Using Templates in Final Cut Pro X

TUTORIAL: HOW TO INSTALL TEMPLATES USING FINAL CUT PRO X

Templates are professionally designed, pre-animated elements that can elevate your edit in a matter of minutes. They’re used by everyone from beginners to professionals who want to speed up the editing process and deliver a high production value project. In this guide we’ll take you through the easy steps to install Final Cut Pro X templates.

Please note, that as Final Cut Pro X is software made for Apple Mac computers, this guide does not apply for PC users.

Step 1: Download Template

Download your template from the Videvo template library: www.videvo.net/video-editing-templates/

In your downloads folder (or wherever you set your files to download to), you should see a zip file. Double click the file to un-zip it.

Step 2: Navigating to the Movies Folder

Now that you have downloaded your chosen asset next we are essentially just dragging and dropping it into the right folder so FCPX knows where it is.

We recommend opening two finder windows and aligning them side by side. On the left open a finder window (Cmd+N) and navigate to your Downloads folder to find the chosen asset already downloaded and unzipped.

On the right, open another finder window (Cmd+N). Navigate to Go in the tool bar and select Home and then Movies.

Once in the Movies folder you will see the Motion Templates Folder, open this folder to reveal 4 more folders: Effects, Generators, Titles and Transitions. After this, skip to step 4. If you do not see a Motion Templates folder, don’t worry, go to step 3.

Step 3: Creating FCPX folders manually (for non Apple Motion users)

If you don’t see a Motion Templates folder in Movies then that’s just because you don’t have a program called Apple Motion on your machine. This is nothing to worry about because you do not need Motion to use Videvo templates. Instead, we just need to create the folder with its sub folders.

When in the Movies folder, navigate to File> New Folder in the taskbar or use shortcut Shift+Cmd+N. Call this new folder Motion templates.localized

When you rename this folder you’ll notice that the .localized part disappears, this is normal. The ending (extension) is essential for FCPX to find the folder so double check the spelling.

Open the new Motion Templates folder and create 4 new folders inside.

Rename each folder with the following:

Effects.localized

Generators.localized

Titles.localized

Transitions.localized

As with before, the .localized part of the structure will disappear when you deselect the folder.

Now you’re all set up to proceed to step 4.

Step 4: The Drag and Drop

The final stage is to simply put your downloaded template in the right folder depending on whether it is an effect, generator, title or transition. If you’re not sure what the template is then we can easily work that out by looking inside the file at the extension.

In your Downloads folder, find the downloaded template folder.
Open the folder, if you find another set of folders, open one of them to get to the contents.
You should see a file with the title of the template usually with a black icon next to it. Select it and use Cmd+I to bring up the info window or File> Get Info.
Looking at the Name & Extension sub-heading you should see one of the following: .moef, .motn, .moti, .motr
This extension determines where the entire folder belongs, see below:

Files with .motr go in the transitions folder
Files with .motn go in the generators folder
Files with .moef go in the effect folder
Files with .moti go in the titles folder

From this, you should now know where the entire folder is going to go. To clarify, it is the entire templates folder, the whole branch that needs to be dragged and dropped into relevant folder, not the individual file we checked the extension of.

Step 5: Organising your files

Once you’ve identified where the folder will go, it’s a great time to begin organising, this will make your experience in Final Cut a lot easier.

Once you’re in the relevant folder where the template belongs, before copying it over, create a new folder and call it something memorable to organise your FCPX panels for example Videvo Templates.

Enter the new folder (Videvo Templates) and place the templates folder here.

Finally, open Final Cut Pro X to find your brand new template in the relevant titles, generators, effects or transitions folder. Voila!

Pro Tip: Renaming templates

If you’re finding it hard to distinguish what each template does because they are titled as sequence numbers such as: 01, 02, 03 etc in Final Cut Pro then you can easily rename the files to better represent what each asset does.

Open a finder window, click Go in the taskbar then Home> Movies> Motion Templates

Click into the folder of the corresponding template element then click into the sub folder such as Videvo Templates if you created one.

Next, click into the folder of the element you’d like to change and find the motion extension file, this is the file which needs to be renamed in order for the title to appear in FCPX.

For example let’s say I’m trying to rename a transition element called Bright Shake Transition.

Once in the Motion Templates folder click on Videvo templates (or whatever you called this folder) click into Bright Shake Transitions. Within this folder may be several other folders, click into the first to reveal the contents. You should see a .motr file in this transition folder, this can be renamed to something more memorable such as ‘bright shake 01’. Don’t forget you can use Cmd+I to get info on the file and check the extension.

We recommend going through each sub folder and adding your memorial text so when you open FCPX you can have a list of easily recognisable assets such as: Bright shake 01, bright shake 02, bright shake 03 and so on.

Organising folders

We showed you how to create a subfolder titled ‘Videvo Templates’ but you could also create sub folders based on genre, project, brand or licence type. This step is really useful for professionals who may have multiple branded elements or for anyone who has an extensive library of templates.

Creating a backup

As your template library grows so does its value, make sure you set reminders to back up your precious library as this Motion Templates folder sits outside of Final Cut Pro libraries and can be easily missed.

Issues with using a template?

Occasionally corrupt files create caching issues which may mean your template doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to in FCPX. In this case, try deleting render files including optimised media and proxy files. When in Final Cut Pro, with the Library or Event selected in the inspector window go to File > Deleted generated render files. Check ‘delete render files’, ‘delete optimised media’ and ‘delete proxy media’ and select ok.

This does not delete your media, the files that are deleted here are ‘thinking’ files which can be re-created by FCP in the background.