2009

Editing Media from Motion into a Final Cut Pro Sequence
If you’ve already created a Motion project that you want to use in your Final Cut Pro
sequence, there are two ways you can edit it into your sequence.
• Edit a Motion project file into a Final Cut Pro sequence: You can import any Motion project
file into a Final Cut Pro project. Motion projects (with the file extension .motn) appear
just like any other clip in the Browser and can be opened in the Viewer, have In and
Out points set, and be edited into a sequence just the same as any other piece of media.
This option is an excellent way to handle Motion content that may be subject to revision,
because it’s easy to modify it as often as necessary. Simply select the Motion clip you
need to revise and use the Open in Editor command to open it in Motion, where you
can make whatever changes you like, save, and then reopen the Final Cut Pro project
to see the updated result. Keep in mind that Motion clips are processor-intensive to
play in Final Cut Pro, and the RT pop-up menu needs to be set to Unlimited RT to play
them at all.
• Export a QuickTime file from Motion to edit into your sequence: You can also export a
QuickTime file (with the file extension .mov) from Motion for editing into your
Final Cut Pro sequence. This is a more efficient solution for real-time playback in
Final Cut Pro, but it makes revisions a bit more involved, because changes require
reopening the original Motion project and reexporting a new version of the clip. You
can export clips from Motion using any QuickTime codec (high-quality codecs are best
to maximize the quality of your compositions), but if you need to preserve regions of
transparency in your composition, you need to use either the Animation (8-bit) or Apple
ProRes 4444 (10-bit, the default choice) codec.
Using Send To Motion Project
If you have one or more clips that you want to incorporate into a Motion composition,
you can use the Send To Motion Project command. There are three ways you can send
media to Motion from Final Cut Pro.
• Send one or more clips from the Browser: You can select one or more clips in the Browser
and use the Send To Motion Project command. A new Motion project is created with
an empty Timeline, and the selected clips from Final Cut Pro are placed in the project’s
Motion Media tab. This strategy is useful when you simply want to send a group of
unedited clips that you’ll assemble into a composition within Motion.
• Send one or more clips from within a sequence: If you select one or more clips in an edited
sequence and use the Send To Motion Project command, a new Motion project is
created with those clips already placed in the Timeline. Each clip’s In point, Out point,
and position relative to the others match those of the original Final Cut Pro sequence.
(The selected clips can be either contiguous or noncontiguous.) Each clip appears on
its own layer along with any clip and sequence markers, and all Motion tab settings,
linear and Bezier keyframes, composite modes, and SmoothCam filters are translated
into their Motion equivalents. This is useful when you want to use a partial section of
a Final Cut Pro sequence as the starting point for a Motion composition.
53Chapter 3 Integration During Editorial Development