Use this free Clips Used in Project tool to list all the clips used by name, numbered, with durations. Disabled clips are marked as such.
Tag: FCPX
Word replacement animation
Word replacement animation without keyframes!
Creating a word replacement animation in Final Cut Pro is actually easier than creating it in Motion. For one thing, it’s immediate and adaptable!
Let's begin!
Starting at the end, this is what this effect looks like in the storyline:
What you see is 9 Basic Titles. All we need to do is add the appropriate effects!
Start with a Basic Title and type the phrase you want as the “base” phrase. In our example, we’ll be using “For your needs”. However, we will need a large enough space for the largest replacement word to fit, so something like this:
“For your needs”
To this title, add the effect Move by Time (part of the Animate by Time effects bundle).
Add a Shape Mask and arrange it so that the left edge is near the ‘r’ in “your” and with a width all the way to the right. (The height only needs to be the height of the text — like a “channel”).
The purpose of the Shape Mask is to limit the region of the clip/title that will be affected by the Move by Time effect. Everything outside the bounds of the mask will stay as is. We only want to move “needs”.
About Move by Time
Move by Time is a precision timed effect. The first two parameters are the Start and End Offsets for the animation time. This effect uses the Start Offset X and Move X parameters. The others are not used (but you might want to experiment with Curvature). The values you see are specific to font size and text placements (width of your text up to the gap). We’ll get to the settings you see later.
Setting up
Count your word replacements. In this tutorial there will be four. Each has a different width. Although the replacements are all the same font, they are a different font from the base text.
If you want to “close the gap” either at the beginning or the end, add that to the number.
Set the length of time of your Basic Title to the length of time you need the words to appear. In General, they will all appear for the same length of time, but varying the times is optional. This tutorial uses exactly 2 second titles.
Duplicate the first title setup for the number of repetitions you need. Lay them out so that they are edge to edge — no gaps.
Next, create another Basic Text. Change the text to one of the replacement words, change the font (or variation) and optionally the color, etc.
You can click and drag the text to “fit” next to your base phrase. Add the following effects: two Fade by Time effects and a Move by Time.
For the first (top) Fade effect *and* Move effect, set the Start Offset to 0 and the End Offset to 0.5 (1/2 second). For the Fade, set the Start Opacity to 0, the End Opacity to 100%. For the Move effect, set the Start Offset Y to -90 (this can be adjusted at any time).
Depending on how long your titles are will determine the times you use. With our 2 second title, our example will use 1.5 and 1.9. The Start Opacity is set to 100% and the End Opacity is set to 0%.
Every replacement word in this example will use exactly the same effects and settings, so Option-drag copies for each word then change each instance to the word you need in sequence.
Finishing up (told you this was easy)
All that’s left is creating the offsets of the end pharse to match the size of the word spacings.
Each base title has one Move by Time effect added. When you set up the first instance, you can set the animation for the same timing as the others, however, in this example, I’ve set the End Offset Sec. parameter to 0.4 so that it animates a little faster than the others — it needs get out of the way!
For the first replacement word, move it into place, then select the base text title, place the playhead at the first frame and adjust the Start Offset X parameter so that the end phrase normalizes in spacing with the first part of the phrase. Move the playhead to past the animation end (0.4 seconds) and adjust the Move X parameter to line up at the end of the word replacement (observe typographical spacing!)
For the subsequent words, you will need to adjust Start Offset X to line up to where you end the end phrase, then the End Offset X to the end of the replacement word as before. You can line up the end phrase positions in a couple of ways. Overlap the beginning of a following base phrase title over the end of the previous one, then adjust the Start Offset X value so that the words overlap (match), then move the subsequent title back in place. The other way would be to use a grid or a guide effect (also available on this site).
More information
Animate by Time is a collection of related effects: Color Fill (related to fade), Fade, Move, Rotate, Scale All (saves space), Scale by X-Y, and Slant. There is also a utility effect: Clip Time by Time which you can add to any clip, title etc. to show the precise time of the playhead location within the clip (you get decimal and a small “frames” display). [Fractional frame rates are NOT supported! They are OBSOLETE!] You can use Clip Time with fractional frames rates, but it won’t be as accurate (relative time is good enough, generally).
Animate by Time is broken down by functions, use only what you need when you need it.
The Animate by Time effects can be applied to anything (except transitions — fcpx won’t allow it). If applied to video clips there are rules that need to be observed.
Video (that is: everything within the Viewer frame) is cropped if it is moved out of its frame.
Effects that move clips offscreen need to complete their action completely before applying subsequent effects.
Explanation: if you Move by Time a video clip by half the frame, then add another Move by Time to move the clip back into place — half the video clip will have been cropped off, and cannot be replaced.
You can complete animations within one single Effect (start offscreen and move onscreen) and not “damage” the video. (Of course, you may opt to do this on purpose!)
Effects *change* video. They are not “added on” like adjustment layers or titles.
You can add as many effects as you need to any given clip, compound clip, title or generator. “Compiling” a collection of effects to a clip does not create multiple “tracks” or layers — what you get is a single layer of video. They typically render much more quickly than titles or generators. Their order is Top – Down. The base effect is the first one added and the last one added is the top effect.
The Compositing, Transform, Crop, and Distort controls are actually Top Level effects and supercede all others.
Plan ahead!
Full Demo
Keep up to date with Sight-Creations on Twitter and Facebook.
A good place to see all of my effects as well as several tutorials and other demonstrations in use is on my YouTube channel.
Effects used in this tutorial:
Using FCPXTemplates Effects Presets
More About Effects Presets in Final Cut Pro
Effects Presets are saved by Final Cut Pro in:
Your User/Home folder / Library / Application Support / ProApps / Effects Presets /
Effects Presets are not like most other Mac … “things” — they are hard-coded to find the Effects they use from specific Effects Categories. If those effects are moved from those locations, effects presets fail! In order to use our Highlighter Effects Presets in Final Cut Pro, you must either install the Highlighter effects in a Category named: FCPXTemplates (case sensitive) or use the following method to change its dependence on the Highlighter installation location to the category that you chose to install them into:
- Open the Highlighter – (name).effectsPreset file in TextWrangler or BBEdit (TextEdit is not suitable for this task!)
- Type Command-F to open the Find/Replace dialog
- In Find, type FCPXTemplates
- In Replace, type the name of the category you placed the Highlighter effects in (case sensitive)
- Click the Replace All button
- Save
TextWrangler has been abandoned, although it still works if you have it. BBEdit is available as a Free Download from BareBones.com (or the App Store) and you can use it for free forever as long as you don’t sign up for the in-app purchases. It’s good to have around, especially if you need to dig into FCPX/Motion files.
Effects Presets from others
The Effects Presets you get from here will be set up to point to FCPXTemplates (unless otherwise specified) as the Category. If you have not been given specific instructions the following instructions will guide you to customizing your installation:
Open the *.effectsPreset file in BBEdit/TextWrangler. A shortcut, if you’re using BBEdit/TextWrangler would be to right click on the *.effectsPreset file and in the contextual menu, go to the very bottom to Services. You should find: Open in BBEdit or Open in TextWrangler from that menu. If not, you can Open With either text editor.
Type Command-F to open the Find dialog. Search for Effects.localized. Since Effects Presets can be complex combinations of effects, you will need to pay attention to which effects are actually used and note how you have those effects installed on your System. For example, everybody has the built-in Stylize > Drop Shadow effect. This effect is internally installed in FCPX and you would not want to change the category for this particular effect. Only change the Categories of those effectsPreset effects that you know you have installed.
With that in mind, keep advancing the Find results until you find the Effect whose category you need to change. Once you find an Effect you have installed, double click on the Category name, making sure that it is completely selected (you may need to extend the selection over spaces and some other characters) and type Command – E (Use Selection for Find).
Then type in the name of the Category to be used by replacement.
Click the Replace All button and Save.
You only need to change the Category names in the effectsPreset for the Effects that are not installed in the same location as indicated in the effectsPreset file. Once you have the categories synchronized, the Effects Preset will work just as if you had created it yourself.
Keep up to date with Sight-Creations on Twitter and Facebook.
