You can choose how values change between keyframes – effect the shape of the value curves for x position, y position, rotation, scale and edge trim amount:

You can also control the order of these effects. You can trim before scaling, then scale before rotating and rotate before setting x and y position. You do this by choosing the order you apply the effects the clip. If you change your mind about the order, you can drag effects up and down within Video panel of the clip inspector.

In the scale and rotation effects you can also set the centre around which the clip is scaled and rotated:

Here are the controls for all six effects:

Choosing the order you apply the effects

Note that these are straightforward effects that are added to a clip. That means if you rotate a clip, the effect can only apply to the original area of the clip that is visible before you applied the clip.

You can rotate a clip:

You can scale a clip:

If you rotate a clip and then scale it using two effects in this order:

…you’ll see the rotated clip has now been scaled down. As the scale effect is only sent the result of the rotate effect it scales down the clip but does not restore the edges:

However, if you scale the clip first and then rotate it by changing the order in which the effects are applied:

…the scaled down image is then rotated:

Showing a keyframe curve

To display the value curve for an effect parameter, click the control in the top-left corner of the clip:

Choose ‘Show Video Animation’ from the pop-up:

From the parameter menu pop-up:

Choose one of the parameters in one of the Alex4D Curve effects:

Click the show curve control:

To see the graph of the value changing over the time of the clip:

Changing the keyframe curve

To add a keyframe, option-click the curve. To delete a keyframe, select it by clicking it and then pressing the delete key. Drag up and down to increase and decrease the value, drag left and right to move the keyframe backwards and forwards in time.

If you click to select a keyframe, you can use the keyboard to perform the same adjustments option-up arrow and option-down arrow to change the keyframe value, ‘,’ and ‘.’ to move the keyframe back and forward in time (the amount moved depends on the zoom level you are using in the timeline).

Note that in versions of Final Cut up to 10.0.2, the numeric value shown while you change a parameter value can be incorrect.

If there is no keyframe at the play head and you change the value in the video panel of the clip inspector (by dragging a slider), all keyframes change by the same amount.

To change the ‘curviness’ of the way a parameter changes between keyframes, drag horizontally on a curve:

A more curvy line will make a parameter gradually change at the start and finish of the line – which is a more natural for some changes.

You can choose whether a curve starts or finishes gradually by choosing alternative curve shapes. Control- or right-click a curve and choose a new shape from the pop-up menu:

Motion note

If you create effects for Final Cut Pro X using Motion, you can have a parameter have graphs like this simply by rigging it. Only first parameter published can have its graph displayed in Final Cut. That’s why I needed to make separate effects for X and Y position.

Installing

If you have Motion installed, or you have already installed third-party effects, download the effect archive from here.

Expand the ZIP archive and add the folder to Movies : Motion Templates : Effects :

If you don’t have Motion installed on your Mac and you’ve never installed any third-party effects, download the archive of the Motion Templates folder with the Alex4D Curve effects in the correct sub-folder. Expand the ZIP and put the resulting Motion Templates folder in the Movies folder of your home folder.

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

Magic Lantern is a system for adding features to Canon DSLRs, Unified is a recent ML package enables some cameras to shoot footage that can processed to produce content with a larger exposure range – i.e. High Dynamic Range.

The files produced are made up of alternate frames of under- and over-exposed footage. My new generators take these frames and give you the control to define how the overexposed frames are overlayed on top of the underexposed frames.

For more information on Unified and Magic Lantern and the software to for your Canon DSLR, visit the Wiki

Note that you must shoot footage at twice the framerate you need, as 25 fps footage results in 12.5 fps HDR footage. These generators don’t do any interpolation.

Workflow

1. If you have Motion installed, or you have already installed third-party effects, download the effect archive from here.

Expand the ZIP archive and add the folder to Movies : Motion Templates : Generators :

If you don’t have Motion installed on your Mac and you’ve never installed any third-party effects, download the archive of the Motion Templates folder with the Alex4D ML HDR Compose generators in the correct sub-folder. Expand the ZIP and put the resulting Motion Templates folder in the Movies folder of your home folder.

2. Start Final Cut Pro X, add your HDR footage to an event, create a new project at the native frame rate of your footage.

3. Add your ML footage to the project.

4. Go to the ‘Alex4D’ section of the Generators panel:

The Magic Lantern HDR Compose generators default to a duration of 10 minutes, so to set the correct length, drag the generator you need on top of the ML footage:

When you release the mouse button, a pop-up menu will appear. Choose ‘Replace from Start’.

5. The ML footage isn’t automatically added to the generator, so you need to click it, click the clip well and choose your ML footage.

The generator defaults to simply showing the overexposed frames.

There are many settings, but I suggest you try changing the following in this order:

The Opacity Out setting defines how much of the brightest parts of the overexposed frames are overlaid onto the underexposed frames. Start by reducing this value, so less of the most blown out parts are shown.

The Opacity Gamma setting defines how smoothly the overlaid image fades out the brighter parts, gradually increase this value.

The Gamma setting defines the contrast of the overexposed frames, increase this a little.

This may result in a desaturated image, so use the Overall Saturation setting to increase the saturation.

The Black In, Black Out, White In and White Out controls give more control over the contrast of the overexposed frames.

Here’s a demo showing the results of these settings of some night-time footage (which you can download from http://vimeo.com/34028226 )

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

Here are the controls:

You have the choice of three different particle shapes, and can animate the location, size, number of sparks, speed and the strength of gravity acting on the sparks.

