Subtitles of the Movie

Now in this module we'll get underway with our first Motion Project and the way that we'll do that is we simply have a project underway already, and the duration of that project, if you look in the Canvas Window, it's 10 seconds. Why is it 10 seconds? Well, one, it's because of the Presets, and two, it's because of the Preferences of that Preset, and you can modify this if you want to. Just go to the Motion Menu, and I click on Preferences, and now there are a couple of things that I want to spend some time with. Of course, we could go through each of these and I could talk about each one of the options here but that would take us another dozen modules, and I like to just give you information kind of on an as-needed basis, as they come up, as it becomes relevant we'll go back to our Motion Preferences and talk about some of these items. One is, at startup now you're going to create a new project. If you've unchecked the Welcome Screen checkbox, but if you want to turn that back on you certainly can do so using that option there, or you can open up your last project. But for now I'll leave it where I had it before, which is to create a new project, and that's indeed what I've got started here. The other thing that's worth pointing out right here that's relevant is the Project Collection of Settings, or Preferences. In your default settings your Project Duration will be 10 seconds, so you can certainly change that if you want to as well, but with this in place now I can take something that's in the File Browser that lives on my computer, or even on an external device, and what I can do is I can just select it and then the easy way to do this is just to import it into your project. Now, you could also drag and drop like this, and notice when you drag and drop, elements that are on your hard drive, existing files, notice that you have these yellow lines that appear. These help you center whatever object you're dragging and dropping, and in fact, this is easier to see if you change your zoom level on the Canvas. So again, if I drag and drop, notice that if I want to get this thing centered up just so I would release it now with that yellow crosshair in place like that. So that would perfectly center the picture that I would drag and drop onto my Canvas. Now, again, I think the easier way to do this if you're working with a picture for example as the starting point for your Motion File, is that you just select the image you want and then click on Import. And now you import it into your Project into the Canvas, and it's perfectly centered and you don't really have to think about it, you don't have to waste the time dragging and dropping and getting it just so. So, that's how you get started with a file, for example, and you could always do Command Z and Undo an action, and now the Canvas is once again blank. So, that's one of your possible starting points for a new project, is just to take something that's already been generated; you can use a movie file that's been generated in Final Cut, for example, or an iMovie. If you've done some previous work and now are kind of upgrading your digital editing skills to Motion in the Final Cut Studio Suite, but whatever your starting point is, again, you can browse for it in the File Browser and just import it. Same thing if I were to look through my collection of movies, I have some slide shows that I've generated here so if I select that one notice I have a little Preview that plays automatically, but if I want to import it, boom, I click on Import. Again, the duration of this Project is going to be 10 seconds. Also notice here that I've got my Playheads set here and it imports it at the beginning of the Playhead. So that can also be a significant factor when you are starting with a new project. Again, I'm going to Undo this, go back to Pictures, and just reiterate this point. I'm going to Import, and my Project is still, again, 10 seconds long, but my Import started at the Playhead. Undo, I can just drag and drop this Playhead back to the very beginning if I want to and Import and now once again I've got 10 seconds worth of picture that has been imported and is the starting point for my Project. Again, I can change all these parameters later on if I want to. If I want 15 seconds, if I want 5 seconds worth of picture that I'm going to use somewhere else in another project, that's fine. But that's how I get started. The other thing you could do is that you can use the Library and there are lots of elements that appear in your Library. You can also get access, speaking of a starting point, to your entire iPhoto Library by clicking on Photos. I'm going to adjust some of these parameters here. And, that's another way to get access to stuff that you already have; that you've already taken. Now, in the case of my photos they live on an external drive, which I'm not connected to right now, but that's Ð if you're connected, if your photos are stored on your hard drive you would have access to all your iPhoto Library there. The other thing you can do is you can just browse through your list of Behaviors and Filters and for example, Particle Emitters, and this can also give you a starting point. So, as I adjust what's viewable here in the Utility Pane, notice I have Bats, I have Fall Leaves, so I have all these pre-generated graphics that could also serve as a starting point, or could also serve as a layer on top of another item that I've imported. So, once again, my options are to drag and drop, or to just apply. And now, when I Apply and then play through my Canvas you get a little preview of what that's going to look like. So, we're just starting. We are just saying, okay, let's put this on our Canvas and let's start to work with it, and these are really the two methods or the two Tabs that are going to come into play the most: the File Browser and the Library will give you the starting point for your new Motion Projects.