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Using Motion Templates in Apple Final Cut Pro, Part 2

Feb 2, 2010 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

Back again working with Apple Motion. When I last left you, you had just finished customizing a Motion template in Final Cut Pro. You liked the effect, but decided that you wanted to change the font and font color, activities that you can only perform in Motion. Resolved to go where you've never gone before, you took a deep breath and right-clicked the Motion template in Final Cut Pro and chose Open Copy in Editor. It's cruel to make you wait two weeks after such a courageous decision, but schedules are schedules—just ask my editor.

Anyway, after choosing Open Copy in Editor, Motion should be open and you should be staring at a very blank screen. In this installment of Final Cut Pro Insider, we'll customize this template and create a new (and very simple) opening sequence in Motion, and then use it in a Final Cut Pro project.

Let's start by opening up some windows in Motion. Press F5 to open the Project pane on the left of the Canvas, which should open in the Layers tab, and then F6 to open the Timing pane, which contains the Timeline and some other tabs we won't be working with. The Layers tab displays the hierarchy of objects in your project, while the Timeline shows the timing of their deployment. We're not going to work with the Timeline right away, but the workflow is easier to understand when all the critical windows are all open.

Speaking of critical windows, another important window is on the left: the Utility window. It contains the File Browser, where you'll hunt for files to include in the project; the Library, which contains Motion's content and effects presets; and the Inspector, which contains the configurable parameters for content and effects deployed in Motion.

At a high level, to customize a Motion template, dig through the Layers tab until you find the object that you want to change, click to identify it, then click over to the Inspector and make the changes. To change the font and font color in the Cracked Copy.HD template, I'll start by twirling the Cracked triangle in the Layers tab to find the text. Twirl once, and you'll see four items: the Camera and three Groups.

Click the triangle in Group 3, and you'll see three items, TEXT HERE 3, and two others. We're definitely getting warm. Twirl TEXT HERE 3, and you'll get see two items: Circle 3 and Text Here 3. The item Text Here 3 is the object that we want to edit, so click that.

Then, in the Inspector tab of the Utility pane on the left, click the Text tab and then the Format tab below that. You'll see a range of typical text-related controls, such as font, family, size, and tracking. Choose the desired font and related configuration options.

Then, click the Text Style pane to adjust the color and add an outline, glow, or drop shadow. You know the drill: to change the color, click the color chip beneath each font characteristic to choose the color; to enable and outline, blow, or drop shadow, click the respective checkbox to enable it and then choose your parameters. Note the Style Preset list box atop the pane, which contains about 30 presets you can use if your creativity is flagging. If you're going to choose a style, however, the style's font selection will override yours once applied, so choose the style before selecting your font.

Of course, we just made the changes to the third text group; duplicate these steps to adjust the other two text strings.

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