Free Final Cut Pro plugin: Alex4D Adjustment Layer title

This Final Cut Pro X title generator helps you apply effect, opacity and transformation changes to multiple clips at once.

It is named after a feature of Adobe After Effects – a compositing application that is used to animate graphics and video. If you have twenty or thirty layers in a project, if you an ‘adjustment layer’ above them, any effects applied to the layer are applied to all the layers below at once.

‘Alex4D Adjustment Layer’ is a title generator works in the same way in Final Cut Pro X. Once you add it to a project any changes you make to the title are applied to all the layers below. If you add a blur effect, all the layers below are blurred. If you use the transform controls to change the scale and position, the combined result of what the lower layers look like will be repositioned and have their scale changed.

You can make the duration of this title generator as long as a whole project if you would like to apply effects to all clips at once.

This can be useful if you have multiple layers that you would like to fade in and out.

For example, here’s the first frame of a project that starts with three layers: the video clip, a shape generator and a title generator:

You could use video animation to fade in the opacity of each clip:

But that would mean that while the video clip is fading in, the shape and text will be semitransparent too:

If you use an Alex4D Adjustment layer and fade in the opacity value:

The combined clip, shape and title layers are ‘sent’ to the adjustment layer, as its opacity value is fading in, the combination fades in as one:

Applying effects and transformations to each layer causes problems in other situations.

If you apply the ‘Quick Flash/Spin’ effect…

…to each layer – you can see that the effect isn’t designed to work content that isn’t full screen, the shape and text is cut off. On the right the three layers are combined first and the effect is applied to the combination.

If you scale and rotate each layer…

…the centre of the scale and rotate is different for each layer. The image on the right-hand side shows the Alex4D Adjustment Layer combining the three layers before rotating and scaling.

Installation

Download this disk image:

It includes an installation script for Spherico’s Motion Template Tool application, if you don’t have it on your Mac, download it. It is a freeware/donationware tool that simplifies effects installation for Final Cut Pro X users. MTT installs the effect in the correct folders, creating them if need be. You don’t need to have Motion 5 installed or MTT for this effect to work.

Once you have MTT installed on your computer, double-click the ‘Install Alex4D Adjustment Layer.mtt’ file.

If you don’t want to use MTT, install these effects in Home / Movies / Motion Templates / Titles / Alex4D:

To use the effect, drag it from the Titles browser:

If you find this free plugin useful, you might like my Alex4D Animation Transitions plugin pack:

Find out more about Alex4D Animation Transitions.

There are many more free plugins on my Final Cut Pro X page