5

Adding Media to a Project
After you create a project, you typically import media files to create a composition. All
media types—movie clips, still images, and audio files appearing in the File Browser, or
other media items appearing in the Motion Library—are added to your project using the
same methods. To learn about the File Browser, where you access files on your disks, see
File Browser. To learn about the Library, where you find the content built into Motion,
see Library.
Note: Layered Photoshop files have additional import options available from the drop
menu. For more information, see Adding Layered Photoshop Files to a Project.
The Link Between Motion Layers and Media Files
Before learning how to add media to your Motion project, it’s important to understand
the correspondence between layers and source media. Every time you add a file to your
project, you create a link between the layer you see in the Layers list and Canvas and its
corresponding media file on your hard disk.
Motion is a nondestructive application. This means that changes you make to media
objects in a Motion project aren’t applied to the source media files on the hard disk.
Because of this link, when you add a file to a project, the file must remain available on
your hard disk for as long as you work on that project. If you move, delete, or rename
media files that correspond to layers in a Motion project, those layers go “offline.”
If this happens, it’s easy to reconnect the offline layers in your project with new copies
of the media you lost, assuming those files are still available. For more information, see
Online Versus Offline Media.
Selecting Files in the File Browser
You can add media files to a project using the File Browser or the Import command in
the File menu. In most cases, the File Browser is more convenient and gives you more
control over how the resulting objects appear in the project.
Before adding media files, you select them in the File Browser. You can add files to a
project individually or in groups.
To select media files in the File Browser
1 Open the File Browser.
2 Select files by doing one of the following:
• Click a single file.
• While holding down the Shift or Command key, click to select multiple files.
• In list view, press Shift and use the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys to add files to the
current selection.
206 Chapter 6 Creating and Managing Projects