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Filed under: Apple •Motion •GentryMedia Sister Sites •ProVideo Coalition •Motion Graphics •Tips •

Getting the Most out of Motion

One of the most enjoyable features of Motion is its ability to play back even moderately complex projects in real time - allowing for a type of interactive development process where you can add and animate layers while the project plays back. In fact, the real-time playback feels so intuitive and natural after only a short time that it becomes quite addictive - to the point where it can be really annoying when the performance begins to slow down.

Once you start adding a lot of particles, blur, or multiple HD video streams with filters, masks, and behaviors, things can slow down to a crawl quite quickly. Of course, you can render your project like you would in other compositing applications - but there are things you can do to improve playback performance as your project grows in complexity.

Here are 12 tips on how to get the best performance out of Motion:

1) Upgrade your graphics card. The graphics card is key to Motion’s ability to play back in real time. If you have a G5 or a Mac Pro with the stock graphics card, you can replace it with a better card - you’ll see a significant increase in playback performance. One good card that works in G5’s and Mac Pro’s is the Radeon X1900 (different versions for each machine). For Mac Pros, also check out the Radeon 3870 - it’s probably the best card out there right now for Motion. There are new cards coming out all the time; check barefeats for testing data.

2) Install more RAM. The more RAM you have, the more video you can load into RAM and play back - allowing you to work with a larger play range. You should have at least 4GB if you can; some MacBook Pros can be upgraded to 3GB or 4GB. I usually get my ram from Crucial or Kingston.

3) Get an Intel Mac. I wrote my first Motion book using a G4 PowerBook - and Motion was just barely useable on that machine. When I upgraded to a MacBook Pro, I was astonished at how much better Motion ran. In fact, the difference in performance as you move from MacBook Pro to iMac to Mac Pro is not as great as you might imagine - the primary benefit of the tower is the ability to upgrade the graphics card as new ones are released, but Motion runs just fine on a MBP, and runs great on an iMac.

4) Stick to one monitor. Dual monitors are great, and you can tear off any tab of the Motion interface to move it to another screen, but by running two monitors you are splitting the VRAM on your graphics card, which impacts performance (assuming, of course, that you are driving both monitors from the same card).

5) Create short projects. Motion is happiest with short projects - say 30 seconds to a minute. Don’t send every clip from your 90 minute documentary from Final Cut Pro to one Motion project in order to add lower thirds, etc. - create short projects by just sending specific clips.

6) Set a short play range. Motion loads your play range into RAM for playback. Set play range In and Out points around the region you are currently on, and reset as you move along the project.

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