Apple Motion

amazing. nobody guessed it either. now i need to get myself a g5 and start working in video.

Doesn't this scare Mac users a little? Apple yet again replacing (or diplacing) a very important partner when it comes to "major applications" for the Mac platform. No wonder Adobe is bailing on them. How long will it be before all major apps on the Mac will only come from Apple. And is that necessarily a bad thing?

I'm guessing this won't run on my g4 ibook? ;)

Have you ever used After Effects, Woody? It's not very good. It's the de facto standard simply because there's nothing out there that's any better.

And didn't I just read a statistic this past week that said something like 3/4ths of Adobe's revenues from their Creative Suite product came from sales of the Mac version?

The reason why nobody is clamoring for an alternative to Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign is that Adobe has done a phenomenal job with them. (Well, not quite as much Illustrator as the others, but let's be charitable.) Premiere was a piece of junk, and After Effects was limping along, in desperate need of a complete makeover.

Does this scare Mac users? Hardly. Just the opposite, I dare say.

I was there this morning and saw the live demo. Whatever you read on Apple's website will fall short of what this app can do.

Motion is very Wacom friendly, it plays your clip in real time no matter what you throw at it (the demo included 1 HD clip -720- color corrected, one photoshop file with 3 layers, one logo file, two live texts and plenty of particles and other effects.)

Answering the post above; I've been using After Effects since the days it was called CoSA and I can tell you that it is a very capable and mature system (I earned my living with it for the last 7 years); but I do agree that Adobe is dragging their feet with updates (specially hardware optimizations for the Mac hardware).

If you have questions about Motion, please post them here and I will try to find the answers tomorrow at the exhibit.

Thanks!

fed

The real question is:

How will Adobe react?

My guess?
Pack up their toys and take them over to the windows side and pout because Apple is not playing like they want them to.

And my answer to that would be:

How about instead of whining about competition you work to improve your applications instead of crying and immediately giving up??

(although we all know Apple's gonna kill em anyway. They're just more creative, better developers and more focused)

Ah well.

We'll just have to see whether Adobe will actually face the competition or tuck their tail and abandon the product. Adobe hasn't been challenged in years and that shows, product development stagnated (Premiere and AE). So I see it as a good thing that they are finally challenged with a product that is better then their offer. Adobe should have expected this, since they pulled the exact same trick with Quark by taking away a lot of their business with InDesign 2.
Product cancelations (Premiere and now possibly AE) are only a problem if an alternative is not available ... we have an alternative now, a better one.

I'm with Jeff. I bought the Adobe Digital Video Collection way back in the day, futzed around with After Effects, went "Blech!" and set it down. I've always wanted to experiment with text animations (a la the opening credits done by teams like Imaginary Forces), but AE never worked quite the way I wanted. Since then, I've made the jump from Premiere to FCP and haven't looked back. I'm really looking forward to trying out Motion.

I hear a lot of people knock After Effects, and while Adobe may have been slacking on AE dev over the last few releases, it isn't the dog some would like you to believe. Some shy away from it because it isn't as simple to step into as Photoshop or Final Cut Pro, but once you get the hang of it, it is an immensely powerful tool. With the unlimited potential of 3rd party filters and scripts, there really isn't much you can't do with it.

One thing I'd love to see is the ability to export FLV / SWFs from Motion. You could of course export QuickTimes and then import them into Flash MX (or use Sorenson Squeeze) but having that native capability would be FANTASTIC.

Apple's latest stance is "If you aren't going to put the effort into your software for the Mac, we're going to create a better one and eat your lunch!"

I don't think there is anything wrong with that. On the mac side, the only apps that are really doing anything are Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. The Mac marketshare for those apps hovers around 50%. Adobe isn't stupid. They aren't going to stop creating those apps for the Macintosh platform, as their revenues would sink faster than Sun's.

Adobe has made some smart moves. Killing Frame for the Mac was a good move. For those who never used it, it never ran on OS X, other than in the "classic" environment. Why pour huge amounts of funds into something that almost no-one uses. It just wasn't profitable.

Motion is the latest shot across the bow. Adobe has updated AE, but support for Altivec and MP systems was poor at best. The G4 MP systems have been around for 5 years or so, and they still can't get it right. Apple stepped in and said, "Hey! if you're not going to write a good app, we will!"

Now watch apple rake in the raw, green cashish.

Motion certainly looks like an interesting challenge to AE, but I'm concerned about the way keyframes are handled...it's hard to tell from the online screenshots but it appears the "record" button sets a keyframe for all parameters at once, more like Flash than AE. I hope I'm wrong about this, because it's one of the things that drives me crazy about Flash...I keep hoping macromedia will make the Flash timeline more like AE (actually, like Livemotion's was... it's about the only thing it got right). This would be the kind of thing that would keep me using AE, although at motion's price point I'd probably end up with both.