If you have Motion installed, or you have already installed third-party effects, download the effect archive from here.

Expand the ZIP archive and add the folder to Movies : Motion Templates : Effects : Alex4D :

If you don’t have Motion installed on your Mac and you’ve never installed any third-party effects, download the archive of the Motion Templates folder with the Sparks effect in the correct sub-folder. Expand the ZIP and put the resulting Motion Templates folder in the Movies folder of your home folder.

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

[T]ake out your favorite Magical And Revolutionary Technology Device. Use it for a bit.

What did you feel? Did it feel glassy? Did it have no connection whatsoever with the task you were performing?

I call this technology Pictures Under Glass. Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade.

[...]

With an entire body at your command, do you seriously think the Future Of Interaction should be a single finger?

Perhaps he is right. Minority Report‘s computer interactions have been very distracting for many OS user interface designers.

Why should we listen to Mr. Victor? He worked at Apple for a while where his job was “to play with experimental hardware platforms and input technologies, and come up with new user-interface and application concepts.” He was there from August 2007 to last November.

Perhaps when Apple’s competitors seem to have caught up (or produced a ‘good enough’ version of iOS) is the point when Apple will unveil the next UI target.

That means advancing the input technology. A start would be a touch surface with a ‘dimple resolution’ of at least 72 dpi – a trackpad whose surface texture can be manipulated by software. You would then be able to feel window boundaries, get a quick idea of how many windows there hidden under the window you can see, and even have keyboards that reconfigure themselves based on the input task (from typewriter to piano).

This could evolve into a transparent surface that can be overlaid onto screens and elsewhere, allowing the combination of visual and tactile feedback. One day technology might be able to induce complex texture and weight effects that we’ll be able to sense in 3D space. One step nearer that holographic interface.

As well as telling us that ‘Pictures Under Glass’ isn’t all the future should be made up of, Bret includes a rallying cry too:

Despite how it appears to the culture at large, technology doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t emerge spontaneously, like mold on cheese. Revolutionary technology comes out of long research, and research is performed and funded by inspired people.

And this is my plea — be inspired by the untapped potential of human capabilities. Don’t just extrapolate yesterday’s technology and then cram people into it.

In the last few months I’ve been posting about Final Cut Pro, but I’ve also written about future UI too.

Alex4D Trim works in the same way as the trim mode of the crop effect, with an extra. You can blur all the edges using the ‘Overall Feather’ parammeter, and have additional individual feather values for each edge of the trim.

I’ve also included versions of this effect that trim a single edge.

Download the effect archive from here.

Expand the ZIP archive and add the folders to Movies : Motion Templates : Effects : Alex4D :

If you don’t have Motion installed on your Mac and you’ve never installed any third-party effects, download the archive of the Motion Templates folder with the Trim effects in the correct sub-folder. Expand the ZIP and put the resulting Motion Templates folder in the Movies folder of your home folder.

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

It re-creates the ‘cuts only’ scene transitions used in the early 70s in films such as ‘Easy Rider.’ By showing a few frames of the next scene a little while before it starts, the clip acts as a ‘premonition’ of what will happen next. It was also used with a musical cue in ‘Captain Scarlet’ – a kids TV series.

As well as using the incoming clip, there is also the option to use a frame from elsewhere in your primary storyline instead. You choose it by dragging a ‘Timeline Pin’ which appears when you select the transition:

Here are the controls:

There are six flicker patterns to choose from. They currently aren’t described in the pop-up menu. If you can suggest useful names, I’ll add them. Also, if you have ideas for patterns you’d find useful, comment below.

Pattern 1 shows the same small number of frames from the incoming clip at increasingly frenetic rate:

Pattern 2 shows an increasing number of frames:

Pattern 3 shows the same larger number of frames from the incoming clip more often:

Pattern 4 first shows a small number of frames from the incoming clip twice, then cuts to the incoming clip apart from showing a small number of frames from the outgoing clip a couple of times:

Pattern 5 is the same as pattern 4, but with a larger number of frames:

Pattern 6 is a straightforward premonition, it shows a few frames from the incoming clip, then stays showing the outgoing clip until the end of the transition:

Download the effect archive from here.

Expand the ZIP archive and add the folder to Movies : Motion Templates : Transitions : Alex4D :

If you don’t have Motion installed on your Mac and you’ve never installed any third-party effects, download the archive of the Motion Templates folder with the Premonition effect in the correct sub-folder. Expand the ZIP and put the resulting Motion Templates folder in the Movies folder of your home folder.

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

Final Cut Pro version 10.0.1 includes an updated version of the Ticker title effect. I’ve come up with some additional improvements. The most useful one is that I’ve linked the size of the background of the ticker to the font size of the text (note that the font size control in the Text tab of the inspector is disabled – use the text size control in the Title tab instead).

The default text position is within the title safe area. You can control the vertical position of the ticker, the transparency, border and shadow of the text and the background. You can also keyframe the ticker speed – which is useful if you want to delay the start).

(To get the dot “·” used in the sample text, press shift-option 9)

Here are the main controls of the effect (the rest modify text and background settings):

Download the effect archive from here.

Expand the ZIP archive and add the folder to Movies : Motion Templates : Titles : Alex4D :

If you don’t have Motion installed on your Mac and you’ve never installed any third-party effects, download the archive of the Motion Templates folder with the Ticker effect in the correct sub-folder. Expand the ZIP and put the resulting Motion Templates folder in the Movies folder of your home folder.