A good place to see all of my effects as well as several tutorials and other demonstrations in use is on my YouTube channel.
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Highlighter Effects
Designed primarily for Titles, Highlighter is a general purpose graphics "engine" for Final Cut Pro X.
Details
Mixing OSCs with Text in FCPX — An Update
OSCs. OnScreen Controls.
Before FCPX 10.0.6 (10/23/2012), using OSCs in a Title with Text was not a problem. As long as there was access to the control point, it could be “grabbed”. After 10.0.6 came out, this changed. Text objects took complete precedence and any OSC within the “bounds” of the text could not be accessed without moving the text out of the way or by changing its position parameter in the Title’s inspector.
You can stay up to date by following Sight-Creations on Twitter and Facebook.
Impact 3D User Guide
Impact 3D OSC is a remake of an older title with far more customization control featuring 3D Text, material, lighting, dust and coloring controls.
Keying Inside and Outside
You do not need a Motion Template for this effect!
Scene: You have a green screen clip and you want to replace not only the green screen but also the subject with replacement media.
I came across this problem on Apple’s discussion board (FCPX forum) and thought it was an interesting problem. It’s actually quite simple, but there is a catch if you don’t know what to look for.
For this demonstration, I will be using a free sample (practice) green screen clip available from hollywoodcamerawork.com. The download is in the Godiva Medium section about halfway down the page. Here’s a frame:
This is a relatively awful green screen. The green isn’t “even”. It is very difficult to pull a decent key especially in the area of the sheer fabric. It is, however, a very good clip to learn how to key and if you successfully pull a good key, then you will have learned something useful!
The effect I want is to have our model replaced with fireworks as a silhouette effect and the green background replaced with an icy waterfall (fire and ice 😉 ). Two mattes from one clip.
If this question hadn’t been asked, this is not something I would have thought of by myself… It’s actually rather cool!
How this is accomplished is rather simple:
1) apply they keyer to the green screen footage — invert it! — and overlay it over the fireworks clip.
(When you invert a keyed green screen, you get the original green screen back as everything that is not green is masked!)
2) select the green screen clip and fireworks clip and make a compound clip.
3) apply the Keyer to the compound clip and overlay it over the icy waterfall clip.
Pretty simple provided 1) you get a good key and 2) you know how to get around the non-transparent “white out” where the green screen used to be. This is what it looks like:
This is a WTF moment. It’s supposed to be transparent. So what happened?
It turns out that the provided Keyer effect in Final Cut Pro automatically sets a 46% Spill Level (I don’t even know what this is because it is separate from the Spill Suppression — it seems to be the “primary” spill removal tool; it’s documented that it will fill the green with a light gray color instead of transparency.) The solution at this stage is to simply set the Spill Level parameter to 0% and that will clear out the white-out to transparency again.
When completed, you will end up with a compound clip containing your green screen footage (with inverted key) over the media used to fill your subject, and placed over another clip used to contain the media used to replace the green screen. It will look great! And, you didn’t need to use a special Motion template to accomplish it.
That said 😉 —
If you use SC KeyFX scKey Replace, you only need one clip. “scKey Replace” allows you to select any color (use shift-click and/or drag to include more) very much as you would in a “paint” application like Photoshop. You can stack the effects on a single clip and use the drop zones to fill the parts. There is a feature that will allow you to blend the replacement media with the original media using Blend Modes if you wish. With it, you can pull off an even more interesting effect of lighting up your subject with the filling media.
In the first frame: throughout most of the play through, the subject model is silhouetted. However, when the “flash” is close to her face, you can see the fireworks “light up” her face briefly. It’s really impressive to see!
Model’s face is silhouetted
Model’s face shows some color detail. (It is more obvious in playback.)
You cannot get this kind of effect from the basic Keyer effect since the blend modes provided by scKey Replace are not available in Keyer.
See SC KeyFX Tips for more information.
Installing Plugins for FCPX
Installing Plugins for Final Cut Pro X
Effects (also known as Templates or Plugins) need to be “installed” in a very specific location.
Inside the Users folder on your main hard drive is your user folder (with your exact username as the label with a little house icon).
Inside that you will find a folder called Movies.
Inside that you need to have a folder called Motion Templates. If you don’t have it, you can create it. Once created, right click on the folder and Get Info. In the Name & Extensions section, make sure it reads: “Motion Templates.localized” (without the quotes). The case sensitive spelling (including spaces) is very important.
Inside the Motion Templates folder, there should be at least four other folders labelled: Effects, Generators, Titles, and Transitions. If these folders do not exist, you can create them. You must do the same as Motion Templates and go into Get Info and make sure their extensions are .localized. These are the only folders requiring the localized extensions. [Do not add the localized extension from the Finder.]
Determine the type of template you are installing (Effect, Title, Transition, Generator) and open that folder.
You will need to *provide* a category for FCPX by using a folder at this level or by creating a new folder with a name that will be used as the category in FCPX. If the folders already exist, you can choose a category that already exists; otherwise, create a Category folder for your effect type. (A lot of people miss this step…) The Category is the section in which you’ll find the template in FCPX in the corresponding template browser.
Open the Category folder and place the entire template’s folder inside.
Templates in FCPX are actually a “bundle” of files arranged by a parent folder with the same name of the Motion project file name. Inside there will be two thumbnail .png files, the Motion project (ending in .moef, .motn, .moti, or .motr) and a Media folder. All of these files (and folder) need to be present in order for FCPX to properly “read” the effect into the application. Many people may make the mistake of removing the Motion project file from its parent folder when installing (and therefore “break” the effect [temporarily — it’s fixable — just put it back].)
There is technically another “level” that can be used within categories called a Theme, but until you’re comfortable installing templates in the “usual” method, you shouldn’t worry about it.
Video Instructions:
HTH
Keep up to date with Sight-Creations on Twitter.
A good place to see all of my effects as well as several tutorials and other demonstrations in use is on my YouTube channel.
Sliding Thirds User Guide
Sliding Thirds User Guide
A title effect for FCPX
Description
This effect is for 16:9 media. You can use it for other aspect ratios, it simply will not look as good.
Sliding Thirds title is a simple yet powerful effect. Even though it is being referred to as an “effect”, it is actually a Title plugin for FCPX. And even though it is a “title”, no text has been provided for use. Sliding Thirds is very much like an adjustment layer you can apply to your storyline to provide animation support for any other kind of title you would like to apply. Its effect can be extended greatly by “stacking” instances of the Sliding Thirds title in your storyline. (Examples below demonstrate a “pyramid” stack, an “offset” stack, and “straight” stacks.) Directly stacking one upon another will double its effect.
The default setting is to have the left side panel animate into view for a little over 1 second (including the offsetting of the “canvas” if set). At the end of the title (about the last 1 second) the panel slides back off and any offset of the canvas is restored to its original position. The title can be as short as 2 seconds and 10 frames long or as long as your entire project. Panels are activated by checkbox option. It is allowed to not use any panels and only use the Horizontal and/or Vertical Slide to move what is on the canvas. Sliding Thirds can be used simply to “push” anything on the screen by up to one third of its dimension. Stack another Sliding Thirds on top and move everything another third, including whatever you add to the Sliding Thirds title underneath. Stack as many as you like to keep moving panels across the screen.
See the demo video (below) for a variety of effects than can be accomplished with this single simple title.
Horizontal/Vertical Slide: Values default to 0. Sliding left moves the screen (storyline) media to the left. Sliding right moves the screen media to the right. Values go to 100% with minus or positive indicating direction of movement (negative vertical is downward). A 100% offset will move the screen media just far enough so that the edge of the media will match the opposite edge of its corresponding panel (if used). Offset values of 0 will not move the screen/storyline media. The usual value of 50% will move the storyline media just far enough to maintain its center to the center of its new visual space between its panel and the outer edge of the video. This value may be keyframed to customize its appearance as well as to make adjustments when stacking Sliding Thirds. Keyframing can be used to override the built in animation timing. An example of this is demonstrated in the Demo video below.
Fill Color: The color used for all panels. There is no mix and matching colors for panels, they are all the same for one instance of Sliding Thirds.
Fill Opacity: Sets the transparency for all panels.
