Having Issues with Motion L3

[Dan Brockett]

Hi all:

Really lame question but I am very graphically challenged and only deal with motion graphics when someone puts a gun to my head as they have on this project.

I customized the "Weave" template in Motion 2. Changed it around enough to make it look pretty decent. Did a cool looking open and bumper. Bring them both into FCP, work and look great. Now my confidence is up. However, it quickly plummets back to Earth when I do the L3. When I bring the L3 into FCP, it has no alpha, even when I export it from Motion as "lossless+alpha" movie or as a DV (timeline in FCP is DV). When I look in the browser columns in FCP, the clip shows up with no alpha channel.

The L3 template in Motion shows up with a Grey background with a film strip that is labeled, "Background - Replace Here" in the Motion timeline. Do I need to somehow replace the BG with some sort of alpha channel before I export it? If I export it as is, that Grey background actually shows up in FCP. If I delete it and export it that way, the actual L3 clip ends up with a black BG, not an alpha channel BG. That means I have tried exporting the L3 from Motion in three different ways but no success.

What really obvious step am I missing here? You don't have to export the video clip you want to key the L3 over from FCP, into Motion, then back into FCP do you? There is a way to actually just export the L3 clip from Motion and bring it into FCP and have it key over a clip, right? Tried every composite mode in FCP too. Some of the almost got it but it still didn't look right. Some of them looked very weird too.

Motion 2, FCP 5.1.4, G5 dual 2.3gHz, 4 GB ram, QT 7.2

Thanks!

Dan

[Dan Brockett]

messed with it some more and discovered it's in the way that the file is exported. You must either export the finished Motion file as a .motn to FCP OR you export as "Lossless + Alpha" instead of your video codec.

Sometimes Apple isn't THAT intuitive.

Dan

[Dino Leone]

Originally Posted by Dan Brockett

messed with it some more and discovered it's in the way that the file is exported. You must either export the finished Motion file as a .motn to FCP OR you export as "Lossless + Alpha" instead of your video codec.

Sometimes Apple isn't THAT intuitive.

Dan

I thought you can use Animation codec with alpha ?? At least that's what I was using last time if I remember correctly. (that's with motion 3, fcp6).
Also, I think there's a huge difference between importing .motn or rendered files from motion into fcp. I once tried placing .motn files directly which leads to fcp having to render everything... this brutally brought down my G5 (which is anyway struggling with motion) in fcp.

Dino