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

Updates in Final Cut Pro / Contents /Resources / en.lproj / PELocalizable.strings

A few extra messages associated with importing XML.

There are also some messages supporting those attempting to run 10.0.1 on systems with unsupported graphics cards:

To ensure optimal performance, use a graphics card that meets minimum system requirements. For more information on minimum system requirements, visit the Tech Specs page on the Final Cut Pro website.
This system does not meet the minimum system requirements for graphics cards. For more information on minimum system requirements, visit the Tech Specs page on the Final Cut Pro website.
This graphics configuration does not support hardware acceleration, which is required to run Final Cut Pro X.
Safe mode does not support OpenGL hardware acceleration, which is required to run Final Cut Pro X. Please reboot normally and try again.

There is also support for running in trial mode.

New UI elements added to the Final Cut Pro/ Contents / Frameworks / Flexo.framework / Versions / A / Resources / en.lproj / directory:

FFAXELExport.nib
FFAXELImport.nib

FFAudioMatchWindow.nib

FFColorBoardContentView.nib
FFColorMatchWindow.nib

FFDataListClipsView.nib
FFDataListRoleSetTile.nib
FFDataListRolesView.nib
FFDataListRoleTile.nib
FFDataListTagsView.nib

FFMatchAccessory.nib
FFMatchFooter.nib

So there is more internal support for AXEL – ‘Apple eXchange Editing Language’ flavour of XML (which is distinct from Final Cut Pro XML v1.0). Here are two consecutive lines of Final Cut Pro / Contents / Frameworks / Flexo.framework / Versions / A / Resources / en.lproj / FFLocalizable.strings:

“FFXMLFORMAT” = “Final Cut Pro X XML, %@”;
“FFAXELFORMAT” = “Apple eXchange Editing Language (axel), %@”;

In the same file there is some additional text to support roles, including a concept I haven’t heard of yet:

“FFSetRole” = “Set Role”;
“FFFocusRole” = “Focus Role”;
“FFUnfocusRole” = “Unfocus Role”;

I wonder what ‘focus’ing a role means…

The internal format of these presets is the same for Motion 5. That means you can copy the presets you’d like to use from inside Motion 4 to Motion 5.

To see the wide variety of project templates in Motion 4, view its contents (by right- or control-clicking the Motion 4 app and choosing ‘Show Package Contents’ from the context menu), and navigate to

Motion 4.app / Contents / Resources / English.lproj / Presets / Project

If you’d like some of these presets in Motion 5, use the following method.

It might be a good idea to try this tip on a duplicate copy of the Motion 5 application, but it seemed to work on the original installed version with no problems on my installation.

In a new window, view Motion 5′s contents and navigate to

Motion.app / Contents / Resources / English.lproj / Presets / Project

Option-drag the presets you want to copy from Motion 4 to Motion 5.

When you next run Motion 5, you’ll have the option to choose from a wider range of project presets.

If you don’t have Motion 4, you can open up the presets inside 5 and use them as the basis of new presets.

They can be opened and edited in TextEdit. Here’s the one for ‘PAL DV’:

If change the Description, FieldDominance, FrameRate, Height, PixelAspect and Width to match the specification of the format you are creating the preset for.

The value above for FieldDominance is 2, which sets the preset to interlaced, lower field first. A value of 1 indicates interlaced, upper field first. 0 means progressive.

Values for FrameRate include 23.98, 25, 29.969999999999999, 50 and 59.939999999999998

Values for PixelAspect include: 0.909090909090909, 1, 1.3333330154418945, 1.5

Once you have made your changes, save them with the name you want your preset to have with the ‘.preset’ suffix, you’ll have a new preset to put inside Motion 5. Save it in

Motion.app / Contents / Resources / English.lproj / Presets / Project

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

In the natural world objects don’t move at a constant speed, they slowly get moving, speed up and then slow down before stopping. That slow speed up and slow down is called ‘easing in’ to the animation and ‘easing out.’

My Smooth Move effect animates a clip between two states with the option to choose the shape of the curve that is used to animate the parameters.

There are three curve shapes available: Constant, Ease Both and Logarithmic. Logarithmic is available for the scale parameter, which makes scaling clips down look more realistic.

You can also control when during the clip the animation starts and finishes. If the controls look like this:

Then the animation will wait for 45% of the duration before animating from Start to End, ending at 85% of the duration:

Control Points

When you apply the effect, both on-screen controls will be centred. If you drag a point, you’ll be choosing the end position and angle for your clip.

Download the effect archive from here.

Expand the ZIP archive and add the folder to the Motion Templates folder in the Movies folder of your home directory:

If you don’t have Motion installed, you won’t have a Motion Templates folder in your Movies folder. Download this set of empty folders and add them to the Movies folder of your home directory.

Although the folder is called Motion Templates, you don’t need to have Motion installed on your computer for this effect to work.

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

You can control the timing for the point at which the outgoing clip has faded out, the timing for the incoming clip, whether the background is a solid colour, a third clip of your choice or simply the storyline below.

The default settings produce the same effect as Final Cut Pro’s Dip to Color Dissolve:

To produce smoother effects, the default shape of the Fade In and Fade Out are S-curves.

You can change these settings so the outgoing clip fades to a solid colour over the first 60% of the length of the transition, but there is a pause while displaying the background before the incoming clip fades in more quickly (during the last 10% of the duration of the transition):

Flash Frame

The settings can also produce a flash frame effect by not fading the outgoing clip at all and starting to fade in the incoming clip immediately:

A third clip

You can specify a third clip to appear between the outgoing and incoming clip.