Use Left/Right/Top/Bottom Panel: Checkboxes allowing selection of which panel appears. They can all be used or none of them can be used. If you would like to build a “reveal” effect using only Horizontal/Vertical Slides, you must combine the Sliding Thirds title with a clip in a compound clip and place the media to be revealed below the compound clip in the storyline. Without using a compound clip, Sliding Thirds will move *everything* beneath it including clips beneath the storyline (but not audio!)
Drop Shadow: Typical drop shadow controls; should not need explanation.
Drop Zones: There is a drop zone for each panel. The drop zone is sized to exactly fit the panel it belongs to which will make media placement convenient: the center of the dropped media will always align with the center of the panel. Included with each drop zone is a Pan parameter which allows adjusting the positioning of the media within the panel; and a Scale parameter which normally will be used to “shrink” one of the dimensions to fit more of the view into the panel, e.g., scaling the X dimension to less than 100% to squeeze the media horizontally for Left/Right panels, or for shrinking the Y dimension to fit vertically into Top/Bottom panels.
Added recently:
Animate Intro/Outro: The animation only determines the appearance of the panels. Turned on, the panels will slide in. Otherwise they will instantly and continuously be “on” for the duration of the Sliding Thirds title in the storyline. Sometimes it might be useful to have the Outro turned off if you simply want to move a clip in one direction and not have it be returned to its original position (usually when stacking multiple Sliding Thirds…) It’s at the bottom of the parameter list to mostly be “out of the way” and there if you need it.
Parameters:
Basics
Sliding Thirds consists of two parts: The sliding background panel and the storyline content. Storyline content means everything (media, generators, titles, or anything else you can add to your project) underneath the Sliding Thirds title instance. A Panel is a complex background widget consisting of a solid color and/or drop zone content.
Panels are designed basically as a solid color background for any other type of content you wish to add above the Sliding Thirds title. Panels may be any color. Panels may have any level of opacity, they can even be made invisible.
Drop Zones can contain anything. Media, other titles, other generators, and compound clips of any other combination of media, generators, titles, etc. Using Drop Zones that are filled with titles or other transparent background media still display the background color solid panel depending on your settings. When using another title for any of the four drop zones available, you may create a title in your project anywhere in your project, then select the drop zone source well in Sliding Thirds and select your (temporary) title and Apply. Once the content is added to the drop zone you may delete it from the storyline or change your title to be reused in another drop zone. When you’re done with adding drop zone content, you may delete any item from the storyline that you created to place in the drop zone.
Drop Zones in Sliding Thirds are designed to have the aspect ratio of the panels on which they are applied. When designing titles or generators for adding to a drop zone, design for the center of the screen. The center relationship is maintained within the custom drop zones. You can offset and/or scale the drop zone media with the supplied parameters for each.
Use as a Reveal effect
Panels are optional. The left panel is on by default but may be turned off. The storyline media may be animated (up to 1/3 the screen in either direction per instance of Sliding Thirds [if stacking is used]). If all the Sliding Thirds titles are combined with media immediately below their instances into a compound clip, then any other media below the compound clip will remain stationary. Combining the animated compound with stationary media will create a reveal effect. This may also be used for basically any kind of media: to reveal a title or reveal another clip. Turning off the Animate Outro option with three stacked Sliding Thirds instances can be used as a slide transition.
“Fully Loaded”
One Slider Thirds title. The ice cream sundae clip is in the viewer and all four panels have their drop zones loaded. When the drop zones are empty only the panels are visible provided their opacity is enough to make them seen.
Upper and Lower Thirds are always dominant. When using color panels without drop shadows, it is possible to make L-shaped fill regions. When using Stacking (see below), for example for a 2/3 slide, Drop Shadow seams can be eliminated by applying a drop shadow only to the lowest instance.
Stacking
As stated, Sliding Thirds will move everything underneath its duration. You can add basic titles (or any other type of media) over the storyline and Sliding Thirds will gather it all up and slide it (by the Horizontal/Vertical Slide amount). In the example below, there is a Basic Title over the storyline video. About 1 second after its appearance, a Sliding Thirds “instance” is placed. The Basic Title text will slide with the storyline media as if it were part of the scene. If the Sliding Third has video in its drop zone, then that video will slide into view to “fill the gap”. When the Sliding Thirds instance ends, the media will slide back to its original position.
Stacking more than one Sliding Thirds will continue to slide media — including a Sliding thirds panel or drop zone that is underneath it. The maximum slide for each instance is 1/3 the screen. Two instances will slide 2/3s of the screen and so on. More than three instances will begin to slide panels off the screen at the other end — but they will slide back on when Sliding Thirds title ends over the instances below it. In the case of “Offset Stacking” as shown below, the returning media will “collapse” behind the last (topmost) instance until finished.
The above image shows the storyline section for the Demo: Offset Stacking section of the demo video.
Pyramid Stacking
In the example below, there is a Basic Title (“Demo Pyramid Stacking” from the Demo video) on top of the storyline. Four Sliding Thirds titles have been stacked and retimed to form a pyramid shape, followed by another Basic title on top. The top Basic title remains stationary throughout the animations. The Demo Pyramid Stacking title text at the bottom of the stack is animated four times – once for each Sliding Thirds title added and resulting with the Demo … text moving off the right side of the screen upon the exectution of the fourth stacked Sliding Thirds. In this arrangement, when the topmost Sliding Thirds ends, the entire screen (accumulated titles below it and the storyline) will reset back the same displacement amount. When the third Sliding Thirds ends, the screen resets back another third distance, etc. until the storyline is restored to its normal appearance.
The example below demonstrates the use of interim text titles under the Sliding Thirds. The green arrows show the positions of Sliding Thirds titles and the yellow arrows highlight the positions of Basic Text Titles used to label the entire accumulated scene beneath each text entry. The yellow circles illustrate where titles were “bladed” and their content changes, so as the animation begins resetting to the normal storyline appearance, the titling has been changed to extend the messaging.
This example is taken from the section of the Demo video below beginning with the waterfall and sliding up six times.
Straight Stack
Add a Sliding Thirds title to the storyline and set the Horizontal or Vertical (or both) offsets to ±100. Hold down the Option key and drag upward to create a duplicate of the Sliding Thirds title. With snapping on, align the two titles together. Animation will now cover a 2/3 distance across the screen. Repeating this action will cover the screen with either panels, drop zones (in 1/3 sections) or, by making a compound clip, a full screen “reveal” effect with any other additional media placed anywhere below the compound clip.
Creating a Paneled Split Screen
Apply a Sliding Thirds title. Pick which panel to use and adjust its color. Leave Horizontal/Vertical Slides at 0. Option drag a copy immediately above the first one (which also duplicates color and panel choice). For the instance on top, set the Horizontal or Vertical Slide to 50%. To the instance on the bottom, adjust the drop shadow if used (Blur = 0 and Opacity =100% will create a solid line). Apply your titling or other media content to the solid color background portion of the screen:
Of course: you still have plenty of options for customization!
Sliding Thirds is an extremely useful, easy, and quick utility to perform perfectly executed animations by thirds — no keyframing required. If you work with television advertisement, this tool is a must have.
Demo:
Short Circuit User Guide
Short Circuit User Guide
by Sight-Creations
A Title for FCPX
There is an onscreen control (OSC) for convenient positioning on the screen. There is a Rotation parameter available just for fun.
Due to the way this effect was created, editing text on the screen is not allowed. You must change the text in the Text parameter in the Title inspector. All other controls for text (color, font, size, alignment, line spacing, tracking, etc) have been made available in the inspector for your convenience. The Collection parameter has been supplied so that if you use font collections in Font Book to organize your fonts, you can shorten the font list by selection your “favorite” collection first, then choose a font from that collection.
GLITCH PARAMETERS
Noise Smoothing
Noise has been added to this effect to create part of the texture. Noise Smoothing blurs (more like smears) the noise in a specific direction. The higher the amount, the smoother it will appear. Between 0 smoothing and about the default setting of 16, the smoothing will appear a little like a paint brush stroke. As the value is increased, the noise will be less apparent.
Noise Angle Mvmt
This parameter randomizes the direction of the “smearing”. At 0, the smearing is horizontal.
