Apple, Sony & Newtek

NAB Diary: Tuesday

Ok, Ive spend an entire page just talking about Final Cut Pro HD, but what else did Apple show?

MOTION.

Apple would be the first to say that Motion is not meant to be an After Effects killer, but with the features, and price point, I will be the first to say that it is a definite shot in the head to Adobes compositing application. Why do I say this? Arent I a big AE user and supporter?

If, in the last two days, youve been living in denial or under a rock, Motion is Apples motion graphic package that includes behaviors, particles, text creation, physics, and much much more. If you are an editor, or indie person who needs to create high quality motion backs, bumpers, credits, etc., and are intimidated by the interface of other applications, this adding dynamic design elements to your project a snap. This means that a lot of users who might have purchased After Effects (or combustion), might be better off with Motion. At $299, Motion is going to put a huge dent in Mac AE and combustion sales. To borrow a phrase from my sister, ?Killer?.

One of the things that will make this migration happen is Apples take on keyframe creation, or lack of keyframe creation. With Behaviors, you simply apply a behavior to an element in your project and using a nice heads up display interface, you can direct where, how fast, and even what interactions the element should have. You do all of this without creating a single keyframe.

Not to make you think that Motion doesnt create keyframes, if you are someone that feels comfortable in that environment, then you can certainly do that, but after seeing the demo, I doubt I will want to go back to keyframes.

Since I already mentioned After Effects, Motion will also allow you to use third party After Effects plug-ins to generate magic, in addition to the 90 or so effects already built into the application.

The interface to Motion look so much like LiveType and SoundTrack, and since both of those applications come with themes and presets, I had to ask if Motion would include templates and themes for users to instantly add or modify for their next project. The answer of course was yes, Motion will include a large number of professionally designed templates for your use.

I dont want to give everything away about this application, but the final item I want to point out that is part of the Motion package is a very impressive particle system that, when the appropriate behavior is applied, also has a very nice real world physics engine.

Whats missing or bad about Motion? For a first release built from the ground up, Motion 1.0 is very robust, but it doesnt have the ability to do 3D layers. Is that a big deal? Not for those of use who want to quickly generate powerful motion graphics for our next project.

The other bad thing about Motion 1.0? It wont be released until it is ready to be released, but signs point to Summer. They say summer doesnt come fast enough, but in this case, I hope it speeds its way to my door.

Integration between FCPHD and Motion also includes tight integration with the latest release of DVD Studio Pro. Those of us in attendance spent so much time covering FCPHD and Motion that we ran out of time and didnt get to get an up close look at DVDSP. This is a shame, because the new graphical views, compressor 1.5, and workflow enhancements really should be covered more in depth than this one paragraph allows. I will hopefully have more information on this in the near future.

Whew! Over two pages of information just about Apple, but you know what? This much space was needed to be used just to tell you about two of these super cool products.

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