Stills work best because long video clips will be sped up to fill the length of the transition. If you don’t want that, edit the clip you want to use to the timeline, trim the start and finish to match the length of the transition. Click the Clip well in the transition and then click the trimmed clip on the timeline to choose it for this transition.

Transparent

You can also choose to make the background of the transition transparent. If the transition is applied to a secondary storyline, the primary storyline will be momentarily visible.

If those settings were applied to a timeline that looked like this

The 06-25-5 clip will be fully visible in the middle of the transition between the clips in the secondary storyline.

Here are those transitions demonstrated:

Download the effect archive, expand it and add the Alex4D Dip to Background folder to the Motion Templates folder in the Movies folder in your Home folder.

If you don’t have Motion installed, you won’t have a Motion Templates folder in your Movies folder. Download this set of empty folders and add them to the Movies folder of your home directory.

Although the folder is called Motion Templates, you don’t need to have Motion installed on your computer for this effect to work.

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

I wanted to add a snapshot to the slider at exactly 50. You add snapshots to sliders by double-clicking below the slider. You then can position the snapshots by dragging them left and right until they are at the slider position you want.

Unfortunately you can’t drag as precisely as you might like. It helps if you drag the edge of the inspector pane to make it much wider – you get more control that way. Here’s what I ended up with:

My solution was to edit the Motion template directly. As they are stored as XML files, I opened my transition in TextEdit, and searched for ‘Snapshot’ until I found the section of the file that referred to the three snapshots on a slider:

Click to see more of the text at this point of the file.

I modified the position of the middle snapshot to 0.5, and the default setting for the slider to 0.5. With the range I’d chosen for the slider, that translates to a value of 50:

When I opened the file back up in Motion 5, the slider snapshot looked like this:

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

Here’s how to make your own copy of the help system that works when you don’t have an internet connection for your Mac, PC or phone.

The advantages of the html version over the PDF version are internal links between sections:

…pop-up boxes to explain terms:

and an operational search system:

If you’d like the help system in French, German or Japanese, in the following instructions replace ‘English’ with ‘French’, ‘German’ or ‘Japanese’. The text in the German and Japanese help system illustrations is in English, but the French system has illustrations in French.

These instructions are for Safari.

1. Create the following folder structure:

To save you a little time, you can download a ZIP of the empty folders. If you would like a help system in a different language, rename the ‘English.lproj’ folder as ‘French’, ‘German’ or ‘Japanese’.

You’ll be ending up with a folder that looks like this:

2. Right- or control-click this next image and use the ‘Save Image As…’ command to save it into ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/Art/’

3. Right- or control-click this link. Use “Save Linked File As…” from the contextual menu to save it as ‘print.css’ in ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/css/’

4. Right- or control-click this link.Use “Save Linked File As…” from the contextual menu to save it as ‘stylesheet.css’ in ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/css/’

5. Open a new window and paste http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0/English.lproj/content.json into the address bar. Use ‘Save As…’ to save it as ‘content.json’ in ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/English.lproj/’ – note that Safari will want to append a ‘.txt’ on the end of the ‘content.json’ filename, when the alert appears, click the ‘Don’t Append’ button.

6. In the other window, paste
http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0/English.lproj/contentjson-version.txt into the address bar. Use ‘Save As…’ from the File menu to save it as ‘contentjson-version.txt’ in ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/English.lproj/’

7. Right- or control-click this link. Use “Save Linked File As…” from the contextual menu to save it as ‘index.html’ in ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/’

8. In the other window, paste http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0/Info.json into the address bar. Save it as ‘info.json’ in ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/’ – note that Safari will want to append a ‘.txt’ on the end of the ‘info.json’ filename, when the alert appears, click the ‘Don’t Append’ button. If you forget to not append ‘.txt’ you can rename the ‘info.json’ file in the Finder:

9. In the other window, paste http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0/js/javascript.js into the address bar. Save it as ‘javascript.js’ in ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/js/’

10. In the other window, paste http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0/js/jquery.js into the address bar. Save it as ‘jquery.js’ in ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/js/’

There are two more sets of files to download: 16 .png files for the ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/images/’ folder and 501 .png files for
‘Final Cut Pro X Help/English.lproj/Art’ folder.

Pre-Safari 5.1 instructions

Luckily there is a shortcut for downloading many files at once in Safari in versions up to 5.1. If you have a list of URLs, if you paste them into the Downloads window, Safari will download them all.

11. To tell Safari to download the 16 pngs to the ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/images/’ folder, choose ‘Preferences’ from the ‘Safari’ menu, go to the ‘Save downloaded files to:’ pop-up, choose ‘Other…’ and select the ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/images/’ folder. Make sure the ‘Open “safe” files after downloading’ option is unchecked:

12. Click this link. When the file appears in the other window, select all the text (Using ‘Select All’ from the ‘Edit’ menu, or by pressing command-A), make sure the ‘Downloads’ window is open (using the ‘Window’ menu), click it to make it active, and paste the list of files using the ‘Edit’ menu, or by pressing command-V.

Over the next few seconds the 16 png files will download into the images folder.

13. Choose ‘Preferences’ from the ‘Safari’ menu, go to the ‘Save downloaded files to:’ pop-up, choose ‘Other…’ and select the ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/English.lproj/Art/’ folder:

14. Click this link (For French images, click this link). When the file appears in the other window, select all the text, click the ‘Downloads’ window and paste the list of files.

