Review of Apple's "Motion"

Review of Apple?s ?Motion?

I was fortunate enough to be working with an Apple Solution Expert on the Apple stand at The Production Show this week in London. Although I wasn?t aware beforehand, they were doing public demos of a beta copy of ?Motion? ? the only copy in the UK at time infact. Obviously I was interested in seeing it as Apple?s boasts about it aren?t exactly modest.

The ?UK Business Development Manager for Pro Video? was basically running the show down there and decided that after seeing me give individual demonstrations of Final Cut Pro, he?d kindly let me have a crack at Motion. So, it was loaded onto our G5 and away I went.

Now, having not seen it before, let alone used it, I was quite nervous about demonstrating it to potential clients, however after watching Apple?s demo guy doing a public demo, I jumped in with both feet.

It is AWESOME! I can now understand WHY Apple aren?t modest about it?s boasts.

Now, before I tell you about its features, I should tell you the machine I was using it on. It wasn?t exactly a top of the range G5, though it did have the following:

Dual 2Ghz Processors
1.5GB RAM
600GB SCSI RAID
Radeon 9800 Pro
OSX Panther (10.3.3)

Those are the vitals that you need to know.

Well, the program is resolution independent and can handle anything from DV to HD very nicely. There was a little slow-down with the HD footage because a) it was a beta release and b) our storage was only SCSI. The slow down wasn?t that noticeable however.

Motion boasts Real Time everything ? i.e. there?s no need to render and (if using Final Cut Pro or DVD Studio Pro) no need to export even (just drag your saved project file into FCP or DVDSP and away you go). You can adjust any effect ? be it a filter or a motion path or a keyframed effect or effects Apple call ?behaviours? ? all in real-time. You see the results as you adjust things.

Behaviours are basically effects/filters that don?t need keyframes. So, in essence, you can create a simple motion path without keyframing. You can adjust the scale of something without keyframing, you can attract and blur object without keyframing.

Compositing is just as easy ? be it items with alpha channels or bluescreening/greenscreening (for which you can use the Primatte RT filter that comes as standard), it?s all real-time and drag and drop.

You have a timeline, so you can adjust start/end points over multiple tracks as you could in After Effect or similar, and you can view you layers in a ?project? window similar to the layers palette in Photoshop. A transparent ?Dashboard? pops up when you apply an effect allowing you to easily adjust effects or, for more advanced features, you can just click the ?Inspector? tab to access the more complex controls.

Now, I know some people enjoy the exactness of keyframing, so don?t feel you?re losing a function whithout them, because all these affects and filters are still keyframable if you want them to be. There is a ?Keyframe Editor? tab on your timeline, which can be adjusted in real-time as you play your sequence through if you want, or adjusted whilst your sequence is paused.

Text is also as simple as just typing wherever you place your curser on the canvas. Fonts update in real-time as you scroll down the font list, as is tracking, side, leading etc. If you have LiveType installed (which comes free with Final Cut Pro 4 and HD), you can access all your LiveFonts along with all your system fonts in the ?Library? tab. The Library tab also contains lists of all the filters, effects, 3rd party plug-ins, gradients, shapes, alpha channel effects and particle systems available to you.

The Particle systems are also extremely powerful. Motion comes with many predefined particle generators, including smoke, fire, gas, sparks and many more that you can preview in the library whilst your sequence still plays in real-time. To apply them, you just simply drag and drop them onto you canvas where you can edit things via you Dashboard and/or Inspector at will.

Motion will also support After

 

Thanks man, I'm excited to try that out.

 

it does sound like a very very nice program, with a good price tag on it too. wish i could try my hand at it too. Nick, you are a lucky boy.

 

What a coincidence! Some dodgy geezer was telling me about this in the pub tonight!

All the best,
Neil / Pred

 

<<Nick, you are a lucky boy. >>

you don't know the half of it

<<What a coincidence! Some dodgy geezer was telling me about this in the pub tonight! >>

That same dodgy geezer beat you at fussball on numerous occasions as well

anyway,

Nick "Shorty" Long

 

Its the taking part that counts!
Anyway, its early days yet!

 

very, very excited for this to be released

 

Wow. That's really cool

I'm so jealous!

 

BUMP

 

Posted a news item.

 

That's all good....but can you make Lightsabers with it?