Glitch Coloring
This gradient can be customized to color the glitch effect. It uses luminance “mapping”. Darker shades of the Glitch pattern used will appear to be the color selected on the left side of the gradient. Lighter shades will map the right side of the gradient. You can use as many color tabs as you like. The colors of the gradient may also be animated. If you opt to animate color, make sure you have all the tabs of color you need for the entire animation. Adding tabs is easy: simply click the mouse in the “color bar” under the gradient bar and a new tab, containing the color clicked on will appear. (You can remove tabs by clicking and dragging them off the bar.) The gradient has a disclosure triangle to open it up for all of its available features. Since this is a luminance mapping, opacity tabs have no effect on the color used.
Glitch Color Over
On by default. Deselecting this option will have the actual text always “on top” of the effect. Its appearance will be affected by the Text color parameter. The glitch effect does not blend.
Horizontal Glitch Amount % / Vertical Glitch Amount %
These parameters determine how spread out the effect becomes. Near 0 will keep the glitches close to the text. The higher the percent, the more of the screen territory will become involved in the effect.
Glitch Amout % > Frequency
This parameter increases the amount of change in the glitching based on the direction percentage set.
Division Lengths
The glitching effect is “notched” in on/off states. The “notches” are generally different lengths of time (depending on the Random Seed parameter). Higher numbers for Division Lengths means that glitching will happen for longer periods of time (still very short — but relatively shorter or longer depending on this setting).
Frequency
This parameter will set, in general, how many glitches occur over the 10 second default length of this title. Setting or animating to 0 for this parameter *should* turn the glitching off. A setting of 1 will create a circumstance where the glitching is nearly constant. A setting of 2 will be approximately half and half, etc. A setting of 8 should provide 8 on/off cycles.
This title is designed to loop its animation. This method allows this title to keep the exact timing you achieve with your chosen effect no matter how long you make the title in the storyline.
All of this will depend on the setting of the Random Seed which changes everything. The timing of this effect is extremely flexible and its random mixing of time notches is part of its appeal making it seem more “natural”.
GLITCH SHAPING PARAMETERS
The glitch effect is determined by a pattern created in Motion and almost infinitely variable even though it is restricted so that will not become over-taxing to Final Cut’s rendering engine. The pattern is comprised of shapes that you can randomly size.
Pattern H Density / Pattern V Density
These parameters determine how many shapes are “crowded” in the horizontal and vertical space of the “texture”. (More below).
Scale X / Scale Y
Use these parameters to redefine the basic shape used in the texture.
Scale Rand.
This parameter will randomly change the redefined basic shape by the amount selected.
Randomize S… (Scaling)
This randomizing parameter will re-randomize the scaling of all the shapes in the pattern
Pattern Shuffle
This parameter will simply rearrange all the shapes within the pattern.
More on Glitch Shaping Parameters
It is possible to remove all shapes. At this point, the Glitching will simply be Noise (and the base text combined). By manipulating these parameters, you can design a multitude of different glitching effects (all in one title!)
TIP
When you find a pattern you really like, select the title in the storyline and save as a Compound Clip (set up an Event to collect saved favorite titles!)
Demo:
INSTALLATION
If you need help installing this title effect, please refer to this document:
https://fcpxtemplates.com/installing-plugins-for-fcpx (there are links to an outline and step-by-step video if you need to see the process.)
Motion Template Compatibility
FCPX/Motion Template Compatibility Guide
...and how to backdate a template to work in older versions
Whether you need to “backdate” a template to an older version of FCPX, or just curious to see if a template you’re trying to use is compatible with your version of FCPX, the Compatibility Chart below will help you.
People who design templates generally tend to use the latest version of Motion— we have to so we can keep up with all the “latest and greatest” features. What that generally means is that any new template created with the latest version of Motion will only work in the corresponding latest version of Final Cut Pro X.
Always having to use the latest version of Motion is not always convenient since there are plenty of Final Cut users still using older versions for whatever reason like hardware restrictions, project involvement, or even other less honest reasons — I don’t care. I’m not judging. When you’re stuck, you’re stuck and neither Motion nor FCPX has a method of being able to “backdate” templates, even if they are still compatible!
Below is a compatibility guide of all the versions of Final Cut from 10.0 to the current version with all the corresponding versions of Motion, plus some other data which will be covered shortly. You can also see their release dates, although some of the dates are only approximate for Motion as it was not always updated on the same days as FCPX in the past, or, so far.
You can also see there were several subsequent subversions released with no change of the other app, for example, FCPX went through versions 10.0.1, to 10.0.3 without a corresponding update in Motion.
Motion Template project files are just XML files which can be opened in any text editor like TextEdit. The first few lines are always exactly like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE ozxmlscene> <ozml version="5.5"> <displayversion>5.1</displayversion>
with the double space between the ozml and displayversion tags. Note that Motion 5.0 and 5.0.1 do NOT have a displayversion tag and the next tag in the file will start after the blank line following the ozml tag. This is as far into these files as you ever need to go.
The (simple?) Rules:
You cannot backdate a template that uses anything that wasn’t available in the target version of FCPX. For example, if your project uses shapes that use Size: Width and Height parameters, this must be converted to Control Points first if you need to backdate to FCPX before 10.2.0.
If you are using 3D Text, you cannot backdate before FCPX 10.2.0, it has no way of “knowing” what 3D Text is. etc.
And there are a lot of these little gotchas you need to be aware of if you’re going to successfully backdate a “modern” motion project for older versions of FCPX.
That said, the majority of “function” in Motion is the same as it was going all the way back to Motion 2.0 over ten years ago. Your chances of success are fairly good!
Instructions:
There are four types of Motion projects used by Final Cut: Effects, Generators, Titles and Transitions and they have the file extensions of: .moef, .motn, .moti and .motr respectively.
The Motion project files can be found inside the folder with the exact same name in the Motion Template’s folder (by class, then by category folder). You can right-click on the template project file and Open With… and choose Text Edit. Make sure TextEdit is in Text Only mode (rtf will mess things up!) It is highly recommended that you move a copy of the template to a safe location before making any edits to the file.
From the guide below, find your version of Final Cut (or your target version for backdating) and copy the OZML version to the ozml tag value (maintain the quotes!) then copy the DisplayVersion to the displayversion tag (notice the displayversion is exactly the same as the version number of Motion… so far).
You should not change anything else in the file, including the formatting of the XML unless you need to remove the displayversion tag to make Motion 5.0 compatible. Make sure the factory tag moves up to occupy the former displayversion position in the file (one empty line between the ozml tag and the first factory tag).
Save. You’re done. Go into Final Cut and see if it works. If you have a problem, you will probably just end up with a red icon with the Alert badge on it. If that’s the case, delete the template and replace it with your backup (or if you cannot use it, keep it moved out of the Motion Templates location until you upgrade to the current version of Final Cut.)
Apple’s release notes (most major additions will be listed here)
Use our automated backdating tool!
Motion Template Backdater can perform this task for you. Just upload the template, set the version of FCPX you are using and download the backdated version.
Templates uploaded exist only in your browser. They are not saved to the server. This tool is not used to copy uploaded templates.
Change Project Frame Rates in FCPX the Easy Way?
Change Project Frame Rates in FCPX the Easy Way?
Change FCPX project frame rates:
Edit the XML file
I have changed the frame rate of an FCPX project using this method successfully. It started after I learned how to alter a Motion project file (also XML) to change the frame rates of projects. I wondered: if I could do it for Motion, if I could also do it with FCPX. Turns out… I could. All assets are automatically conformed to the new project rate.
This is not a supported method and should be considered experimental. If you attempt to do this – you will be doing so at your own risk. [I’m not going to take any responsibility for it. AFAIK, nobody else has attempted this.]
Follow these instructions exactly, and you should get a working project with the new frame rate. (I imagine you can change the size as well, but you can also do that from within FCPX which would be safer.) No knowledge of FCPXML necessary!
Create an “empty” project with the size and framerate you need. Use Custom Settings and set the specific frame rate you require.
File > Export XML.
Export XML on the project requiring the frame rate change.
