Favorites Part 3: Saving “Favorite Motions”

This week, we have already covered the process of saving and invoking favorite transitions and favorite filters. We covered the basics of where these favorites are stored and how you can get to the Favorites Bin quickly. Today, we examine the “Favorite Motions” functionality.

First of all, let’s be clear on what exactly Favorite Motions are and which ones are saved as a favorite.  Basically, they are almost all the parameters for a clip that can be found on the “Motion” tab when you open a clip in the Viewer. This includes all “Basic Motion,” “Crop,” “Distort,” “Opacity” and even “Drop Shadow” parameters. The settings for Motion Blur (which is not keyframe-able) are saved if Motion Blur is turned on. Note that “speed” parameters are not saved as Motion Favorites.

When it comes to keyframes, they are saved, but they will be scaled to the length of the clip to which they are later applied. If you are planning to apply saved, keyframed parameters to a series of clips that are of the same length (which might very well be the case if you are dealing with a series of on-screen graphics or like-timed lower thirds), this is fine, but do be aware of this. Yesterday, we discussed an alternative method for copying keyframes settings from one clip to another when you want to control whether the keyframes are scaled or not by using the Paste Attributes (OPT V) command.

HOW TO SAVE MOTION PARAMETERS

Unlike transitions and filters, motion favorites cannot be saved by a dragging (to the Favorites bin) process and they cannot be saved individually. This means that if you save motion for a clip, all parameters are saved–you cannot make say, changes to scale and cropping and save just one of those.

Motion settings can be saved if the clip with the settings to be saved is selected in the timeline (you do not need to open it in the Viewer as with transitions) and you can do it be using the menu command Effects>Make Favorite Motion (if you have lots of time on your hands) or you can save them by using this fine shortcut:

Note this goes nicely with OPT F, the shortcut for saving favorite transitions and filters. When you hit CTRL F, the settings appear in your Favorites bin in the Effects tab of the Browser with a distinctive icon. No matter how many motion settings you may have tweaked, they are all contained in that single unit.

As with all Favorites settings, its a very good idea to take the time to give the setting a good descriptive name and bear in mind that the name you give the setting will dictate where it appears in the Effects>Motion Favorites list and hence will dictate which shortcut will apply them.

APPLYING FAVORITE MOTIONS TO CLIPS

Well, we have another highly intuitive set of shortcuts that you can use to apply the first 4 favorites that appear in your Motion favorites list and here they are:

By now, you’ve probably figured out why I call these seemingly random shortcuts intuitive and if not, all will be made clear tomorrow.

PRACTICAL EXAMPLES

OK, so why would you use these motion favorites–especially if the keyframes scale (which makes them hard to use for clips of varying length)? Here are some of my favorite uses:

• I work in a variety of formats and some incoming raw camera footage can have a thin black line along one edge and I routinely have to scale those clips up to maybe 102% to properly fill the frame on my timeline. This is a perfect scenario for a motion favorite.
• I find myself always wanting to tweak the drop shadow settings when I superimpose text over footage (I like a little less softness and a little more opacity), so I have a standard Drop shadow motion favorite.
• On a project by project basis, I frequently have effects like a “picture in picture” look (usually involves a bit of crapping, a scale change and and a center change). Because you can save favorite Motions in a project (rather than universally in the Effects Tab), I tend to set up these favorites when I first create them in a project.

As I mentioned above (and discussed yesterday), if there is extensive keyframing involved and the clips will not be of a uniform duration, I really prefer to simply use the Copy (CMD C) and Paste Attributes (OPT V) shortcuts and either check or uncheck the “Scale Attribute Times” button on the Paste Attributes window.