after effects, apple motion, final cut

hi!
i was on your meeting yesterday (thanks again, was very nice) and a lot of you told me they edit/produce their clips in after effects. could anyone explain what exactly final cut, after effects and motion are for or bettre in what they differ?
i thought final cut was to trim,fade,loop and arrange several snippets of material to a bigger clip or maybe complete movie(thought of somewhat like cubase or logic) and after effects and motion were to make special effects (like wavelab or peak for mastering in terms of musicproduction). is this right or did i get this wrong? can the most important basic things (like cutting,fading...) be done in all of the programs?
i am asking because i would really like to get into this but 3 programs to learn is quite hard work and it would be cool if i could reduce the effort and just get into one of them (at this time).
cheers

jens

Hi Jens,

you are on the right way…

After Effects and Motion are so called
motion graphic design and visual effects programs.

They are used to add effects to existing clips or
to create compositions/animations from scratch.

After Effects is way more complex and powerful compared to Motion,
but Motion has great possibilities to really quickly get results
like animations without keyframing and particle systems.

Final Cut is a film editing software (like Adobe Premiere or AVID).
You take your filmed footage or the compositions
made in AE or Motion and finally put it together.

As most of the loops and clips used by VJs in their live performances
are quite short (1-30 seconds), there is not really the need to use
the huge functionality for modern non-linear editing of editing progs like Final Cut.

All basic editing functions are available in
After Effects and Motion too.

Hope that clears your sky a bit…
…I'll get back to you, when I have questions about Live ;)

Cheers,
Roland

hi roland

thanks for your answer.

i bought a book about after effects yesterday and cant wait to get a bit into it. seems to be very complex but having all the complexity and possibilities is part of the fun i guess.

it is friday, most of the patients wont turn up anyway so lots of reading it will be for me today.

have a nice weekend.

cheers

jens

hey jens, good to meet you on wednesday.

and glad to hear you are getting your teeth into after effects...

sorry :lol:

glad to hear you are getting your teeth into after effects...

haha. i might come up with some questions here and there... . :mrgreen: