Motion App Reviews

I find this application very useful, as I use it in order to do more advanced things that I can’t do on a simpler editor. Definitely worth the $50 I paid. Although it’s no After Effects, it’ll get the job done. 5/5 would recommend.

I have used Motion for about 2 years now professionally. I usually use Motion in our pipeline along side AE and other 3D programs for VFX / motion graphics work. While it is no AE, the strongest area it has are the replicators. For $50 we are able to do things in Motion that would have otherwise cost us more money for several plugins in AE. I think Motion is a very under rated app, but it has some strong capabilities. I wish Apple would spend some more time developing the software since it has the potential to become a great all-around program.

I have been working on a smaller project for the last week or so and have also recently added a second monitor to my set up. I am running an iMac 27” from 2011 tricked out with all the bells and whistles. I am baffled as to why this program keeps crashing on me? I am getting tired of looseing even minutes of work and am not sure why there is even an issue with all the horse power under the hood.

I foolishly updated to Yosemite, only to find that the older version of Motion woudln’t work… I upgraded to this version of Motion, only to find out that it doesn’t work with FCP7. And like any serious professional video editor, I don’t use FCPX. So I’m kinda out of luck. And wasted 50 bucks on this update.

About a half a year ago I decided to purchase Motion to add a little something extra to my video projects - and I’ve been extremely happy with it’s depth and capabilities! At first, I was happy just to add scrolling text and fly-in titles but now that I’ve gotten a chance to really dig in to this app (along with the help of some tutorials from MacProVideo and the Apple site), the sky is the limit!. The few third party plug-ins I’ve tried are incredible too and really stepped up my learning curve by being able to take them apart and see how real professionals build animations and layered effects. I was so used to keyframing everything (and I still use key framing) but the list of generators, behaviors and particle emitters does a lot of the hard work for you, with easy to use GUI too. Best 50 bucks I ever spent!

Motion is obviously an alternative to After Effects for a lower price, and its a great one. On my brand new MacBook Pro After Effects lags like crazy, Motion runs smooth but there are some things I would like added. 1. A redesign to make it fit in better with Yosemite. 2. Some better particle effects and more and easier 3D editing. 3. A better export window. 4. Make it even faster. 5. Lower the price of Final Cut Pro and make whole video editing suite for under $100.

Im a multimedia producer, and I use Motion for the usual: compositing effects and keyed images/video for larger projects, creating short animations, and making more specialized titles than Final Cut can manage. And for this, Motion works great. Its powerful, intuitive if you use Final Cut X, and usually pretty quick on my late 11 MacBook Pro. However, I also use it for a relatively demanding purpose on the side. I do music production, and for simple animated music videos, I use the audio-modified behavior to the programs limit, at least on my admittedly not brand-new machine. At worst, Ive had upwards of twenty objects, all being transformed by different frequencies, and almost everything I tried to do in the application caused it to hang for about five seconds. The one star off isnt for this alone, its also because it obviously hasnt been updated for Yosemite, and the lack of any recent optimizations are only exacerbating the issues I have. If you have an iMac, Mac Pro, or any newer MacBook Pro, you should be fine, but just be aware that some things you can do with it will be considerably more taxing than others.

I’m generally not one to write a bad review, but in this case I feel deeply compelled to do so. I rarely have problems with apps that are purchased and installed via the Apple App Store, but this one is really terrible. I can’t get the app to run more than 5 or 6 seconds before it crashes, and the crash report comes up. I did notice a bit of glitch while it was downloading. I got some strange error message that I hadn’t seen before so maybe something went wrong with the installation. I was really excited about the 3D titles, but unfortunately the app just doesn’t run on my 2008 Mac Pro running 10.10.3. It’s installed on a PCIx SSD with 24 gig of RAM so I doubt it’s a hardware problem. I’ll call tech support tomorrow and try to get to the bottom of this. Based on my experience, I would not ecommend upgrading to this version of Motion, yet.

Just wanted to say, it worked for me, I tried the 3d titles (all of them) an had no trouble, it did not crash. Not once. Looks like a nice update, I appreciate the new 3D text feature, and look forward to other enhancements in the future. It would be great to be able to add other 3d objects, like a company logo.

I have the worst virus, it’s called Apple updates-post Steve Jobs! This version crashes, and if you do get a video out, it is complete garbage! I use this for work! I can’t just shut down my buisiness because Apple dosen’t verify updates.