Open the two XML files in TextEdit (Text Only – no rich text format! I recommend TextWrangler, but TextEdit wlll do… I think.)
Copy the top <format> tag from the “empty” project and replace the tag in your active project.
Save As a different name.
The format tag looks like this in context [it’s at the very top of the file]:
Just replace the line that starts with <format and ends with /> (exactly! same indent) with the copy from the empty project.
As a warning – make sure you *respect* the original line spacing and indentation in the file. Change only the contents of the <format> tag exactly where it is. Indents are tabs not spaces and indicates “levels”, etc. Changed formatting will invalidate the file. On the other side of this warning, all of the content of the original project seems to work perfectly (I’ve only done this a couple of times.)
File > Import > XML (to a different Event is recommended) the altered XML back into FCPX… You might be asked if you want to replace assets – I recommend you “Keep Both”. You should end up with two distinct projects, one with the old frame rate and one with the new.
That’s all there is to it. If you already have a project with the frame rate (and size) you want to copy over to the project to change, you can skip creating an empty project. Export XML(s). Copy and paste the contents of one line. Save As and import — you’re done.
Good luck.
— Fox
Hinged CRT User Guide
Hinged CRT Generator
User Guide
I want my LiveType® TV!
This is not a complicated effect. It’s basically a drop zone with window dressing. This effect requires the installation of a special font used to create the 3D text effect graphics (included with the plugin download).
This generator is auto animated via the optional Build In and Build Out parameters. The Build In animates the CRT up into view with a turn (just like the original). The Build Out turns the CRT and pulls it back out of the scene. There are other controls that can be keyframed to customize animations however you like and they can even be used to supplement the default animations.
There are sixteen default animations, eight standard and another eight with the turn direction reversed. CRT is animated from scene edges (top, bottom, right and left) and the Long descriptor means horizontal orientation of the CRT while Tall means vertical. The turn for all orientations is screen up to face front. The turn, if Change Direction is checked is screen down to face front.
First trick:
Set up the Hinged CRT generator as if it were a completely finished effect including all keyframed animations. Blade through the middle of the generator (all keyframes will remain intact) and change the Build Out animation to move in the opposite direction by selecting the Change Direction checkbox.
Parameters:
The Zoom slider will increase the size of the CRT to slightly larger than 1920 x 1080. For larger format media, use the Video Inspector Scale All parameter. It will still look great!
The Horizontal, Vertical and Rotation Offset parameters can be used to customize animations, even the Build In/Out animations already in progress! Rotation reorients the entire Hinged CRT model, not the CRT in the hinge mount.
The front screen “glass” effect looks a little lame… due to the nature of 3D surfaces in Final Cut, there’s not much that can be done. A Reflection Amount parameter has been added to help reduce the otherwise sharp edge effect in the glass. Another technique to disguise its appearance is to rotate the CRT about -7º to shift the shine slightly and smooth out the edges.
The next section of parameters deals with the Drop Zone. Select the Drop Zone source well and FCPX will present a “two-up” display in the Viewer. Select your source media from the Event browser. If your media is to be video, then as you mouse over the video in the Event Browser, the cursor will change to a pointing finger and you should see a skimmer bar. Keep an eye in the viewer and where you click on the Event thumbnail will select your first frame of video to be used. If choosing an image? It doesn’t really matter where you click.
The Drop Zone can also be filled with any kind of video you create in the storyline. You can combine video, photos, titles and generators just as you would for your normal video presentation. Bundle all the pieces to be used into a Compound clip and select the starting frame from your compound clip right in the storyline. Once you fill a Drop Zone with media in the storyline, you may simply delete that media from the storyline and the drop zone will retain what was placed in it. This is especially convenient if you need to simply place Title text in the CRT without having to make a compound clip. Once loaded, reuse the title for another instance of Hinged CRT or simply delete or “hide” the title (typing the V key on any kind of selection will toggle its “visibility” [or turn on/off audio as well.])
There are Pan and Scale controls to help align and/or fit video into the CRT screen. You may also changed the background color of the dropped material (e.g. text) with the BG Fill Color. The color selected will appear slightly different due to the design of the 3D model. Color “richness” can be compensated with the Contrast, Brightness and Gamma controls at the bottom of the parameter list.
Bad TV options are on be default but minimally used (scan lines). Unchecking Bad TV will present a “straight” media image with no “old TV” effects.
Waviness is a good way to provide “glitch”. Keyframe a jump into Waviness to last about a second and jump back out (reset to 0).
Roll is best used by setting from one extreme and keyframing to the other depending on the direction of the roll. That action will give two “flips” through the image and looks convincing even when the Drop Zone media is scaled down (creating a rather large border between the two rolled images).
Static, like waviness, is best used in moderation, but the choice for all of these features is yours!
Reducing Color Sync will give the image color edges (faded red and cyan – probably looks somewhat “cool” with red-cyan 3D glasses :D).
Old TVs were very “flexible” in their display of onscreen images — the Saturation control can help with that little bit of realism as well.
The next three parameters deal with scan lines. You really have to play with them in conjunction with each other. The number of effects achieved cannot be enumerated here.
And last, the previously mentioned Contrast, Brightness and Gamma Controls. These can be used to adjust the actual dropped image in the Drop Zone.
Have fun!
[LiveType® is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc.]
Demo video:
Talking Head User Guide
Talking Head User Guide
Video layouts and title animation made easy.
Talking Head is an Effect template for Final Cut Pro and was inspired by news channel format for “remote” interviews. A talking head is usually a camera shot in a kind of Picture-in-Picture format. However, most picture-in-picture effects for Final Cut are accomplished by the use of Titles or Generators using Drop Zones. Anytime a drop zone is involved, all audio from any clip applied to the drop zone is gone. If audio is needed, the audio track must by reapplied to the storyline and manually sync’d for the drop zone media. Talking Head is not a drop zone – it is the actual clip with all its properties loosened from the confines of the video full frame.
Talking Head has an OnScreen Control (OSC) to assist in making your clip layouts exceptionally easy. Size your Talking Head with the Dimensions parameter (dial down the disclosure triangle to set the Width and Height separately) then drag it into position with the OSC. Use the Horizontal and Vertical Img Offsets to reveal the portion of your clip required and use Image Scale if necessary to fit your subject inside the dimensions you have set. It is possible to animate the Horizontal and Vertical Img Offsets to slide your subject into the Talking Head “space”. There are controls for “Fill Color” and Fill Opacity to create a custom solid color background, or set the Opacity to zero to have the clip below show through. There are similar controls for the border.
Talking Head is a “modular” effect. It can be applied along with any other effect and it is layer sensitive (effects added after Talking Head will affect the Border and Fill (if exposed). You can change the order of effects applied to a clip by using the mouse to drag them in the Video Inspector over or above other effects already applied.
Using Talking Head to create custom title effects
When added to a title like Basic Title, Talking Head can turn the title into text with a background fill, or outlined, or both. Text can be animated by Position and Rotation via the Position and Rotation controls added by the effect. Text can be animated inside the Talking Head frame to make a scrolling text effect, or a “news crawl” effect. Use the Horizontal and/or Vertical Img Offset parameters to keyframe the animation. See the video below for ideas.
Layering
More than one Talking Head can be applied to a clip to create other effects as well, for example:
Talking Head 1, blue outlined clip. Talking Head 2, orange outlined with white background.
Tip for building a “slide” in effect:
The best workflow is to build your “final” layout. Size all your Talking Head effects in the “canvas”. Move the playhead into the clip by a few seconds. Set a Keyframe on the Center Location parameter and the Dimensions parameter. Back up the playhead several frames (depending how fast you want the effect to animate – it can be changed later). Set the Dimension Width (or Height) to zero. Use the OSC (or click and drag on the Center Location X parameter) to move the Talking Head clip to line up next to the section you want it to expand from. Play. If done correctly, the left (or right) edge will remain stationary and the clip width will expand to fill the originally designed area. See video for example.
Installation Instructions. (Talking Head is an Effect).
Keep up to date with Sight-Creations on Twitter and Facebook.
A good place to see all of my effects as well as several tutorials and other demonstrations in use is on my YouTube channel.