I think Apple had to do something like this - have you seen the "article" about the Orphanage switching from mac to PC for their After Effects work? I've seen it in several video magazines and it basically says AE is so much faster on a pc than mac that even lifelong Mac devotees should switch. I'm not sure who's paying for the ad...but it's clear that Adobe has been putting much more effort into the pc side than macs. Considering this market is clearly one Apple is aggresively targeting, they can't afford to have a performance gap like that in an industry standard app without some kind of alternative.

Todd, its funny, I totally hear you on the desire to start doing more video. Working in flash one is continually having to worry about client side rendering, cpu usage, file size etc. Often times I find myself yearning for the stability of video; you publish video and it plays the same on most all platforms. But what I really get a kick out of is how my friends who do motion graphics for video often talk about wanting to do more stuff in flash, about the flexibility of flash.

Its reminds me of what I would always hear about guitarist wanting to drum and drummers wanting to play guitar. Grass is always greener I suppose.

It's funny, as a long-time Flash developer, more and more of my work involves video now. A recent client came to me and asked for a Flash presentation, but I sold them on a small DVD presentation instead (for a larger fee). There was no overriding technical reason to use Flash, and they wanted smoother animation and quality.
Another client wanted a DVD-like experience to run on some custom hardware (no DVD drive), so I used Flash Player 7's excellent video support to simulate a DVD - full-screen, full-frame rate. Worked great.
My point is that playback platforms are robust enough, and Flash is developed enough, to where you can integrate video on so many levels. Or, use your animation skills with a video app. It's all mixing together in a big spicy pot now!

Interesting that Adobe is plugging their Video Collection, on their homepage today, as if to say that they offer the motion graphics piece and a whole lot more.

Well, the timing of the Adobe updates to their video collection and Apple's announcement probably has alot to do with the NAB conference in Las Vegas. But no doubt, the playing field is getting interesting.

I come from a unique perspective, I started out hardcore Apple years ago with Final Cut Pro. For a living I now teach mainly Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition and Encore. Not Final Cut Pro. Not Soundtrack. Not DVD Studio Pro. Will Adobe drop After Effects for Mac? Well they just announced version 6.5 yesterday but it wouldn't surprise me.

I find I don't have room enough in my brain to use both and although Premiere had problems in the past, Premiere Pro has some serious features- I can edit faster now in Premiere than I can in FCP.

So this announcement causes me to groan. I want to learn Motion, but probably won't. We're officially at a point where you will have to choose platforms. In the end it's still what you do with it . . .

Just one thought on this. No one seems to mention the powerful 3D features in the latest versions of AE. How does Motion stand up against these? It would seem that this may be a deal breaker for a lot of people.

This announcement makes me wonder what could be next from Apple. It seems as if they are slowly taking on both Adobe and Macromedia at the same time. They are constantly pushing them to make better and better Mac products for pro users just to keep up with Apple's versions of the same thing. Maybe next something to tackle Dreamweaver or Fireworks or Illustrator?

It's fair to say that the after effects community is pretty concerned about the possibility of adobe bailing out. Personally, if apple's product is good enough, I'd be psyched to use it - I don't appreciate having spent the last six months working with the unspeakably buggy AE6, and now having to pay to upgrade to an incremental release.

AE is still a good product and very flexible, with a huge following. Fret not; a good source at adobe has assured me that they will not be leaving the market in the foreseeable future.

Apple will always win any battle with Adobe. Adobe helped make Apple what it is today - the most useable platform, not to mention the coolest. Now that Apple have that position it won't matter if Adobe starts pulling out. The only apps that people would realy miss would be Photoshop (since it is pretty much the defacto standard for just about everything) and possibly Acrobat (again, more down to standards than anything else). But, will Adobe be stupid enough to pull its big sellers out of the Apple market? And, if it does, will Apple replace them? How long before we get iPaint / Apple Paint Pro etc.?

Some notes from NAB:

I spoke today with the Apple guys doing the Motion demos:

-No 3d compositing support (as in After Effects). They said "remember this is only version 1.0"

-The project workflow is quite different from AE. There are no multiple compositions, you can only have a single comp per project (but you can import projects into projects)

-A little buggy (it crashed twice during the demo, but the guy was pushing the machine REALLY hard)

-1080i HD Video plays in real time, you can actually have a couple of streams playing (even with corner pin distortions)

-For those of you worried, there is a timeline, keyframes are there, animation curves are great and overall the interface is very customizable (think DVD Studio Pro, with the three levels: Basic, medium and advanced)

Other notes;
I saw after effects 6.5 @ the adobe booth. The FINALLY fixed the network rendering. It used to be a real pain in the ass. It works great in both mac & pc (interesting note, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE MAC IN ADOBE'S BOOTH. EVERYTHING IS DELL. pretty sad.

The apple booth is generating quite a buzz in the show floor. They also have technology previews of some HD Quicktime codecs, you have to see the G5 feeding a 50 inch Panasonic plasma with 1080i full frame full motion video.......

