Free Final Cut Pro plug-in: Alex 4D Grow-Shrink effect

This Final Cut Pro X effect animates a change in scale for a clip. It defaults to increasing the size of a clip by 5% over the lifetime of the clip. This kind of ‘creep in’ is useful for adding a little subliminal interest to stills and titles.

You can also choose a centre point for the scaling to happen around. This helps to zoom in on an interviewee, or zoom out from a specific part of the frame.

Here are the controls:

Start Scale and End Scale: The effect defaults to starting at 100% (Start Scale: 0%) and scaling up to 105% (End Scale: 5%). To scale from 110% to 75%, use Start Scale: 10% and End Scale: -25%.

Curvature: the shape of the animation curve. 0% will use the same speed to change scale throughout the clip. 100% will start to scale gradually, then scale at full speed and slow down towards the end of the clip. This simulates the way a camera operator would zoom in or zoom out of a clip.

Start Scaling Late and Start Scaling Early control for how much of the lifespan of the clip the scaling happens.

Centre Point: You can set this using an on-screen control

Installation

Download this disk image:

It includes an installation script for Spherico’s Motion Template Tool application, if you don’t have it on your Mac, download it. It is a freeware/donationware tool that simplifies effects installation for Final Cut Pro X users. MTT installs effects for Final Cut Pro X in the correct folders, creating them if need be. You don’t need to have Motion 5 or MTT installed for these effects to work.

Once you have MTT installed on your computer, double-click the ‘Install Alex4D Grow-Shrink 1.0.mtt’ file.

If you don’t want to use MTT, install these effects in Home / Movies / Motion Templates / Effects / Alex4D:

Check out my other free effects and articles on my Final Cut Pro X home page.

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