 

<<That's all good....but can you make Lightsabers with it? >.

As the software includes all the compositing and layer screening modes as AE and PS, then yes, i would assume you can.


anyway,

Nick "Shorty" Long

 

Awesome! I'll be getting it, hopefully.


--Colin

 

bump

 

I love apple! Motion is going to be sweet.

 

Personally I am hanging out for Motion!! The only thing that I find slightly worrying is that it practically REQUIRES a G5 dual processor!!

It is a good reason to upgrade my G4 however!

John

 

Do you know if this will have motion tracking abilities? How good they're going to be?

Does shake have motion tracking?

I'm asking becuase currently I'm PC, but I'm thinking about crossing over for my video editing (Still use the PC for the 3d apps though ).

--Jamball

 

He already mentioned that in his first post:

It may also be worth mentioning there are rumours of a motion-tracking plug-in being written specifically for motion, but that IS PURELY A RUMOUR and I cannot confirm it as I just don't know if there's any truth to it

~Neszis~

 

Doh. Forgot about those requirements. I've got an 800 MHz G4. The minimum is a 867 MHz G4!! You think it'll run??

So, if you had the proper system requirements, and price was not an issue, which would you use more often/buy: After Effects (Production Bundle) or Motion?

--Colin

New faces!

 

Perhaps a new toy for when I get my new G5

 

Basically, the video card is going to be the problem for most users:

From: http://www.apple.com/motion/specs.html

? NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
? NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200
? ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
? ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
? ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
? ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
? ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

Unless you have a very late model (read new) Mac, you are out of luck with Montion. I own a Dual Processor G4 1.25Ghz, and with the stock standard card, a Radeon 9000, I can't run this application.

Of course the specs on Apple's webpage may not be correct, but at this point I won't be about to use Motion except on my G5 at work. Sounds like one of those Apps designed to sell hardware!



John

P.S. Of course when you look at the Recommended Specs, it's unlikely there will be any point even running this app on anything other than a Dual Processor G5.

 

I work at an Apple Store and I teach the Pro Apps (FCP HD, DVD Studio, the fun stuff). Our Business Specialist got one of the guys in Apple's Pro Applications Group to come in and give a presentation on the Pro Apps, to include Motion and Shake.

Once the store closed I got to play for a while.

Yes, you can make lightsabers, and they're so pretty, so very very pretty.

No, so far you can not do motion tracking (i did say "so far" tho)

Yes, shake can do motion tracking, and it does it so damned well it's not even funny; it can track down to 1/64th of a pixel!

The guy that came in said that Apple is NOT trying to replace After Effects with Motion... but I chuckled because with what Motion can do and with its price I can see a very large number of converts... but Apple already killed on Adobe app with their own solution (anybody remember Premiere?), so we'll see.

Also, as to the hardware requirements. The app ran quite well on our tricked out DP G5 2.0 with 1GB RAM and a 9800Pro Radeon, but he also demoed it on his 17" 1GHz PBook and working with a project while it was playing in real time wasn't the nicest thing to see, so this is pretty definitely an app that demands some performance out of a computer. I'd say if you're looking at picking up a new laptop, get the $50 add-on of a 128MB graphics card (Build-To-Order only) and definitely the 9800Pro if you're gonna get a G5.

 

<<So, if you had the proper system requirements, and price was not an issue, which would you use more often/buy: After Effects (Production Bundle) or Motion>>

for every day effects for text/motion effects etc, i'd use Motion more often as it is easier to do such everyday effects.

I should point out that this program is designed with 64-bit in mind, this is why a lot of the functions work in real-time, therefore, it's likely that it's gonna need a G5 to get the best performance out of it.

Dev - nice to see we've got something in common - Training people to use the pro-apps.

anyway,

Nick "Shorty" Long

 

Wow so cool "Motion", I've been dreaming of this app since I first saw it posted on Apple's website. Thanks for all the first-hand info. I won't get to see it personally until next month, when Apple rolls around to Detroit. This is the app that makes me want to do a needed upgrade to a G5. Very cool forum Nick,

Ken

 

<<Very cool forum Nick, >>

Umm, thanks - though not my forum

anyway,

Nick "Shorty" Long

P.S. Yes, this was a post disguised as an excuse to bump the thread again!