Vegas Baby Title
Vegas Baby User Guide
A Title for FCPX
The iconic Las Vegas Welcome sign was designed in 1959 by Betty Willis. It is in the style of “Googie Architecture” (FYI). She gave the design as a gift to the City of Las Vegas without copyright. It is in the public domain.
Vegas Baby is a 3D Text title for Final Cut Pro. It requires FCPX 10.3.4 or better, a video card with a minimum of 1GB of vRAM, and the installation of a specialized font (ZZSCVegasBaby-Regular.ttf) responsible for the “neon” letters and the sign shapes (it will be necessary to restart FCPX after installation of the font).
Vegas Baby is a complex effect with flashing lights and special textures (coin faces) and animations on two separate sides. Expect long render times. When dealing with the title in the FCPX storyline, it is best to set the View > Quality to Better Performance. Since Vegas Baby performs “reasonably well” using Better Performance, it was deemed eligible to be released. Please be patient with it!
Vegas Baby features an easily customizable “banner” (circled letters) and drop zone panels on the front and back sides. Separate titling for the front and back panels. Titling and drop zones can be combined. Complex text formatting will need to be handled via imported image/video or by creating compound clips in the storyline. An example would be any text message with more than one font used.
A 3D OSC (on-screen control) has been applied to this effect. For this reason, none of the text in the title is editable in the viewer but text boxes have been added to the Inspector to make text changes. To use the OSC simply single-click on the Vegas Baby panel and wait about 1 second. A Rectangular outline will appear and a 3D directional control will appear near the center of the rectangle region. It’s a hack… but it works. You can use the 3D control to keyframe rotation, but positioning via keyframe will have to be manually done with the parameter values in the Inspector. [Note: the OSC is a text character itself which is editable in FCPX – ignore anything you see in the Text Inspector as it pertains to this character used for the 3D onscreen control. If you accidentally change the character, its default is the character zero (‘0’) and its size is 856.0 if you find you need to manually reset these values.]
The Coin Features (Banner) Section
The neon letters in the circle shapes at the top of the panel are considered the banner. As with the real sign, the front surface of the circular regions have the pattern of a 1922 “Peace” silver dollar. The “coins” are not “regular” and each surface of the original WELCOME sign have different rotational orientations for the coins. This title has a feature to force them to align if you so choose — set the Coin Rot. Variance to 0% and set the Coin Rotation to orient the faces to the same angles across the characters of the banner.
In the Circle Text entry, you can enter anything from deleting the text (to completely remove the circled characters) to whatever you think can fit on a single line and still look good as a sign ;). Whatever you enter will apply the characters (only a-z lowercase [and space] are supported), the coin circles and the rim “ring” lights. A space character will add a small separation between letters.
There is a fundmental “lighting” structure to this 3D model. Sometimes expected colors may seem darker (or lighter) than the values provided in the inspector. Make visual adjustments in the Viewer and don’t rely so heavily on the numerical values. For times when even the “brightest” color is not bright enough: the numerical values of the RGB color can be adjusted to greater and less than the absolutes provided by the corresponding sliders. Click on the individual numerical values for the R, G, and B elements and drag up to go beyond 1.0 and drag down to go below 0 (towards -1).
Due to the design of the template, text is not editable in the viewer. For each panel, there is only an option for one font. If you need more complex textual design (more than one font, or font and graphics) create a compound clip in the storyline from titles and other graphics and add the compound clip to the drop zone for that panel. You can delete the compound clip from the storyline immediately after adding it to the template.
Flashing light animations will be affected by lengthening or shortening the time of the Vegas Baby title. Longer times will slow it down; shorter times will speed it up. Recommended length in storyline is about 5 – 15 seconds (10 is default). Ten seconds is a good length of time to leave this title active to give the viewer time to take in the whole effect.
The rest is fairly typical.
Published Paramters
ANIMATION CONTROL
Position — It is possible to position this template in the view with an OSC (described above). However, if you want to keyframe motion, you cannot use the OSC to make position changes. Use these parameters “manually” for keyframing. Another benefit of these parameters: no matter what rotational orientation you have set for the template, these parameters will move it in tradition X, Y & Z axes relative to the Viewer. Using the OSC: rotation changes the XYZ axis orientation as well. Position parameters override that orientation.
Rotation — Unlike Position, Rotation can be keyframed using the OSC. These parameters do not override those set in the Viewer.
Hide Stand — The blue stand can be removed from the scene to reduce the template to the basic sign.
Glow Amount — This is set to 3 by default. In general, this setting is likely the best setting. However, you can raise this value to create more “light halos” or turn it off altogether.
COIN FEATURES
Circle Text — This is where you enter the text for the “banner” section. Only lowercase alphabetic characters (a-z) are used for the effect. Other characters will not provide the correct visual effect.
Text Color — Keep in mind that this is supposed to be a neon-like light. You will want to adjust this color to a value that will be enhanced by the glow effect.
Circle BG Color — By default, this is set to 90% white. You can set this, and all colors in this template to “supercolors” (element values greater than 1.0 or less than 0.0).
Coin Face Intensity — This determines how dark the “marks” are that create the coin “face”. Setting this to 0 will fade the coin face out completely creating a solid color background for the neon characters. Setting this value to maximum intensity will help “punch through” the pattern if you adjust the Coin BG Color somewhat darker.
Coin Rotation — The “real” Las Vegas Welcome sign has 1922 Peace dollars painted on the backgrounds at varying angles of rotation. This is set at 360 (straight up) to help with the Variance (see below). When Variance is set to zero, all the coins are rotated to this value.
Coin Rot. Variance — The variation from one coin to the next for the rotation. When Coin Rotation is 0, this has no effect. When Coin Rotation is non-zero, this parameter will randomize the rotation between 0 and the Coin Rotation value.
Var. Random… — This is the Random Seed generator for the Variance. Click the “circle arrows” to generate a new “seed” value and change how the coins are varied.
Ring Light Color — Each character in the banner also has a “ring light” — another “neon” (or florescent) type light around the rim of the “coin” background. Use this parameter to change its color (default is white).
Emit Intensity — This parameter will change the brightness of the Ring Light color.
FRONT SIDE/BACK SIDE
(each section has identical parameters, both of which will be outlined in this section.
Front (Back) Text — Use this text box to enter the text you want to appear on the sign panel. This can be used in conjunction with a drop zone (always appears on top).
Collection — Font Book “collections” are supported with this template. If you manage your fonts with collections, you can set the collection here. For example, you have a collection of just “script” fonts, you can set this parameter to your scripts collection then search for the script font from that collection you are looking for without having to navigate a font menu that might be hundreds of fonts long.
Font — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience.
Size — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience.
Color — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience.
Weight — This is a feature of 3D text. You can use this parameter to change the thickness of characters, make them more bold or more thin. Best practice: hold the Option key down while dragging the numeric value for more refined alteration.
Line Spacing — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience.
Tracking — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience.
Baseline — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience. Use this parameter to help vertically align the text where you want it to appear.
Drop Zone — Optional. Drop Zones are pre-loaded with a transparent PNG so that the typical drop zone “symbol” does not appear.
Pan — Use the X and Y parameters to adjust the alignment of the image in the panel.
Scale — Use this parameter to size the media to fit within the panel.
Front (Back) Brightness — As mentioned above, this is a 3D model and lighting is affected by things like angle of rotation. You can use this parameter to help override a “too shadowy” look, or tone it down if it’s too bright.
Keep up to date with Sight-Creations on Twitter and Facebook.
A good place to see all of my effects as well as several tutorials and other demonstrations in use is on my YouTube channel.
Artistic Magnifier User Guide
Artistic Magnifier
A Title for FCPX
User Guide
Installation instructions: https://fcpxtemplates.com/installing-plugins-for-fcpx
Originally designed as a utility magnifier for tutorials and such, it turns out there are interesting visual side effects that make this effect usable anywhere!
This effect was designed as a Title which allows any other object positioned below the title attached to the storyline, including text. If you’re okay with a little softness in the text (which is also a nice effect occasionally), this effect can be used to “transition” text with a slight drift and marvelous fade.