It will take a while for the 23.1MB of images to download.

15. Once they have finished downloading, go back to Safari preferences and set the downloaded files location back to where you had it before, such as the ‘Downloads’ folder:

Safari 5.1 and newer instructions

11. Download ‘WebArchive Extractor’ – a free download from MacUpdate.

12. Click this link to open a page with all the pngs from the /images folder. Once the 16 images are downloaded, save the page in Web Archive format as ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/images.webarchive’.

13. In the Finder, start WebArchive Extractor and drop the ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/images.webarchive’ file onto its window.

14. A new folder named ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/images’ will appear. Inside you’ll find a set of nested folders. In finalcutpro / mac / 10.0 / images you’ll see 16 png files. Move these to the empty ‘images’ in the ‘Final Cut Pro X Help’ folder you’ve been building.

15. Click this link to open a page with all the 501 pngs from the /English.lproj/Art folder (use this link for the French illustrations). Once the 16 images are downloaded, save the page in Web Archive format as ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/English.lproj/Art.webarchive’.

16. Move the pngs from ‘Final Cut Pro X Help/English.lproj/Art’ / finalcutpro / mac / 10.0 / English.lproj / Art to the empty ‘Art’ folder in the ‘English.lproj’ folder in the ‘Final Cut Pro X Help’ folder you’ve been building.

You now have an offline version of the help system you can use with any browser when you don’t have an internet connection.

To create a bookmark for the help system, drag the ‘index.html’ file from the ‘Final Cut Pro X Help’ folder to your browser. Once it opens, add a bookmark to your bookmarks menu.

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

Here are the controls…

…and the ratios available:

There are options to reduce the strength, the position of the matte. You can also choose whether it is generated in landscape or portrait format:

Here are the controls that produced that result:

This isn’t an effect, you’ll find it in the titles browser.

For more about how to use title generators as mattes, check out the instructions in my ‘Alex4D Dimensions’ post. In that post there are instructions for how to use Compressor and other free tools to crop off the matte from your outputted movies.

Installation instructions

Download the effect archive for Final Cut Pro X here.

Expand the ZIP archive and add the four folders to the Motion Templates folder in the Movies folder of your home directory. Create an Alex4D folder in the Titles sub-folder:

If you don’t have Motion installed, you won’t have a Motion Templates folder in your Movies folder. Download this set of empty folders and add them to the Movies folder of your home directory.

Although the folder is called Motion Templates, you don’t need to have Motion installed on your computer for this effect to work.

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

There are 28 font families, as some families have more than one variant there are 53 fonts in total. They are built into each app so that they’re are always available if projects include any Motion templates.

Click to see a sample of all the fonts:

They are stored in Final Cut Pro and Motion at Contents / Frameworks / TextFramework.framework / Versions / A / Resources / Fonts. To get inside Final Cut Pro or Motion, right- or control-click the application and choose Show Package Contents from the context menu.

If you want to create templates that use these fonts you can make a collection with the Font Book application.

1. Open the fonts folder in Final Cut or Motion, option-drag the fonts to copy them to a new location.

2. Start the Font Book application.

3. Create a new collection named ‘Free Inside FCP X’ and drag the fonts from your hard drive into the new collection.

4. When editing typeface styles in a Motion template, choose the ‘Free Inside FCP X’ from the Collection pop-up menu.

5. Motion’s Font menu will then be limited to displaying the fonts in the Free Inside FCP X collection.

There is a 29th font family with a 54th font, but that is stored elsewhere in the apps…

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

In the Final Cut Pro/Contents/Frameworks/LunaKit.framework there is evidence that the window layouts were or will be more flexible than they are in version 10.0:

(Name your current layout:)
_Pro Text Field Cell (Untitled)
_Pro Push Button (Cancel)
_mPro Text Field Cell (Different window layouts can be saved to suit different working environments or styles.)
_Array Controller^Manager Window
_KPro Static Text (Use the current layout as a basis to create a new layout.)

Events are known as organizers internally:

/* Organier open bin in new window */
“FFOrganizerOpenBinInNewWindow” = “Open %@ in New Window”;
“FFOrganizerOpenBinsInNewWindows” = “Open Bins in New Windows”;

from Final Cut Pro / Contents / Frameworks / Flexo.framework / Versions / A / Resources / en.lproj / FFLocalizable.strings:

Not all tools listed are active yet.

/* Tool names */
“FFSelect” = “Select”;
“FFRangeSelection” = “Range Selection”;
“FFAnchor” = “Connect”;
“FFBlade” = “Blade”;
“FFTrim” = “Trim”;
“FFCrop” = “Crop”;
“FFDistort” = “Distort”;
“FFRetime” = “Retime”;
“FFBlade All” = “Blade All”;
“FFHand” = “Hand”;
“FFZoom” = “Zoom”;
“FFRectangle” = “Rectangle”;
“FFEllipse” = “Ellipse”;
“FFBezier” = “Bezier”;
“FFXSpline” = “B-Spline”;
“FFRectangleMask” = “Rectangular Mask”;
“FFEllipseMask” = “Elliptical Mask”;
“FFBezierMask” = “Bezier Mask”;
“FFXSplineMask” = “B-Spline Mask”;
“FFPivot” = “Connection point”;
“FFPlacement” = “Position”;
“FFTransform” = “Transform”;
“FFTransform2D” = “Transform 2D”;
“FFTransform3D” = “Transform 3D”;
“FFAnimationPath” = “Animation Path”;
“FFMotionPath” = “Motion Path”;
“FFKenBurns” = “Ken Burns”;
“FFText” = “Text”;
“FFNone” = “None”;
“FFTakeSnapshot” = “Take Snapshot”;

The Connect tool might be the equivalent Command-Option clicking within a connected clip to move the anchor.