Network rendering, finally! Anyone who has tried it in any of the previous versions of after effects knows just what a pain in the ass it is. Even the interface looks like it came from 1995.

Praise be.

Well, the main target for Motion are not mainstream compositing packages, but something much more fat - the turnkey, kinda-realtime systems from Discreet and Media 100 - I wonder, for example, who will buy Media 844 if Motion will do all this in pure software on a G5, for 300$ (even if it happens, say, this fall). They got something really fat to worry about, and even XBlur won't save them.

Adobe will _not_ halt development of its products for the Mac. Adobe, rightfully so, considers Microsoft as its greatest threat. Bruze Chisen has clearly stated this just a few days ago. Therefore they have to help keep the Mac platform alive.

A note about some of the high-end capabilities that Motion might lack compared to AE: don't forget about Shake. If you need serious features, it doesn't get much more serious (or expensive) than Shake. This seems to follow Apple's pattern of high- and low-end offerings (e.g. iMovie and FCP) in a given market.

r u saying that Motion is really Shake Express? It sounds like Motion is more for the broadcast market than anything else. An area that Apple is weakest in among all the professional markets. That being the case, Apple needs to give broadcasters a reason to bring G5s into their studios and real-time everything seems to be the killer feature.

CM Harrington: terminating FrameMaker may save Adobe money, but it has left more than a few of us without a powerful tool for creating long, structured documents. FrameMaker is the only Classic app on my system and unfortunately I see no replacement on the horizon. Two years ago a client opted for FrameMaker in their Mac-only development of ESL books -- today they are trying to convert to MS Word!

Janus, you said no more Framemaker leaves you "without a powerful tool for creating long, structured documents".

You should check out LaTeX. It's not at all the same interface for Framemaker, but it sure can create long, structured documents.

Have a look:

Yeah, always preview before you post. That should have been:

Link to TeXShop, a LaTeX editor.

3d is the only hole in Motion, although the 3d is poor to say the least it is still invaluable in AE. And is the stable diet of any AE project. AE rocks you just need a reason to use it. The idea that a program should be easy enough to sit down and just make great things is bull. If you need to do something you learn and yes that process should be made as easy as posible. People learn by doing and not by doing nothing for no reason, or something like that.

So AE rocks but is waining badly, but Apple need to do this propally if there is any chance of edging Adobe out. We don't want to be left with a lip horse. The drag and drop behavoirs sound ok, but I hope you will be able to script the crap out of this prog, AE experssions are wack but again assentail to every project. Anyone know what languages Motion supports, and if it doesn't forget this app ???

Perhaps somebody could comment on the behaviors to be found in Motion. How do they compare to the drag-and-drop behaviors of mTropolis or Macromedia Director?

Oh, and thanks for the tip about LaTex, Will. I spent about an hour tinkering. It has an interface that only a Unix mother could love.

well you should all think about what you are saying here, software is software people are the artist! do not love a company, love making art! fear the company that hurts the people that have been using their platform for a long time. how would you feel if you have supported the platform to find the maker of that platform hurting the devopler of a package that you use, a piece of software that has made you an artist, beware!

I happen to believe the comment that motion is probably a "shake express". For $300 bucks that is what I'd expect. It's meant to really challenge flash and the changing times of the web. People trying to learn layering, grouping and pre-comping are going to start with programs like Motion or Flash and then move on and up. If an individual is really going to be serious about digital compositing, AE, Combustion or even Shake are the programs. Some need to stick to the simpler programs. Typically, web people are not going to pick any of these three as their first choice.... and Apple knows this. Thus "motion".

While I certainly understand the reason there is speculation about the future of After Effects on the Mac, I want reassure our customers that the After Effects team is commited to maintaining its leadership position on both Mac & Windows and we have no plans to stop developing for the Mac platform

Stephen Kilisky
Group Product Manager - After Effects

That's good to hear about AE developement. A lot of us were trained on a mac in college and high school and use a mac at home.

The sucky thing is that you ADOBE , you are getting away from the end user i mean really listening the them, come on....it took you 4 years to "almost" catch up to Final Cut Pro(i had a 30 day trial of premiere pro for the pc).

YOu should of had Premiere Pro out 4 years ago and that's not only my oppinion, but leading dv editing magazine testers also. If you would of had a better Premiere 6.5 out for OS X, more would of stayed with premiere, but 6.5 seemed like a bad port. I know because I could see the cpu usage even with it loaed in OS X.

It just seems like "us" creative professionals are getting the short-end of the stick on Software developement and new releases from you Adobe.

If things don't change I'm sure, myself and others I know included will look to Apple and others like Discreet, wavefront, synthetic more for alternitives that are frankly written better than some of your products. Please don't treat us like second-rate citizens...

Does anybody have any more details on the ship date for Motion other than "this summer" ???