This effect was designed so that the scaled media used in the magnified view region maintains an “edge alignment” proportional to the position of the magnified region within the view frame of the video. What that means is: when you align the edge of the magnifier region with any edge of the view frame, the scaled media also aligns with that edge. The magnifier is designed not to go beyond the view frame edge, it will always be contained within the view frame. This technique means that when the magnifier region moves away from the center of the screen, the scaled media also moves in the opposite direction. It is a very nice effect — a beautiful difference in parallax view of the scene and gives a subtle sense of “3D-ness” to the scene.
In the diagram below, the Magnifier region is moving along the direction of the green arrow and as it moves, the Scaled Media is moving toward the border of the Drop Zone/Storyline frame boundary in the direction of the red arrow, synchronized to coincide at the edges of the frame boundary. The Scale value determines how much movement is perceptible.
Parameters:
This effect has a single OSC (onscreen control) to assist in positioning in the viewer. The position can be keyframed.
Width/Height: Due to the nature of the design for this effect, it was necessary to limit the width and height to only 1280 wide by 720 high. If you’d like to see how this was done, you can go into the Motion template in Motion and dig it out. It did require working a spreadsheet in Numbers to make the calculations necessary and for values beyond the 1280 horizontal and 1080 vertical, there was not enough room to add the number of control points necessary to handle the exponential expansion of values to make alignment for a larger region possible. Maybe, someday, Apple will add a way to perform that kind of math automatically and this project will be updated. It is not necessary to keep these values proportional to each other. Within the bounds of the maxWidth and maxHeight, any size can be created (even 0 by 0) and keyframed for effect.
Scale: Range from 0% to 400%; default is 200% (or 2X). May be keyframed for effect. All scale values work with the math used for the region/scaled media edge alignments. However, when going smaller than 100%, it will be necessary to resize the width and height parameters if an outline boundary is desired.
Roundness: The magnifier region may have rounded corners. Rounding can also be used to create a more circular effect (although you may have trouble obtaining a “perfect circle”).
Border Color: keyframable value can be animated to change color over life, or simply be set for the life of the effect.
Border Opacity: keyframable value can be animated to fade in/out the border.
Border Width: keyframable value can be animated to adjust the weight of the boarder. The center of the border is the edge of the magnifier region. Using large values will obscure edge pixels.
First/Last Point Offsets: These parameters can be used to offset the beginning and end where the border is drawn around the region. These can be keyframed to create an (eye-catching) animation, typically drawing the box, or used to create an animated arrow (see the Outline Start and End Caps below).
Corner Style: when the region is set up as an unrounded rectangle and outlined with a line wider than 1 pixel, the corner style can be set to Square, Round or Bevel (which will create a 45° angle “cut” on the corners).
Outline Start/End Cap— There are four options: None (similar to Square), Square, Round, Bevel and Arrow. None ends at the actual control (corner) point whereas Square represents the center of a “fill” of a square that is “Width x Width”. Bevel cuts two 45° angles on the end and Arrow applies an arrow head. (Arrow size controls were not included with this effect: they were deemed superfluous for the most part).
Feather Edge/Falloff: These controls can be used to control a blurred and mixed edge between the magnifier region and the underlying media. There are values available beyond the slider, so click and drag the values up/down to create a larger feather.
Bg Overlay Color/Opacity: This effect includes a method of darkening the area outside the magnifier region, for effect. Color is black by default but may be set to any value and animated over time. Opacity is also a keyframable value that can be animated to fade in/out the color overlay.
AUTO ANIMATION section:
These parameters deal with transitioning the magnification effect.
Fade In Time: the number of frames to fade up from 0 to 100% opacity. Timing may be affected by stretching the effect’s timing in the storyline.
Fade Out Time: the number of frames to fade out from 100% to 0% opacity. Timing may be affected by stretching the effect’s timing in the storyline.
Start Offset: the number of frames before starting the Fade In.
End Offset: the number of frames before the end where the Fade Out ends.
These parameters controlling the fade of only the magnifier region allows animating other features before (and/or after) these Fades are applied.
Demo:
Fonts available inside Final Cut Pro X
Fonts available inside Final Cut Pro X
There are 72 fonts in 53 families inside the Final Cut Pro X application (and in Motion as well).
AvenirBlackOblique.ttf
AvianoSansBold.ttf
Banco Heavy.ttf
Bank Gothic Light.ttf
Bank Gothic Medium.ttf
BasicCommercialLTCom-Bold.ttf
BeaufortPro.ttf
BebasNeue.ttf
Blair Medium.ttf
Bradley Hand Bold.ttf
Brush Script.ttf
Comic Script Extended.ttf
Comic Script Regular.ttf
ComicScript.ttc
Coolvetica.ttf
DDT-bold.ttf
DDT-condensedsemibold.ttf
Duality.ttf
Edwardian Script.ttf
EngraversGothic-Regular.ttf
Flatbush Bold Oblique.ttf
Flatbush Bold.ttf
Forgotten Futurist Bold Italic.ttf
Forgotten Futurist Bold.ttf
ForgottenFuturist.ttc
Franklin Gothic Demibold.ttf
GaramondRoughHEF-Medium.ttf
GaramondRoughHEF-Reg.ttf
Gaz Transport.ttf
Georgia.ttf
GillSansUltraBold.ttf
Goudy Old Style Bold.ttf
Goudy Old Style.ttf
Handwriting Dakota.ttf
HopperScript.ttf
HumanaSerif.ttc
Junegull.ttc
Korataki.ttc
Loopiejuice-Regular.ttf
Luminari-Regular.ttf
Meloriac.ttf
Misadventures Black Italic.ttf
Misadventures Black.ttf
Octin Team Heavy.ttf
Octin.ttc
OctinSpraypaint.ttc
OctinStencil.ttc
OldEnglishText-Regular.ttf
OperinaPro.ttf
Paleographic Thin.ttf
Paleographic.ttf
Phosphate.ttc
Posterboard.ttf
Proxima Nova.ttc
SabonLTPro-Roman.ttf
Scheme.ttc
Shababa.ttf
Shabash Pro Regular.ttf
Sinzano.ttc
SketchBlock-Light.ttf
Snell Roundhand.ttc
Soap.ttc
Strenuous.ttf
Superclarendon Bold.ttf
Superclarendon.ttf
Synchro LET.ttf
Trattatello.ttf
VIP.ttf
Virtus-Regular.otf
Wanted.ttc
Zingende Light.ttf
Zingende Regular.ttf
These fonts reside inside the actual application package in what is referred to as resource files. To find these fonts inside FCPX:
Right click on Final Cut Pro in your Applications folder and select Show Package Contents. In the contents window, open Contents, then open Frameworks, then open Flexo.framework. Navigate through Versions > A > Resources > Fonts.
To make these fonts available in other applications in FCPX, it is possible to copy/duplicate the fonts by selecting all the fonts and right-click-dragging the fonts out to another temporary location. Open Font Book and drag all the fonts into a collection (I recommend creating a new Category and name it FCPX Collection).
If you create a separate collection, that collection (whatever you named it) will be available in Apple Motion which allows you to “shortcut” directly to these fonts when working with text for templates. It’s a great time saver and a missing feature inside Final Cut Pro!
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Published on Jan. 16, 2017
More About Santa and Rudolph
3D models in Apple Motion are essentially text. True 3D is only available to text objects and in order to create a model, the parts must be part of a “font”. Character shapes are simply vector shapes and if you know how to create a font, then character shapes can be whatever you need to assemble the “characters” into whatever you can imagine. If you purchase one of our 3D model projects, you are essentially purchasing a font with a pre-assembled project (generator or Motion project) to go along with it — something you can use right away!
Our latest 3D model is the somewhat cartoonish Santa and Rudolph:
Designing a human face is an extremely difficult task and would bring the rendering speed of the project down to its knees, so to speak, so Santa and Rudolph had to be simplified.
The point is: this project is basically a font and this post is to let you know that there is a bit more to the font than used in the project.
There are characters to create boxes and bows:
And included in the font are 21 snowflake designs:
Snowflake characters can be used to “dress up” the package wrapping or create a snow emitter effect for FCPX.
