When you click on your File menu, you'll also notice that you have a fancy new "Share" option, which incorporates many new mobile codecs (iPhone, iPod, YouTube, etc.), and through this you can even burn a Blu Ray disc straight out of your timeline. One minor setback is that the share function doesn't seem to support batch exporting, so you'd need to go through compressor for that, but it's still a handy tool for a quick export. Final Cut Pro will also now do all rendering as its exporting, which means you won't get the dreaded blue "unrendered" screen popping up in an exported video as you did with previous versions when you forgot to render something… also a big plus! You may also still send directly to Compressor straight out of your timeline, now with the added ability to run Compressor in the background, and go back to work in Final Cut!
The "share" feature is part of an ultimate push for more mobile collaboration on a video project, and Apple has incorporated iChat Theater support into the new version of Final Cut, allowing your producer to pop-up via webcam and chastise your editing decisions frame by frame without actually needing to be in the room.
Your project is ready to go for youtube with the new share feature!
There are a few other cool little added shortcuts that have been added also help save you time. One, for example, if you need to apply dissolves through all of a sequence, you simply highlight the desired clips, hit "Apple+T" and presto! You'll get dissolves throughout. No need to slug through your bar-mitzvah photo montage painfully dragging each transition into place.
Motion 4
2D stills manipulated in a 3D space in Motion.
Motion 4, which is essentially Apple's answer to After Effects, and works very similarly, uses keyframes and layers to create 2D or simple 3D graphics. While After Effects' interface seems somewhat less clunky, easier to organize, and more apt for complex productions, Motion comes with way more in the way of built-in graphic templates and text effects, and there's less of a learning curve, making it relatively easy for a new user to quickly produce a slick looking graphic.
The integration with Final Cut Pro is excellent. In addition to being able to send a few clips straight over to Motion right out of your timeline, you can also import a Motion Project back into Final Cut, and render it out there.
Motion 4 is an upgrade from 3, bundled with the previous version of Final Cut Studio, and while 3 added 3D capabilities, 4 goes a step further… adding the capability for shadows to fall in the background when coupled with the light effect.
