.1 (first pair stereo, 3 and 4 dual mono, and last pair stereo) I can't hear the center track playback (I only have stereo speakers).
What am I doing wrong? Am I misunderstanding the export process in FCP? Should I just give up and try to trim the WAV tracks outside of FCP (if so, what do you recommend - Soundtrack perhaps?) and then drop them into Compressor?
Many thanks
Matt

OK. I found the solution!
The six "audio outputs" do NOT automatically correspond to the tracks A1 ... A6. In fact, in my sequence (I don't know if this is default), A1 went to output 3, and the rest of the tracks went to output 4. Go figure.
To set the outputs correctly, you do have to set six outputs, dual mono and zero levels, which I did, but then right-click in each audio track (between the A1 label and the padlock icon) and set the output to the required file. So track 1 should go to output 1, track 2 to output 2, and so on.
My outputs now sound right - hooray! I'll mix it down and make a test DVD now.
Phew. Hope this helps someone else out.
One question that comes out of this: for a stereo mix, am I safe to export as a stereo mix in FCP? (Which is what I've been doing.) The FCP/Compressor process won't somehow be downmixing it twice? I don't see any way to pull two mono files into Compressor for a 2.0 mix. Thanks!
Matt
Message was edited by: Matt Clifton

Export to H264: FCP X vs Compressor 4

I have a 6 minute clip.
Exporting from within FCP X (cmd-E --> H264) takes about 7 minutes and I see about 42% CPU usage.
This is not bad.
I hoped however that using Compressor I could do it faster, perhaps utilizing more of my computer's processing power.
So I chose "send to Compressor" and using the "HD 1080p video sharing" preset I got the following results:
100% CPU utilization and 20 minutes compressing time.
This is a huge difference. About 4 times more processing time.
So I am left wondering.
Is it a difference in the presets (e.g. single pass VS double pass) or is it something else going on here?
Is there a way to discover what settings the built-in H264 export uses? A look at the manual was not helpful...
Taking a look at Activity Monitor I noticed the well known "compressord" processes of the past, which remain 32-bit.
When exporting directly from FCP X, it is the Final Cut Pro 64-bit process which does all the work.
Of course the 64bit vs 32bit issue alone, cannot explain this huge difference in processing time.
Is it perhaps OpenCL vs no OpenCL at all ? I have an ATI HD4870 graphics card, which could make a difference
with OpenCL. At least this is what Apple promised when they started advertising OpenCL 2.5 years ago.
I cannot say I am impressed by Compressor 4. Qmaster does not even run as a service.
You have to keep Compressor open all the time, for your cluster to be available.

Uncompressed and 4x4 are way, way overkill and make enormous files. There are actually five flavors of ProRes. 422 is the middle one, good for most things, but still pretty high data rate. There's also ProRes LT, which is a lower data rate, variable, but also 4:2:2 color. DV50 is twice the size of standard DV, but the 4:2:2 space is a great boon.
To access the additional codecs you need to duplicate one of the Compressor presets. In the inspector, in the second button for the Encoder, click on the Video Settings button. There you can access the codecs like DVCPRO50 (Panasonic's designation).

Motion exports darker to FCP

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for