Version 5.2 will not load. It crashes every single time. Creating motion titles is a major portion of my job and this is especially disappointing because it’s one of my favorite programs. Please release 5.2.1 soon or I may have to learn After Effects (and Premiere since the new FCPX version crashes every time as well.)

For those of you complaing about the crashes please take the time to do the following: 1. Verify and Repair System Permissions, 2. Restart your computer, then relaunch Motion 5. This fixes most of the problems I’ve encountered with both this and other types of software. As with all new software there are problems to begin with-Be greatful for the new content, and patient with its problems. —Macbook Retina Pro 15” 16 GB add-on

Recently, I have not been using motion. But ever since I heard about the problems with the new update, I decided to check it out. For me, the problems with motion did not effect my computer. I guess that it just runs smoothly for some Macs.

…but the performance leaves much to be desired. I’m running this on my new Mac Pro fully loaded and the performance is pretty bad for what I expected. The RAM preview seems buggy in that it doesn’t preview the entire area I specify. The playback in general whether in the live viewport or RAM preview is slow at best. Far too slow for what this computer can handle. I dont use emitters or any FX, simply imported image sequences and it feels as if I’m on an intel Celeron eMachine from 1996. I like the software and the fairly easy to use interface but the poor performance just drags this down. Mac Pro 12 Core CPU 64 GB RAM 1TB SSD

I love that I just dropped $50 and the app won’t even open. The first time I opened it I began a project and it crashed. Now it won’t even open after reboot and reinstall. Best $50 I ever spent!!

As it may be good for simple things, it is not meant for people who need the extra boost to really show their true talent. The keyframing system is awful, and it doesn’t have as many effects/options you would expect from a $50 product. Also, Motion 5 tends to lag A LOT with very simple files for no reason at all (this only started recently.) It also has trouble exporting a lot of the time, it tends to crash while exporting, and it actually crashed a lot of times for no reason, so MAKE SURE YOU SAVE A LOT. It may be good for simple things, but it’s no where near being worth $50.

I might be the only one, but I haven’t run into any issues on either my 2010 Mac Book Pro or my 2013 Mac Pro. I’m rating it 4 stars is because it’s so simple to use and the interface makes way more sense than AE, imo. I’ve used AE a lot over the years and have just recently decided to realy dig into Motion since I edit in FCPX. The connectivity between the two is pretty incredible once you figure it out. I’m still learning, but so far I haven’t been disappointed. I just hope Apple decides to update Motion like they are with FCPX and not just leave it behind, which is why it’s not all 5.

As a newcomer to motion graphics, I did a lot of online research. Apparently, you’re not supposed to compare Motion with After Effects. And I agree. Sorta. As someone who wanted to dive in deep in order to start playing with motion graphics, I had to choose to invest my time learning one or the other… at least to begin with. Money wasn’t really the issue in my case, although it was definitely a big win to pay $50 once rather than pay monthly for AE. Either way, I just found Motion way more approachable. Way more. Plus, it seems that Motion is much better suited for experimenting and playing with effects and parameters in real-time. I’m using it artistically, so it’s just perfect. I actually started with AE… watched hours of online tutorials, started to get the hang of the basics. But here’s what absolutely did it for me: In AfterEffects CC, unless I’m totally missing something, there is no way to preview font choices within the software. Not only can you not preview your font change, but even the font dropdown list doesn’t show the font names in their matching font. I’m still boggled by it… for a piece of software that is heavily used to animate text, seems to me that previewing fonts would be V1.0 functionality. In any case, compare that with Motion where all the font names in the dropdown font list actually use their matching font… just like they do in Keynote or most other Apple products. But Motion takes it a step further and you can actually highlight your text and scroll through the font list and see your text change fonts without actually having to select/change the font. It’s a live preview. Anyway, this is just one example of how I found Motion to be way more friendly than AE. So if you’re evaluating Motion over AE, it feels to me like if you’re “in the industry” than you may have little choice but to go with the gold standard. But if you want to have fun with an exceptionally powerful and amazing tool, spend $50 and have a blast.

I love the app, ever since motion 4, that’s why I rate 4, but ever since I got 5.22, It wouldn’t open.

For only 50$, you can get this stunning program. It works great with FCPX, and allows you to add an incredible amount of effects to your movie or photo. It’s true that AE is somewhat better, however for the cheap price Motion is completely worth it.