DV Info Net - Motion 5 tutorials

Motion 5 is an excellent addition to FCP X. You can do things with it that Hollywood spent tens of thousands of dollars doing just a few decades ago and one can really ratchet up the professional look of the video. A fantastic bang-for-the-buck.

As for good tutorials, there are a lot of good freebee ones out there now but what will separate them is how you relate to the presenter. My preference is for someone who talks slower and doesn’t rush through the steps. Having it organized, like with an outline, is a plus. I never took a paid tutorial because I worked out of a text book and when there was a problem I searched on the Internet to find out how to solve the problem and get past it.

You didn’t mention if you had a book yet, but early on there were really two books available, one of which was “Motion 5, Designing and animating Motion Graphics” © 2012 (I think when “5” was released) by Mark Spencer. It came with a DVD and one could go to a web site for more information. The book is an “Apple Pro Training Series” text book.

A second book, out of print, titled “How to Cheat in Motion” by Patrick Sheffield is excellent to kick-start creative ideas. Basically, it is a compendium of ideas with an abbreviated step-by-step procedure on how to do it. The author assumes some knowledge of how to use Motion 5 and for beginners, in order to use some of these ideas one really needs a text book.

My approach to using Motion without using a paid training series was to make a document outline that followed the book’s chapters. As I went though the lessons I’d write information in the document, especially for those areas where I had difficulties, complete with screen shots. There is an errata list and one can put that info in the document so you know when to look out for the problem, and/or put a Post-It-Note on the page in the book. One of the biggest problems I’ve had is remembering all the details, terminology, etc. One really needs to use what you learn (at least I do), ortherwise it is easily forgotten.

Using Motion creatively in one’s video will really help to separate it out from being just another ho-hum average video.