There isn’t a Blade All tool yet. The Rectangle, Ellipse, Bezier and B-Spline tools are distinct from their Mask equivalents here.

Once the Transform 3D tool is available, the Transform panel in the video inspector will probably be renamed Transform 2D. I wonder what the distinction is between the Animation Path tool vs. the Motion Path tool.

Here are some commands from the FFLocalizable.strings file that aren’t documented yet:

/* Undo Labels */
“FFMake Note” = “Make Note”
“FFAddAudioVoiceoverFile” = “Add Voiceover to Timeline”;
“FFAdd Effects” = “Add Effects”;

“FFLiftAndStampCorrectionFromEditFormat” = “Copy Correction From Edit %@ Back”;
“One” = “One”;
“Two” = “Two”;
“Three” = “Three”;

“FFAdd Clips to Event” = “Add Clips to Event”;
“FFTransitionNoSourceType” = “Toggle transition to/from black”;

Final Cut Pro X is designed to display sizes for very large files and storage spaces:

/* Unit strings */
“FFByteString” = “B”;
“FFKiloByteString” = “KB”;
“FFMegaByteString” = “MB”;
“FFGigaByteString” = “GB”;
“FFTeraByteString” = “TB”;
“FFPetaByteString” = “PB”;
“FFExaByteString” = “EB”;
“FFZettaByteString” = “ZB”;
“FFYottaByteString” = “YB”;

Wikipedia: “The combined space of all computer hard drives in the world does not amount to even one yottabyte.”

Some objects are described, but aren’t yet visible

“FFDropFolderObjects” = “Drop Items”;
“FFStabilizationMaximumZoom” = “Max. Zoom”;
/* FFOrganizerFilmlist */
“filmlist cluster name template” = “%@ (%d)”;

/* iSight Status */
“FFMIOiSightStatusIrisClosed” = “Iris Closed”;
“FFMIOiSightStatusLidClosed” = “Lid Closed”;
“FFMIOiSightStatusBusy” = “Busy”;

/* Compound Clip Names */
“FFMultiCamClip” = “MultiCam Clip”;

/* Timeline Marker Contextual Menu */
“FFTimelineMarkerModify” = “Modify Marker”;
“FFTimelineMarkerCut” = “Cut Marker”;
“FFTimelineMarkerCopy” = “Copy Marker”;
“FFTimelineMarkerDelete” = “Delete Marker”;
“FFTimelineMarkerMakeToDo” = “To Do”;
“FFTimelineMarkerMakeCompleted” = “Completed”;

The Final Cut Pro / Contents / Frameworks / Flexo.framework / Versions / A / Resources / en.lproj / FFColorCubeScopeModule.nib file might support a 3D scope for colour correction – as seen in Apple Color:

Editable Audio Effects

If video effects can be implemented using Motion 5, will a future version of Final Cut include audio effect editing?

Audio effects are implemented in audio.effectBundle files. They are encoded in AXEL, Apple’s new XML flavour. Like Motion templates, they allow effect designers to combine plug-ins and create presets. Here are some selected lines from the Car Radio audio effect (stored as Final Cut Pro / Contents / Frameworks / Flexo.framework / Versions/ A / Resources / Effect Bundles / Car Radio.Distortion.audio.effectBundle:

The UI within Final Cut for that effect looks like this:

Unlike Motion effects, audio effects can have presets pop-up menus that modify values for other controls. In this case, choosing the Normal preset sets the Amount slider to 50.0 (as well as changing settings within Fat EQ and Overdrive. If you look at the code above, you’ll see that the car radio effect also uses an instance of the Channel EQ as well as the two visible audio plug-ins.

How will more of these effects be created? A future version is most likely because the ‘OZone Markup Language’ flavour of XML used here is the format Motion stores its files.

More Audio

Various possible audio channel configurations are encoded in Final Cut Pro / Contents / Frameworks / Flexo.framework / Versions / A / Resources / en.lproj / FFAudioChannelLayouts.xml. Each clip can have any one of these audio configurations. Rick Young has written about them on his blog.

ChannelValence=”1″
Mono
Left
Right
Center
Sub (LFE)
Right Surround
Left Surround

ChannelValence=”2″

Dual Mono
Stereo
Reverse Stereo

ChannelValence=”3″

Three Mono
Left, Right, Center

ChannelValence=”4″

Four Mono
Two Stereo
Left, Right, Center, Surround

ChannelValence=”5″

5 Mono
Surround 5.0

ChannelValence=”6″

6 Mono
3 Stereo
Stereo + 2 Mono + Stereo
Surround 5.1

ChannelValence=”7″

7 Mono
Surround 6.1

ChannelValence=”8″

8 Mono
4 Stereo
Surround 5.1 + Stereo
Surround 7.1

ChannelValence=”12″

12 Mono
6 Stereo
Dual Surround 5.1

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

Inside FCP X there hints of features that have yet to be fully implemented, or have been dropped and never to be made available. There’s no way of knowing which is which, but it’s interesting to get inside and have a look around.

Ever since the case of the first ever Macintosh in 1984 not having any text to describe connectors, Apple have tried to enable internationalisation of hardware and software a priority. That means that most Macintosh applications contain text in multiple foreign languages. This makes software simpler to distribute, but also easier for us to examine.