The original project was intended to be only the sleigh! And then it became much more ambitious, but as it was being developed (and the font was developed first), it became clear that it would be necessary to keep certain things as simple as possible — nobody needs a generator in FCPX that going to take more than ten minutes to render *just* to be able to “play” without skipping too many frames. The decision was made to stop at Santa and Rudolph. Santa’s bag was simplified to two characters and no attempt was made to decorate the sleigh beyond what is available as basic 3D Substance options.
That doesn’t keep you, the end user, from developing your own projects with this same font. If you purchased Santa and Rudolph, then it’s in your license to do so. This post is to make you aware of the availability of these extras!
If you purchased Santa and Rudolph, you can download this “extras” bundle containing two Motion 5.3 projects that pre-use the characters. The “packageDev” project is depicted in the “boxes” demo image above and uses the characters for the square and elongated boxes and their tops as well as the character used for the “bow” which is developed using a Replicator. The project demonstrates how to colorize the boxes and create a ribbon effect. The three square boxes have the bow linked to the position and rotation of the top and moving the top in 3D space will keep the bow in position. That task is a little more difficult with the oblong box and these demos have not been fully developed yet. The snowflake demo is set up with a replicator: each character is set up as a single sequential frame within a group which is cloned. The clone is replicated so that the sequence can be played like video. If you change the replicator to an emitter, you can create your own snowstorm with each flake appearing in random order, just like in real life.
Please remember that your use of any of our model fonts have licensing restrictions. You can create whatever you like from them, you just cannot sell or distribute the fonts in any way.
Introducing a new FCPX effect: Comic Book SC
Introducing a new FCPX effect
Comic Book SC
Literally years in the making. I’ve been after this effect for a long time. I finally had to build a custom halftoning effect for this template and it turned out very nicely. There’s a video preview demo below; check it out. I have to self host the video because neither YouTube nor Vimeo would handle it and it may have to pause occasionally (it’s a very large file of 356MB at 28mbits/sec). I must have encoded almost a dozen versions! I was able to make a passable version for YouTube, but it requires viewing in 4K format (4K allows up to 45Mbps bit rate for 30p and the encoding worked out fairly well u2014 not great u2014 passable u2014 barely). Not useful for mobile devices or people with slower internet connections. My self-hosted video isn’t that friendly either but at least you can right click on it and download it for viewing locally, or wait for it to load in the player. Once loaded, you can watch it over and over again at full speed (and the player automatically resizes to fit your browser window).
Please don’t buy this effect expecting to create cool YouTube or Vimeo videos… they won’t fly. This is a more pro level video effect, not because I think it’s so good (although I do), but because of the encoding requirements to make it look… right.
Check out some of these stills taken directly from the FCPX storyline!
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A good place to see all of my effects as well as several tutorials and other demonstrations in use is on my YouTube channel.
A Simple Trick with FCPX Titles
A Simple Trick With FCPX Titles
Rotating Title text in FCPX
You will need FCPX 10.2.x in order to make use of this tip.
[ QuickTools has been upgraded, enhanced and greatly expanded by SC KeyFX! ]
I’ve created dozens (if not more than 100) titles for FCPX, but for my own personal use, 95% or more of the time I just simply add a Basic Title to my storyline as needed. If you’re familiar with Basic Title (and you should be!) you’ll know that there are no parameters available. One of the features of Basic Title is that the Title Background is absent. This Title Background is a placeholder used in developing Titles in Apple Motion to represent the content of the storyline in FCPX (or more accurately, the content of *everything* video/image related beneath the title in the storyline). Something to keep in mind as I’ll get back to that later.
The behavior of Basic Title in the storyline is that you can click on the text in the canvas and drag it around to place it in the scene. You cannot keyframe the motion to create an animation in this way. Keyframing animation is not the important point of this story, it’s just a point of note.
What this article is about is a “trick” to be able to *rotate* the text in 3D space to arrange it in the scene. It should work in any Title or Generator that includes editable text in the canvas.
With the Title selected in the storyline, click on the Text tab of the Inspector. Activate 3D Text (you can turn it back off afterwards!)
Go back into the canvas and mouse over the text area. You should see an outline appear:
Click *once* inside the rectangle. You should see a 3D control appear:
Clicking and dragging inside the circles will allow you to rotate the text in 3D space. The top circle is the X-axis rotation (a red “great circle” will appear when activated). The left circle will be the Y-axis rotation (its great circle is green). The right circle will be the Z-axis rotation (and its great circle is blue).
If you hold down the command and option keys, you can coax all the great circles to appear and stay on allowing a floating rotation control with the mouse in all directions at once.
You may not like or need a 3D look to the text so you can turn 3D Text back off to restore the 2D text and the orientation will remain as in the example frame below. This is a great tool to help align text along perspective planes inside video. It’s not perfect but seems to be convincing enough most of the time. To make it work better — if you have Motion — you could publish the Camera: Angle of View parameter and possibly the Camera: Distance (Position.Z) to emphasize parallax views.
Integrating Titles Into the Scene
The second part of this article is about taking the technique to another level, that have having it appear integrated into the scene — to have action move in front of the text. Take a look at the examples in this video:
QuickMask is part of the QuickTools Effects sold on this site and on my store on Creative Market. The mask only works in this fashion on Titles that have their Title Background placeholder disabled. You can download a *FREE* Basic Title with Parameters title/template here (http://sight-creations.com/free_stuff/sc_Title_with_Params.zip) which will allow you to animate the title in the canvas without having to use the Transform parameters for the entire “layer.” You are able to keyframe rotation using the onscreen 3D controls, and although the position parameters respond to onscreen control movement, you must manually keyframe the Position parameters (for some unknown reason) as onscreen control changes for position are ignored in FCPX.
The power of QuickMask is based on the newly included feature of “effects masks” in FCPX. For an overview of Effects Masks watch this video:
As it turns out, effects can be used on Titles as well and if a title has no background placeholder in use then this visual effect can be accomplished with QuickMask. The masks are easily animated/keyframed making creating the effects shown in the top video possible. The downside is that you have to manually “track” the masks. The upside: manual tracking is usually faster (although more tedious) than automatic tracking — and considerably less expensive! Note: since this technique only works on Titles with no Title Background layer, the Color Mask option is useless (unless you use it directly on the text).
—F•X
FCPX Editing Tip — J,K,L and beyond
FCPX Editing Tip — J,K,L and beyond
Most people know that the J, K, and L keys can be used to skim video in FCPX. It’s been around since… Quicktime Pro (I don’t even know which version!) The ‘K’ key always stops playback. Typing ‘J’ will play in reverse in whatever frame rate your project is [i.e. -1x time.] A double tap on J will set playback at -2x speed. Triple tap: -4x speed. Up to 6 taps on the key will send the speed all the way up to -32x playback. That’s fast. The same is true using the ‘L’ key, except in the forward direction.
The problem is, if you 5-tap the L key (16x forward) and you want to slow down to 2x forward, you have to Stop (K) and restart with a double-tap on the L key.
There is another way.
Type Command-Option-K to call up the Command Editor.
In the Search field at the top right, search for “play rate” (without the quotes, of course).
In the Command List > Command section, you will see a listing of all the play rate speeds: Play Rate -1, Play Rate -2, …,
Play Rate -32, then Play Rate 1, Play Rate 2, etc… to Play Rate 32.
You can assign any available key combination that you like, that is convenient for you, but I’d like to suggest:
Reverse Speeds:
Play Rate -1 → Command-Control-Shift-keypad 1
Play Rate -2 → Command-Control-Shift-keypad 2
Play Rate -4 → Command-Control-Shift-keypad 3
…
Play Rate -32 → Command-Control-Shift-keypad 6
and
Forward Speeds:
Play Rate 1 → Command-Option-Control-keypad 1
Play Rate 2 → Command-Option-Control-keypad 2
Play Rate 4 → Command-Option-Control-keypad 3
…
Play Rate -32 → Command-Option-Control-keypad 6
Select the Command and hold down the modifier keys and type the number value on the keypad (laptop users use the regular number keys.)
The spacebar will always stop playback as well as the K key.
Now when skimming through your video, you can change speeds in one action and go immediate from one speed to another without having to stop and restart the process each time you want to change speeds.