I have been making the transfer from Final Cut Pro’s Motion application to Adobe After Effects.
Here’s a piece I made a few years ago in Motion.
Motion is very intuitive to use, while still giving editors many options. Motion allows for key-framing or applied behaviors. Users can add cameras and edit in 3D space, which is becoming more and more popular in motion graphics for not only car commercials but documentaries. There are also stock replicators and graphics that are easy to manipulate. As most applications by Apple are aesthetically pleasing, Motion is probably Final Cut Studio’s most aesthetically pleasing application.
What I like most about Motion is “round tripping.” This means an editor can easily move between a sequence in Final Cut and a motion graphic or applied effects in Motion. A sequence can be sent directly to Motion, effects are applied, and those effects appear directly in Final Cut without any export. Of course some rendering still have to take place, but who doesn’t render?
Adobe’s After Effects is different on the other hand. The only “round tripping” or seamless editing can occur within Adobe. An editor could move between a project in Premier and After Effects. But a project in After Effects can be seamlessly edited in Final Cut or AVID.
This orange room is the first project I made in After Effects that I had some success with.
When using After Effects and Final Cut, which I have so gracefully taken to with the advice and wisdom of Andrew Killoy (pretty much a master, at least from what I’ve seen), a motion graphic must be exported as a large reference file, then that reference file must be encoded in Adobe Encoder with the desired specs. That file can be brought into Final Cut as a QuickTime, for example, and rendered.
However, if one wants to make changes, they have to go back into After Effects, re-edit, and export all over again. While when working in Motion and Final Cut, changes can be made in Motion and are directly and immediately changed in the Final Cut sequence.
This is a series of photos I stitched together in AE. They were taken near a botanical garden in Valencia, Spain.
This is a single photo I manipulated in Photoshop to create “The Kid Stays in the Picture” effect.
Not too perfect, some of it is rough around the edges, but I am still learning. So why am I bothering to learn After Effects? the application is a powerful tool and most industry professionals know and use it. Although, I must say that it’s popularity has to be because it runs on PCs and Macs.
I do hope to become proficient enough in After Effects so that I can use the program to create motion graphics for my documentary pieces as I have done in my most recent mini-doc, which I used Final Cut and Motion for.
rosie walunas 