Pro video blog…Produced by Philip Johnston DoP/Editor

 

While editing an update for one of my major clients I have discovered that Motion 5 is at present useless. I started to notice the program becoming sluggish and the beach ball of death coming on with the simplest of tasks, then it happened I was converting a PDF file into a JPEG and using the 3D mode to track the words on the page Motion 5 quit, I tried it twice more then gave up.

I am now back with Motion 4 and it works flawlessly…how can Apple bring out a new version of a program and get it so wrong ? I use Motion all the time and was getting the hang of 5 but this serious bug has taken the wind out of my sails. FCPX and Motion 5 are not fit for purpose, Apple should be ashamed of themselves bringing out such buggy unfinished software.

Both Adobe and Avid are hunting out disgruntled FCP users by giving us up to 50% off their software, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 is got to be worth thinking about, I used Premiere Pro back in its infancy versions 1 and 1.5 and I loved it, Encore is a great solution for authoring DVDs and sending the DVD screen straight to Photoshop.

Avid is not my cup of tea, its been too pricy for to long, has problems with simple codecs like Sony’s SxSªand has had a succession of editors jumping from Avid to FCP 7 over the last two years so all in all I think Avid have missed the boat.

SxSª : This is based on a friend who shoots onto a Nanoflash and gives an Avid editor SxS, MP4 file and the computer does not recognise MP4, I do appreciate this is probably an earlier version of the software or the drivers are not up to date.

author

Having been working in the video business since 1988 I have amassed a great amount of knowledge of both the kit and production values over the last 30 years.

5 thoughts on “Motion 5 Revisited…”Bad News”

  1. Hi
    I think you are doing something wrong, because Avid is the Best Editor for Sonys SxS XDCAM EX and HD
    I can Not imagine any Other Editor than AVID who is editing that blazing fast with native XDCAM
    Check out the Trial Version but do Not forget to install the XDCAM Sony AMA Plugins
    Greetings from Austria
    Besides – you are totally right about Motion and FCPX

  2. We have also scrapped Motion 5, similar reasons.

    I am shocked Apple call this software an “update”. This all plays into my underlying fear that Apple no longer cares about the professionals and is more interested in selling iPods and music.

    I hope I am wrong!

    Also considering CS5.5, maybe you could do a review for us all? 😉

  3. I’m sorry guys for you. You can’t try Edius (because you’re using Mac OS). It’s really nice program, easy to use, super friendly…I can go on and on.

  4. I agree with Sly that Avid (Media Composer and Symphony) handles XDCAM-EX very well. I have two things to add.

    1. The initial XDCAM-EX to Avid workflow WAS painful. It required the use of the Sony XDCAM-EX Browser software to convert from MP4 to MXF. Since Media Composer 3.5, with the Avid Media Access (AMA) feature, ingesting and editing natively with XDCAM has been as easy as with P2.

    2. I recently completed my first nanoFlash-recorded edit. Footage was recorded as 50 mbps XDCAM-HD 422 in a .MOV wrapper, though .MXF was an option. I discovered online that it was recommended not to exceed a bitrate of 50 mbps for long-GOP recordings, or the Avid hardware might not play the native footage back smoothly. I did find that Avid would ingest the higher-bitrate, and even all i-frame recordings; but, it was recommended that those be transcoded to the Avid DNxHD codec.

    I hope that this helps!

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