5.5

407Motion User Guide
In Motion, do any of the following:
• “Break” tangent handles to adjust one independently of the other: Press and hold the
Option key and drag a tangent’s handle, or Control click a tangent handle, then choose
Break Handle from the shortcut menu.
• Relink broken tangent handles: Press and hold the Option key while dragging a tangent,
or Control-click a tangent handle and choose Link and Align Handles.
• Reset the Bezier keyframe: While pressing and holding the Command key, drag the
keyframe in the keyframe graph.
• Constrain a tangent handle’s angle to 45-degree increments: While pressing and
holding the Shift key, drag the handle.
Set curve extrapolation in Motion
When you begin adding keyframes, you instruct Motion to modify the in-between frames
to interpolate the effect. But what values are used for the frames before the first keyframe
and after the last one?
By default, when you add your first keyframe, that same value is extended forward and
backward to the beginning and end of the clip (as if you hadn’t added a keyframe). In other
words, the frames before that first keyframe remain at the value of that first keyframe.
Similarly, the frames after the last keyframe hold at that last defined value.
You can override this default behavior to create loops and other patterns. This is known as
extrapolation. When you apply an extrapolation method to a parameter, animation is added
beyond your first or last keyframes. Extrapolation is useful when you need to extend the
duration of an effect such as a moving background. Several extrapolation algorithms are
available in the Before First Keyframe and After First Keyframe submenus of the Animation
menu. For descriptions of the preset algorithms, see Curve extrapolation methods in Motion.
Apply an extrapolation method to a parameter before the first keyframe
• In the Keyframe Editor in Motion, click the Animation menu for the parameter to change,
then choose an item from the Before First Keyframe submenu.
The Animation menu (a down arrow) remains hidden until you position the pointer over
the far-right side of the parameter row you want to modify.