In bygone days we would have used ResEdit to take a look at application text, dialog boxes and menus. As MacOS X is based on Unix, applications are now stored as specialised directories which can be explored without needing a specialised tool.

Text from Final Cut Pro / Contents /Resources / en.lproj / PELocalizable.strings

More preference panels than we know how to display:

/* PreferenceTabs */
“PEEditingPreferenceName” = “Editing”;
“PEPlaybackPreferenceName” = “Playback”;
“PEImportPreferenceName” = “Import”;
“PEDebugPreferenceName” = “Debug”;
“PEVoiceoverPreferenceName” = “Voiceover”;
“PECacheFilePreferenceName” = “Render”;
“PEStoragePreferenceName” = “Storage”;

So there is a debug mode for Final Cut Pro X.

Maybe there’ll be a way of viewing audio as numbered channels:

“NumberedAudioChannel” = “NumberedAudioChannel”;

I don’t know how to make this menu option appear:

/* Toggle Blade All tool menu item */
“PEToggle Blade All” = “Toggle Blade All”;

It seems that the way timelines work in version 10.0 wasn’t always the plan. Here’s a different icon (from Final Cut Pro / Contents / Resources / Sequence.icns) for timelines:

AppleScript

There’s a chance that there’ll be AppleScript-based automation in a future version of FCP X:

/* AppleScript Menu Item */
“PEExtrasMenu” = “Extras”;
“PEAppleScriptFolderMenu” = “Open Scripts Folder”;

In MacOS X Lion, AppleScript apps have access to all the operating system class libraries. Third parties might be able to do interesting things with AppleScript access to Final Cut Pro X data using specialised commands in an AppleScript menu within the application.

XML Workflow

We know from Apple’s Final Cut Pro X FAQ that XML workflows will be supported. There references here too. In a file that describes the XML import function (Final Cut Pro/ Contents / Frameworks / Flexo.framework / Versions / A / Resources / en.lproj / FFXMLImport.nib), there’s the option to import media and Final Cut Pro Classic markers and effects:

_Check Box (Include Effects)
Zcheckboxes
_.Check Box (Import media referenced by the XML)
[Button Cell]AccessoryView
_Button Cell (Include Markers)\File’s Owner
_&Check Box (DEBUG: Export after import)
_Check Box (Include Markers)
ZDisclosure
_Button Cell (Include Effects)
_(Button Cell (DEBUG: Export after import)
_#Text Field Cell (Advancecd Options)[Application
_0Button Cell (Import media referenced by the XML)
_Static Text (Advancecd Options)

In the XML export function (Final Cut Pro / Contents / Frameworks / Flexo.framework / Versions / A / Resources / en.lproj / FFXMLExport.nib) there is the option to export to Apple’s new XML flavour – axel, but no mention of legacy XML for current workflows (to Apple Color or Final Cut Pro Classic):

_Check Box (Export Media)
_$Text Field Cell (Source for Export:)
_DStatic Text (Apple eXchange Editing Language (axel), version 0.5000)
[descriptionZImage View\File’s Owner_Static Text (Format:)
_’Check Box (Use XML file relative paths)
_ Static Text (Source for Export:)
_Static Text (My Spiffy Project)
_HText Field Cell (Apple eXchange Editing Language (axel), version 0.5000)
_Button Cell (Export Media)
_Text Field Cell (Format:)
_)Button Cell (Use XML file relative paths)
ZImage Cell
_#Text Field Cell (My Spiffy Project)

Multi-user editing – ‘Deep Sky’

Final Cut Pro X’s price, UI and lack of a feature set to match FCP 7 have prompted many editors to discount X as an Apple attempt to attract a whole new market of prosumers. Many would define the ability for multiple editors to work on the same project as the definition of a Pro feature.

There is evidence of hidden multi-user editing features in Final Cut Pro 10.0. Apple have come up with the concept of ‘Guards’ – where editors can be assigned to work on specific sequences, tracks or story segments.

This means a sound editor could be working on audio tracks and an assistant on a story segment while an editor works on the main storyline.

In Final Cut Pro / Contents / Frameworks / Flexo.framework / Versions / A / Resources / en.lproj / FFLocalizable.strings there is the following text:

/* Guards */
“FFGuardDisplayNameFormat” = “guard from user %@ created on %@”;
“FFGuardAddName” = “Add Guard”;
“FFGuardRemoveFormat” = “Remove %@”;
“FFGuardConflictDescription” = “One or more of changes are protected by a guard owned by a different user. “;
“FFGuardConflictTitleRollBack” = “Cancel”;
“FFGuardConflictTitleAccept” = “Override”;
“FFSetGuardOnSequence” = “Change Guard on sequence”;
“FFSetGuardOnStorySegment” = “Change Guard on story segment”;
“FFSetGuardOnTrack” = “Change Guard on track”;
“FFGuardChangeOptions” = “Change Guard on story segment”;
“FFGuardAddUser” = “Add Myself to Guard”;
“FFGuardRemoveUser” = “Remove Myself from Guard”;

Here’s what a dialog box would look like using that text:

There’s also evidence of an overlay that could be used to add to icons to allow for user administration within Final Cut. This is an icon that is from the part of FCP X that implements Motion 5-based effects (Final Cut Pro / Contents / Frameworks / Ozone.framework / Versions / A / Resources / OZLibraryBadgeIcon.icns), but it could be relevant:

Here’s what I thought a ‘guarded’ storyline might look like in a future version of Final Cut Pro X (from my old post on FCPX’s database underpinnings):

(To look inside Final Cut Pro X, select its icon in the Applications folder. Right- or control-click it and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu. TextEdit can open .strings files. Preview can open .icns files.)

