Apple Knowledge Base Articles
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 11:48PM Important information if you are upgrading to FCP X and/or Motion 5 and/or Compressor 4
Apple is recommending installing on a separate partition from FCP 7/Motion 4 but frankly I've been running FCP X/Motion 5 on the same boot drive with no issues, as have many others. Installing FCP X and the other apps does NOT overwrite your existing FCS apps - it just moves them to a new folder in your Applications folder.
Although if you do have Motion 4 and Motion 5 installed on the same partition, you'll run into this issue:
Motion Projects Cannot be Previewed in Finder or QuickTime Player
Not a deal-killer, but annoying.
Run Software Update After Install to Install ProApps QuickTime Codecs
You'll definitely want to to this.
You need an OpenCl-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later with at least 256MB of VRAM.
The link includes a chart of cards that do NOT meet the spec - of note is that the ATI Radeon X1900 XT, which used to be THE card for Motion (before the 4870 and 5870) is not supported.
You can download a content update that will add more Library content and sample media, but don't get too excited - it's all stuff that can be found in Motion 4.
Incorrect Alpha Interpretation
Easy to fix, but good to be aware of.
You can get the user manuals for FCP X, Motion 5, and Compressor 4 from the Help menu in each application or online - you can also print them to PDFs for easy offline access - I put my on my iPad to make them easy to grab.
Reader Comments (21)
Thank you !
How to print the PDF with all pages ? I just can print 1 page...
Mark,
Love your tutorials. Have been a big fan of yours and Ripple Training in general for quite a long time. I greatly respect your work, but how can you justify $50 & $60 respectively for your two Motion 5 courses (a $50 program), when Steve's FCP X course is just $40 for a $300 program?
Tony, thanks for your kind words. As to the pricing - All our products for earlier versions were $99 or $129. These new trainings are just as long, just as in-depth, just as fully research and scripted as all our trainings - we lowered the price dramatically due to new software pricing. Motion is not as mainstream a product as FCP, and I feel I'm delivering great value for the price. Also, I think the price for Motion 5 itself is insanely low! But to each his own, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
As to printing the PDFs, I just clicked the icon at the top right and then chose to print to PDF in the print dialog.
Thanks Mark. Well justified.
As I noted, I'm a fan!
I'll be getting the 'Rigging & Publishing" course today.
I just got Motion 5... Question? I had Pro Animator Plugin for M4 but don't seem to have access in M5. Any thoughts?
I also noticed that the Opacity and Blending tabs that used to be in the Layers is not there... I always used the heck outta them, wondering if that's going to be fixed?
Last, the Project Properties under the edit window is not nearly as functional as it was in M4... Your thoughts Mark?
3rd-party plugins need to be rewritten to work in Motion 5.
Opacity, Blending Mode, and Preview all available under View > Layer Columns.
What is missing in Project Properties? I believe it has all the same parameters.
I'm new to Motion and just about halfway thru "Rigging & Publishing" . Very clear, very clean.
Thanks
Thank, Gilbert!
Is it true that Motion 5 will break send to Motion 4 in FCP 7.03?
A creative cow motion forum item from Stephen Smith seems to indicate this, which would
invalidate all Motion 4 workflows with legacy versions of FCP installed on the same partitiion
under Snow Leopard 10.6.8.
The comment indicated that the send to command in FCP7.03 would only send to Motion 5.
I've been too gun shy to test this - running out of test scenario install volumes...
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Ahem... (oops) just read this listed apple knowledge base article:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3858
I'll try this and see how it goes...
This is probably worth adding to the top of the install best practices for
dual installation however.
Chris, I have tested this and it works as the KB article indicates. The key is to already have Motion 4 running before using the Send To command.
Hi Mark,
Do you know if the additional Motion 5 (and FCPX) content is just the same stuff that apple shipped with the last version of FC Studio (the same sound effects, clips, items, etc)?
Yes, the supplemental content for FCP X is a bunch of SFX that you already have from the last FCS; the supplemental Motion content is more stuff from the Motion 4 Library - it just puts it in a different location so you can access it in Motion 5.
Some people have asked about getting just Motion 5 without FCP X. I jumped at it, since it was just $50. Luckily, my video card works with it. I have to tell you I'm thrilled. While i cannot roundtrip to FCP 7, I haven't been bothered by it. Most of the other guys I work with never used the embedded feature anyway. The improved interface and features such as working with chroma keys makes it worth it to me. I did a render test between Motion 4 & 5 (yes, they both co-exist nicely on my boot drive but they cannot run at the same time) For my projects, 5 renders considerably faster than 4 which really is a big deal to me. In the Apple world, it's hard to go wrong for just $50.
Glad it is workiing so well for you Robert.
Hi Mark,
I got this question from my student and I don;t know the answer.
Can you use FPC X with Motion 4?
It is probably NO, or is it not?
Thanks.
Zoltan
PS: Thanks for such a quick respond with tutorials.
You can of course export movies from Motion 4 for FCP X but you can't import a Motion 4 project into FCP X and you can't send clips to Motion 4. But come on Motion 5 is $49.99!
Thanks.
I'w got it for £30 since that is the price of it here in UK.
I feel that FCS is gonna stay in the folder Apple generated when I downloaded the FCP X and Motion 5.
For What I use it for, it is more than sufficient.
Hi,
I tried to print to PDF but it only saves on page. Please tell me how I can save the entire Manual.