DC Metro Final Cut Pros

Recently, I needed a basic animation of a heart-rate graphic.  You know, like on a hospital monitor.  I am more comfortable in Final Cut Pro than I am in Motion, so all I wanted was a looping animation that I could drop in FCP and composite as I saw fit.  A few Google searches and a quick post to the Apple Motion forum later, I found an easy process that met my humble needs.  (Thanks to editor/producer Andy Neil for his explanation!)

Here is the result:

And here’s how I made it:

STEP ONE:  Create a new project and set the timeline length to 3 seconds. That seemed like plenty of time for one heartbeat cycle (and some handles for trimming).  Your timing needs may vary.

STEP TWO:  Draw the heart-rate graphic using the Bezier Tool.

Some folks might prefer the Paint Stroke Tool. I have neither the hardware nor the skill to freehand this stuff.   I also experimented with the Line Tool but the various lines cannot be “Grouped” for purposes of the steps below, and I couldn’t figure out how to make one continuous piece using the Line Tool without grouping.  Here is the finished drawing using the Bezier Tool:

STEP THREE:  Set the playhead to the first frame, hit “Record” and make the adjustments detailed below (involving the timeline playhead and the First Point Offset and Last Point Offset sliders).

You can either hit the Record button on the canvas, or just press “A”.  Then do the following:

• a.  Set the Last Point Offset (“LPO”) slider to 0.
• b.  Move the timeline playhead to 1 second. This equated to Frame 24 in my project.
• c.  Set the LPO slider to 100.
  
• d.  Move the timeline playhead back to frame 16. The goal here is to find the right timing.  You can experiment with what’s best for you, but a good place to start is to halve the frame number at which you set your playhead above (in step b), then add a little.  For example, I set my playhead at 24 frames (1 second), so the half-way point is 12 frames.  I bumped that to frame 16.
• e.  Option-click the dash to the right of the First Point Offset (“FPO”) slider. This sets a keyframe at frame 16 (or whatever frame you choose in the previous step d) for the current value of the FPO – which is 0 at this point.
• f.  Move the timeline playhead forward 2x the number you chose in step d. In my case, I moved the playhead to frame 32 (16×2).  This put it well past the 1-second mark from above, which is an important aspect of getting the timing to work.
• g.  Set FPO slider to 100.

STEP FOUR: Stop recording and hit play.

That’s how I generated the animation at the top of the page.

NOW, the fun part begins with 2 simple questions:

1. How would you improve this process, which is meant to generate the basic heart-rate animation using Motion? and
   
2. What would you do next to spice up this simple animation in Motion?  (i.e. using particles, replicator, emitters, etc.)