So you made a snazzy animated lower-third graphic in Apple Motion. And you want to use it to introduce 30 different people in your hour-long documentary. Now you are faced with the drudgery of typing each name and title 30 times and saving 30 Motion project files to use in your Apple Final Cut Pro project, right?

Well, if you ever need to create multiple versions of the same motion graphics element where only the text needs to change, you'll want to check out AutoMotion, the newest product from the folks at Digital Heaven (www.digital-heaven.co.uk/). AutoMotion quickly and easily automates the process of creating multiple Motion projects, which AutoMotion calls versions, with different text in each version. It also takes advantage of the integration between Motion 2 and Final Cut Pro 5 to allow you to very quickly make changes to text attributes in Motion project elements that have been edited into a sequence in Final Cut Pro.

Setting it up

Before launching AutoMotion, you'll need at least one Motion project file that contains the text objects. It is also helpful (but not required) to have a tab-delimited text file with a column for each text item you want to change and a row for each Motion project that AutoMotion will generate. AutoMotion essentially merges the text file with the Motion project file-much the same way that Microsoft Word merges a form letter and an address database.

Click To Enlarge

After launching AutoMotion and choosing to create a new project, you are presented with a simple interface consisting of three panels (above). The top left panel is where you load your Motion project(s)-these are called templates in AutoMotion-and map each text object to a specific text field. The bottom panel is where you type in or import your text for each version you wish to create. And the top right panel lets you preview each version of the Motion project.

In the hour-long documentary example I mentioned previously, let's say you have created a Motion project for a lower-third title treatment that includes two lines of text (one for a name, one for each interviewee's job title). The text is animated with text behaviors, and it's placed on an animated graphic background. You have 30 names and 30 titles to create, so you use Microsoft Excel or a text editor to create a tab-delimited text file with two columns labeled "name" and "title."

To use AutoMotion, you simply import your Motion project template(s), import your text file, and then tell AutoMotion which field in the text file connects to which text object in the appropriate Motion template.

After you import the Motion project and the text file into AutoMotion and map the fields, choose File/Export/Smart. AutoMotion generates a Motion project file for each name/title combination.

Click To Enlarge You map fields to each Motion text object by choosing from the drop-down list. Then, choose File>Export>Smart to create, in this example, five separate Motion projects for each name/title combination.

Making changes in Final Cut Pro

After you have edited each of the Motion project files into a Final Cut Pro sequence, you may need to make a change-for example, perhaps you need to change the font size, or add a drop shadow. Normally, you would Control-click on each embedded Motion project in the sequence, choose Open In Editor, and edit each Motion project individually. With AutoMotion, however, in one quick operation you can make changes to all Motion projects in the Final Cut Pro sequence that use the same template. Here's how:

In the AutoMotion project, clicking the Edit button next to the template you want to modify launches Motion. Make your change, and in AutoMotion you can use the Smart Export feature to automatically export just those project files that have changed.

Click To Enlarge Editing a Motion template. By launching Motion from AutoMotion, AutoMotion can track which elements have changed and export new project files for just those versions.

Back in Final Cut Pro, you'll get a message that some clips have gone offline-reconnect them by selecting Reconnect, then Search. Final Cut Pro should be able to locate the updated source files and reconnect them to the embedded Motion projects in your sequence.

One job, well done

AutoMotion does what it promises, and does it well. The preview window lets you see any version before you export, exactly as it will appear in Motion (background elements and all), and you can scrub through the animation by dragging in the window. There are many title-safe options so you can make sure none of your text versions run offscreen.

An AutoMotion project can handle as many as 99 different templates, and you can assign specific versions (rows of text) to specific templates. So if you have, for example, three different styles of lower-third treatments, you can assign specific name/title combinations to each style all in one AutoMotion project.

You can edit any text field after you have imported it; you can also add new text rows and new fields. The Smart Export option lets you automatically export just those versions that have changed, but you can select specific versions to export as well. Because AutoMotion is exporting Motion project files rather than media, the export process is very fast, no matter what resolution you may be working with. From DV to HD, you can export dozens of versions in a matter of seconds.

A few issues

AutoMotion tends to bog down if the Motion project is more complex, because it attempts to update the Preview window every time you make a change or click on a version. Turning off Auto Preview gets around this issue.

If you have multiple text styles applied to one text object in Motion (for example, the first name and last name each have a different font), AutoMotion will still work. But AutoMotion can't deal with multiple text styles, so it applies the first style that it sees to the entire text object for every version it creates.

Finally, if you need to create multiple motion graphics versions only once in a while, $395 may be a bit of a steep price to pay for the convenience.

Conclusion

AutoMotion addresses a very specific need extremely well: for editors and motion graphics artists who need to produce multiple copies of graphical elements with text changes, it's an incredible time-saver.