Price: $999 (the price of Final
Cut Studio); $299 upgrade to any
previous Final Cut Pro version
Requirements: Intel processor,
Mac OS 10. 5. 6 or later, 1GB RAM (2GB
recommended for compressed
HD or uncompressed SD video,
4GB for uncompressed HD), ATI or
Nvidia graphics card (integrated
Intel graphics in some laptops not
supported)
Toggle realistic shadows and
reflections at will. Realistic depth-of-field effects. Easy scrolling
credits.
One bug created visual
distortions when exporting.
Mac|Life
RATED
AWESOME
MOTION 4
Motion 4 isn’t a standalone product—it ships with
latest version of Final Cut Studio. Yes, this video
effects program might be a mere “component” of a
larger software suite, but because it competes with
standalone applications, we decided to distinguish it
with its own review. And we went all “deep focus” on it,
because Motion 4 has come a long way since the days
when Apple was selling it as solo software.
Motion came into the world as a rather immature
competitor to Adobe After Effects, the respected and
feature-rich standard-bearer. Since that time, Apple
has steadily improved Motion to the point where it’s
a credible alternative to the Adobe stalwart. The fact
that you get Motion in Final Cut Studio 3 (along with
a number of other fantastic, pro-level apps) makes
it pretty hard to ignore Apple’s stake in the video-editing game.
The software helps you create slick motion
graphics for everything from commercials to DVD
menus to film and video title sequences. When Apple
released the previous version (about two and a half
years ago), it was the first time we thought Motion
was really ready for a wide variety of projects, thanks
to new features letting you set up cameras, lights,
and objects in 3D space. But those 3D features only
went so far, because Motion still couldn’t cast realistic
APPLE MOTION 4
the New LeAdeR iN
MotioN gRAPhics?
shadows or reflections. Sure, you could fake those
effects by creating duplicate objects and morphing
and blurring them until they looked like shadows or
reflections, but it was a painstaking process.
Motion 4 fixes all this. For starters, light sources
can now cast realistic shadows on everything in your
3D world. You can toggle lights to cast shadows or
not and toggle objects to receive shadows or not. You
can also tweak other parameters, such as a shadow’s
edge softness and its color. Similarly, Motion 4 now
lets an object—say, a video layer, shape, or paint
stroke—cast reflections on its neighbors, giving you
precise control over how reflections fall off.
Apple also adds more 3D realism by way of realistic
depth-of-field effects, which enable you to control
the relative sharpness and softness of foreground
and background elements in a scene. Keeping some
elements in focus and others out of focus helps
direct the viewer’s attention to what’s important and
imbues a scene with true filmlike qualities. Motion 3
had no way of knowing what should be in focus and
what should be blurry; again, you had to manually
blur elements to simulate depth-of-field effects. But
now Motion 4 lets you easily set a point in 3D space
where the camera will focus—anything closer or
farther away will automatically fall off into fuzziness,
depending on the characteristics you’ve given your
camera. And speaking of the camera, Motion 4 has
added Camera Framing, which enables you to pick an
object on which to keep the camera pointed, no matter
where you move the camera or objects in your scene.
Rolling credits are a staple of film editing, but it’s
never been easy to actually animate a basic credit
sequence. Motion 4 makes the process a piece of cake.
You can import a text file containing your credits, set
type properties, and use a custom navigation tool
to quickly jump to any part of the credits to perform
last-minute edits. Finally, just apply a Scroll Text
behavior to your credits, and then adjust scroll speed,
direction, and other useful attributes. Voilà! Instant
and professional scrolling credits.
The bottom line. With Motion’s intuitive interface,
its tight integration with Final Cut Pro, and the latest
round of new features, there’s nothing holding Motion
4 back from doing world-class work.—Helmut Kobler
