Peter, did you see League of Extraordinary Gentleman? I believe you will agree that worse fire effects have appeared on screen than what you have created. I am with Bjorn. Getting familiar with Motion quickly will be essential for me to stay competative.

Duane:

Don't get me wrong. Motion is amazing -- I am sure if I took more time the sequences could be refined and be made much better. I've worked with the program for about two - three hours only. My comments were directed more at my lack of skill than at Motion's capabilities.

When I see what's done locally on TV, it's clear that this product is going to vastly improve the quality of what smaller production shops can do.

That fire and fog clip looks pretty impressive to me, and I'm sure that with time and practice all sorts of things are possible. I'm currently considering getting either Motion or After Effects but I don't know how they compare.

I realise that Motion is a lot cheaper and far less powerful, but is it generally true to say that these fog and fire effects could also be done in AE, and that Motion is a subset of AE? Or are they quite different applications? And does Motion integrate with FCP any better than AE does?

OK now I am getting a consistent crash on one project -- an embellishment of the "Dragon" doodle posted above. The only change has been the aqddition of a .jpg file of fish (read dragon) scales to the background layer.

I get a crash every time I open the project file -- several seconds after it generates a formal Apple crash report. Quick read of the report suggests it's the ATI driver thread that's the problem every time.

Have you been to ATI's site and checked for a later version of the Driver? What version OS are you using?

wow nice work, ok gotta get motion not bad at all

Jeff:

As I understand it, normal Apple Software Updates should include new drivers as and if needed. I did just upgrade to 10.3.5 because I thought this was required to installed the application support that Motion requires.

The Apple support forums are reporting some problems with speed etc. I am still hunting for someone with the same experience/system etc. I suppose this is par for the course on complex and brand new software.

They where out at the store so I ordered it from Apple. I guess I have it in about 6 ...








weeks.

Which upgrade did you use? The combo upgrade or simple upgrade? Do the combo update (has to be downloaded from Apple Support) and repair permissions both before and after running the update.

I did not do the combo. I'll try what you suggest and post the results.

Take a look at the following article. Seems to answer my questions. I have the same set-up that is described in the first part of the article except that I have 2.5G of memory.

http://www.lafcpug.org/feature_motion_videocrd.html

A better video card seems to make a great deal of difference.

Yes, it is slow on a dual 2 G5 with 9800pro and 2.5GB ram. It feels just like FCE 1 (that was much smoother in version 2). Also remember the early iMovie days when things where jerky?

It is useful but since it is jerky and slow it is hard to get the timing right.

I ran the same sequence in FCP and in Motion that showed that Motion had trouble running a 2 min clip with a single stereo sound track in a fluent way. I like it a lot but I think that the app is not finished / optimized yet.

Can anyone offer opinions or insight on running Motion on a G4? I've got one of the last dual 1.4Ghz PowerMacs and was thinking of upgrading the video card to run Motion. But it sounds like the program chokes anything short of a 2x2.5Ghz G5. I'm eager to get my hands on this software, but I'm wondering if I'm just going to have to let it go by until I can upgrade my hardware.

motion runs pretty well on my 15" pb, its all about the video card.
run motion and look at the processor % and ram % and its not even using 50% of it.

<<<-- Originally posted by Jeff Donald : If you're buying now, I'd get the nvidia. It's currently the fastest. However, I prefer ATI -->>>

According to the speed test on Bare Feats (http://www.barefeats.com/motion.html) , the ATI RADEON 9800 XT is significantly faster than the Nvidia GeForce FX 5200.

Just wondering about your quote above. Is there something I don't kow?

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