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180 Chapter 2 Creating and Managing Projects
Each project has a single group of project properties that define the duration of the
project, the size of the Canvas, the frame rate of playback, and other details that affect
how your composition is formatted. Later, when you have finished your project and
you’re ready to export it, the project properties you select define the media file that is
created. Although you can change these settings at any time, it’s best to choose the
settings that match your final planned output format.
Regardless of your project settings, Motion still allows you to add nearly any kind of
media file supported by QuickTime to your project. Furthermore, you’re free to mix
media files with different properties in the same project. For example, you can combine
video clips of different frame sizes with graphics files. In the end, the file you output
uses the frame size and frame rate specified by the project properties.
When Motion First Opens
The first time you open Motion, a Welcome Screen presents you with two ways to
create a new project. You can click Start with a Template to open the Template Browser,
or you can click Start with a New Project to create a new blank project file.
By default, this screen always appears when you open Motion. If you don’t want to see
this screen at startup, you can uncheck the “Show the Welcome Screen at startup”
checkbox at the bottom, or you can choose a different startup option from the At
Startup pop-up menu in the General pane of Motion Preferences. You can choose from
the following options:
Open Last Project(s): Automatically opens the last project(s) you worked on, whenever
Motion is opened.
Create New Project: Opens the Select Project Preset dialog, allowing you to pick a
preset to use to create a new, blank project file. If a default project preset is set, this
dialog does not appear.
Show Welcome Screen: Shows the Welcome Screen every time Motion is opened.