Open a template

Open a template

Motion templates—shown in the Compositions category in the Project Browser sidebar—are premade, royalty-free projects that you can customize. Each template contains graphics, text objects, and backgrounds.

You can also create custom templates for commonly used shots that you regularly create. For example, if you make titles for a news program, you can create templates for the opening title, interstitial graphics, bumpers, and other repetitious shots.

Create a project from a composition template

You can open a composition template from the Project Browser.

  1. Open Motion, or if it’s already open, Choose File > New (or press Command-N).

  2. In the Project Browser, select a category from the Compositions section in the sidebar.

    The compositions for that category appear in the middle of the browser.

  3. Click a composition to see its basic properties (resolution, duration, and frame rate) and an animated preview on the right.

    Project Browser showing custom preview

  4. To create a project from the selected composition, click Open a Copy.

A new project opens in the Motion workspace. You can customize the project by editing the text or exchanging the graphic elements with your own. The changes you make to projects created using compositions do not overwrite the source template files.

Create a composition template from scratch

You can also build a custom template from scratch. Custom templates are standard Motion projects saved in a special way.

  1. With a standard Motion project open, Choose File > Publish Template.

    A save dialog appears.

  2. Enter a name for the template and choose a category from the Category pop-up menu.

    To create a custom category, choose New Category from the Category pop-up menu, enter a descriptive name, then click Create.

  3. Choose New Theme from the Theme pop-up menu, enter a descriptive name, then click Create.

  4. If you want the template project to retain media in the Media list that isn’t present in the composition, select “Include unused media.”

  5. If you want a preview of the template to appear in the Project Browser, select Save Preview Movie.

    Note: If you want to add the template to a Final Cut Pro project, select the “Publish as Final Cut Generator” checkbox. For more information, see Final Cut Pro templates overview.

  6. Click Publish.

    The template is now available in the Project Browser, in the Compositions category you chose in step 2.