Apple Motion 3 - Manual (Page 203)

Chapter 2 Creating and Managing Projects 203
To clear the search results:
m Click the Clear button at the far right of the Search field to restore the contents of the
file stack to the previously selected file path.
To preview a file:
m Select any supported media file in the file stack. The Preview area updates with a
thumbnail and additional text information about that file. If “Play items automatically
on a single click” is turned on in the General pane of Motion Preferences, an animated
preview of movie clips and image sequences begins playing.
To preview a file at full size:
m Double-click a file in the file stack to open it into its own viewer window, complete with
playback controls.
File Types Supported by Motion
Motion can use the most popular multimedia file formats supported by QuickTime.
These formats can be broken down into the following categories:
 QuickTime movies
 Image sequences
 Still image files
 Layered Photoshop files
 PDF files
 Audio files
About Networked Disks and Removable Media
You should be careful when adding media files from a remote server to your project.
Although the File Browser sidebar allows you to easily access the contents of disks on
other computers on your network, doing so only places a link to that file in your
project. The actual media file remains on the remote disk where you found it. As a
result, whenever that remote disk becomes unavailable, the corresponding object in
your project goes offline. Furthermore, depending on the speed of your network, you
may experience performance issues when using media files on other computers.
Ideally, you should copy all media files you want to use in your project onto a disk
that’s physically connected to your computer, both to ensure the file’s future
availability, and to guarantee playback performance. If you do use media from a
networked hard drive, make sure it’s one that is always mounted on your system, and
that you have a high-performance network.
This is especially true for media from removable disks, such as CD-ROM, DVD-ROM,
and removable hard drives that are frequently disconnected from your computer.
Always copy media files from such media to your local hard drive so that the media
doesn’t become unavailable when the media is ejected or disconnected.