Final Cut Pro: My free Move plugin
Here is my next plugin: A generator that takes a clip and animates it from one place to another. It defaults to moving the clip from off the bottom of the canvas to off the top.
I came up with this when creating closing credits for a film partially funded by the Arts Council of England (using another of my plugins: Closing Credits). One of the conditions of funding was that their logo appears during the end credits scroll. Oddly enough, it is not straightforward to animate objects in Final Cut to move at specific speeds.
Copy the ‘Alex4D Move 1.01.fcfcc’ file into one of two places on your computer:
Your Startup HD/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins
or
Your Startup HD/Users/your name/Library/Preferences/Final Cut Pro User Data/Plugins/
(Your Startup HD/Users/your name/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Express Support/Plugins for Final Cut Express users)
Restart Final Cut, and you’ll see the generator in the ‘Animate’ section of ‘Video Generators’
Here’s a long (20 minute) video showing how it works:
Here are some magic numbers for entering into the dimensions values for video clips:
NTSC: 640 wide by 480 high
NTSC widescreen: 853 wide by 480 high (?)
PAL: 768 wide by 576 high
PAL widescreen: 1024 by 576
720p: 1280 by 720
1080p: 1920 by 1080
5 December, 2008 at 3:03 pm
[...] Final Cut Pro: My free Move plugin « alex4d: Editing organazized – [...]
11 December, 2008 at 2:14 am
[...] – Audio Unit for the old skool vibe… Joe’s Filters Lyric – Shadow & contrast… Move – A generator that takes a clip and animates it from one place to another. It defaults to moving [...]
12 December, 2008 at 7:43 pm
[...] Download the plugin here. Share and Enjoy: [...]
14 December, 2008 at 1:59 am
[...] Move was created by Alex Gollner and he has all of the info on his site [...]
14 December, 2008 at 2:10 pm
great though the video could be a bit larger to see what you are doing in it. Thanks, Peter
18 January, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Wow, this is a great plug-in! Thanks.
20 April, 2009 at 2:17 am
Fantastic! This is really useful. It also works in Final Cut Express 4. Keep on making these plugins, they’re better than most by far.
8 June, 2009 at 12:35 am
Love your stuff man…This is my first time checking out your site…Keep me in the loop for new tip and tricks… I love them…!!!
4 July, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I am so glad I found this plug-in this morning! Been trying to figure this out for months! Thank you for all your help!
12 July, 2009 at 2:24 am
The only question I have is how did you do the original scrolling credits before you put the logo in? And how did you get it to be 50 pixels/per second?
You mention in the video its tricky but then dont explain how it done. Any help here would be appreciated. Sorry in advance if its obvious
Nathan
12 July, 2009 at 10:46 am
You’re right, it isn’t clear. I used another one of my free Final Cut plugins: Scrolling Credits, which is available at http://alex4d.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/final-cut-pro-my-free-closing-credits-plugin/
Thanks for pointing this out.
13 July, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Having problems with pre-render viewing in FCP.
Here are my settings
2400×600 30fps progressive proRes custom settings.
My test image is 2179×1722 picture.
When i enter into 4DMove (unrendered)
my scrubbed image is bigger than 100% of the viewer
Here is the test settings for 4DMove
width 2179
height 1722
clip start 0
scale 100
move left to right
start point 0,480
end point 0,-480
anim method from in to out (10 second clip)
% complete 100%
speed 50pps
simple math dictates that this image would not fill the
horizontal as the canvas is 2400px wide
and the image us 2179px wide.
I have to render this effect to see the correct scaling;
and I wonder if this is due to the non-standard movie
settings I use?
13 July, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Are you using square pixels in both your sequence and clip?
You can enter any size for your clip and Move will attempt to display your clip at that size.
When you say this happens when pre-rendering, is the size different when you render?
13 July, 2009 at 6:27 pm
It is all square pixels.
Yes the scale in scrub (pre-render on the RED timeline)
is always larger than the rendered (blue) timeline.
Another test I used was an image that was 800×618.
The rendered size is correct, but prior to rendering
in scrub mode the image is about double the size it should be.
13 July, 2009 at 6:37 pm
I think that this is an oversight in my programming. It’ll take me a while to spot the coding problem and fix it. Thanks for pointing it out.
13 July, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Also, if you set up the custom settings
at 2400×600, 30fps, progressive, square pixels
you will notice that you will get different result
on render if you play with
sequence settings/render control/ resolution
and set the quality for 100%, 50%, 25% etc.
if you set the render to 50% the size will double
and at 25% the image will quadruple.
As a control I placed the clip on the timeline without
theAlex4D move and the size is not dependant on the
quality setting- it just looks more pixelated-which is
to be expected at these settings.
13 July, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Thanks for the info.
I’ll produce a new version tomorrow and send you it via email to see if I’ve fixed the problem.
16 September, 2009 at 12:34 pm
An absolutely necessary and useful plugin, thanks SO much!! (This is coming from a person who wouldn’t have a clue how to make/create a plugin!) Only problem I had was finding out my ‘frame size’ as I am using Final Cut Express and it has no ‘frame size’ indicator or column I can open.
16 September, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Thanks for trying the plugin on Final Cut Express. As well as not owning a copy, I’ve never seen it running.
As regards finding the dimensions of a clip or still, have you tried control-clicking a column heading in the Browser’s list view? Does ‘Size’ appear as an optional column heading that you can choose to display?
If not, you can discover the dimensions of stills using the Finder. Select the still in the browser, choose ‘Reveal in Finder’ from the View menu. Choose ‘Get Info’ from the File menu. The dimensions of the still appear in the ‘More Info’ panel of the window that appears.
13 October, 2009 at 9:03 am
Mate – thanks for this… fantastic. Well done