More soon…

Final Cut Pro X – previous parts of this series, my free plug-ins and more

Final Cut Pro Classic – free plug-ins and tips

#fcpx prices in $ UK: $288.94 US: $299.99 Euro zone: $342.35 Denmark: $344.02 Australia: $376.61 Japan: $434.22

Last night Apple changed the price of Final Cut Pro in three of those Mac App Stores. Here’s a slopegraph of the changes:

The initial price spread was extreme. Japan was oddly expensive, and I’ve never known for any Apple product to be cheaper in the UK than the US.

Did Apple UK tell head office that given the lack of feature parity, sales would be tough? Did Japan say that price doesn’t matter?

What do you think?

These are large versions of the icons used in Motion’s library:

Perhaps these icons will support a ProApps Store that is built into a future version of Final Cut Pro X and Motion.

The detail of Undo text is one of the unsung features of FCP X. Every time I go to the Edit Menu, the text next to Undo tells me exactly what my last action was. That means all those descriptions need to be built into Final Cut – including some for commands aren’t documented.

Here is the contents of a text file associated with the ‘Pro On Screen Controls’ part of FCP:
“Rotoshape On Screen Control Vertex” = “Control Point %d\n %.0f, %.0f”;
“Rotoshape On Screen Control Vertex Index” = “Control Point %d”;

/* On Screen Controls */
“On Screen Control Transform” = “Transform 2D”;
“On Screen Control Transform 3D” = “Transform 3D”;
“On Screen Control Rotoshape” = “Edit Points”;
“On Screen Control Pivot” = “Anchor Point”;
“On Screen Control Crop” = “Crop”;
“On Screen Control Shear” = “Shear”;
“On Screen Control Four Corner” = “Four Corner”;

The mention of Break Handle reminds me that in Final Cut Pro X if you control- or right-click an animation path point handle, you get a contextual menu that gives you the option to disconnect the handles:

What does this mean?

These commands and controls can be found in Motion 5 today (including the keyboard shortcuts mentioned in the tool tips). So two explanations (amongst many) arise: more Motion features will be added to Final Cut Pro in future or to make sure that FCP X can accurately display Motion effects, a large part of Motion is built into FCP X but will never be usable directly by editors.

However, I don’t think there is a Ken Burns effect in Motion, so this file seems have text from a combination of features.

Also from Motion 5 inside Final Cut Pro X:
The Curve Editor
“Curve Editor Curve Set New” = “New Curve Set…”;
“Curve Editor Curve Set Manage” = “Manage Curve Sets…”;
“Curve Editor Curve Set” = “Curve Set”;
“Curve Editor Curve Set Exist” = “The curve set name you have entered already exists, please choose another name.”;

Shapes
“Shape Stroke Left Cap” = “Start Cap”;
“Shape Stroke Right Cap” = “End Cap”;
“Shape Stroke Arrow Length” = “Arrow Length”;
“Shape Stroke Arrow Width” = “Arrow Width”;

There’s also a Navigator overlay component, but I don’t recognise this text from Motion:
“Navigator Camera” = “Camera”;
“Navigator View” = “View”;
“Navigator Object” = “Object”;
“Navigator Roll” = “Roll”;
“Navigator No Roll” = “No Roll”;
“Navigator Camera Navigation” = “Camera Navigation”;
“Navigator Undo Transform Change” = “Undo Transform Change”;

Here is the contents of a file named “MediaAndSubTypes.strings”:

// Media Type
“vide” = “Video”;
“soun” = “Sound”;
“muxx” = “Muxed”;
“text” = “Text”;
“clcp” = “Closed Caption”;
“sbtl” = “Subtitle”;
“tmcd” = “Timecode”;
“tmet” = “Timed Metadata”;
“strm” = “Streaming”;
“twen” = “Tween”;
“sprt” = “Sprite”;
“sdsm” = “MPEG-4 SDSM”;
“odsm” = “MPEG-4 ODSM”;
“skin” = “Skin”;
“qtz ” = “Quartz Composer”;

// Other Codecs
“texttext” = “Text”;
“qtvrqtvr” = “QuickTime VR”;
“tmcdtmcd” = “Timecode”;
“clcpc608″ = “Closed Caption”;
“clcpc708″ = “Closed Caption (708)”;
“texttx3g” = “Text”;
“sbtldrmt” = “Subtitle”;
“sbtltx3g” = “Subtitle”;
“hintrtp ” = “Hint”;
“sdsmmp4s” = “MPEG-4 SDSM”;
“odsmmp4s” = “MPEG-4 ODSM”;
“musimusi” = “Music”;
“skinskcr” = “Skin”;
“skinskdr” = “Skin”;
“strmrtsp” = “Streaming”;
“qtz qtz ” = “Quartz Composer”;

This is in no way a promise that a future version of Final Cut Pro will support these forms of media. It might be an element of the AV Foundation library for Snow Leopard compatibility (AV Foundation is the software that comes with Lion that is designed to eventually replace QuickTime).

Seeing as Final Cut Pro X is based on AV Foundation, many of AV Foundation’s features were designed with Final Cut Pro X in mind, there’s a good chance that a future version of X will be able to recognise some of these formats – if only to report that it can’t handle them!

More soon…