Motion Graphics

by Dave Brewis

As an After Effects user, I'm someone who has learnt to love the 'mathematical' aspect of motion graphics design. Calculating change over time and putting pegs in the ground by adding keyframes is to me what motion graphics design is about 'time painting by numbers', if you will.

When Apple demoed Motion at Expo here in Paris recently, however, the whole keyframing approach seemed to be being challenged, and the price barrier to professional compositing smashed. So there was nothing slow about my motion towards the sales stand to pick up a copy of said software, and to get it running on the G5 as soon as.

A few weeks have passed, and so I thought I'd write up my findings to date.

Unlike Adobe After Effects, which requires a render to preview a project, Motion provides "real-time on-screen responsiveness and interactivity that feels like a dedicated system.

Yes, this is Apple hype. But, having used Motion in anger on two projects (one with the client hanging on my shoulder), I have to say Apple have a point.

Our primary input is no longer the use of keyframes, but by 'Drag and Drop', and utilizing Behaviours, Filters, Emitters and the setting of Parameters. And, having done so, we can preview our work instantaneously.

Each addition, change and adjustment, even the smallest manipulation, whether by moving a slider, entering a value or by clicking on an element in the Canvas window and dragging it to a new location, is displayed in real time on your screen as Motion loops through your project.

It's certainly intuitive to use, and it does change the way you work a little. Obviously the trick with creating composite effects is to be able to 'see' your required effect before you even launch the software (and even before you shoot in some cases). However, Motion allows you to tweak intuitively and in that respect it supports a more iterative design experience.

Of course, this is all made possible by Apple's G5, and in particular three of its constituents, namely the CPU processor, System RAM and the Video Monitor Card.

From what I've read I understand that the Video Monitor Card is crucial in terms of Motion's ability to playback in real time, and in particular the amount of VRAM on the card.

This is because the Video Card is doing all the calculations needed to describe the effect before displaying it on the monitor, and the VRAM holds all the information for each frame before drawing it on screen, before being flushed and calculating the next frame, and so on.

In my studio I'm running Motion on a G5 2.5 Ghz with 1.5 GB RAM and a stock ATI Radeon 9600 XT card with 128 DDR video memory, and using a 23 inch Apple cinema display.

Suffice to say I'm really impressed with the results. What tends to happen is that as you add effects and elements to your project, the frame rate drops on playback. But not so much as to interfere with your workflow, although this is obviously dependent on the complexity of your project.

Up until now I've only used Motion on DVCAM (PAL) material, and whereas I can't foresee any throughput issues when working in HDV, I think my system as it currently stands would choke on Digibeta or HD material.

Obviously Motion integrates really well with FCP using Motion as your external editor for effects, and also allows you to view your composites on a broadcast video monitor via FireWire out.

To conclude, I hope that Motion will make our design and compositing process more fun, and free up our creativity.

Technically speaking, I wouldn't attempt to use Motion on anything other than a high end G5 with a decent Video Card but, to be fair, the money you save on purchasing the software should help you pay for one!