If you don’t see your question answered on this page please get in touch by emailing sam@finalcutprotemplates.com. Our customer service isn’t 24/7 but we can usually get back to you in a day or so, if not sooner.

Most Common Major Problems

The templates don’t work!

Make sure you have Motion installed.

Make sure you have all Apple’s software updates for Final Cut Pro and Motion.

Hard drive crashed/Reinstalled OS and I need a new download

First of all, you may still have the DMG or zipped DMG in your downloads folder, so take a look there. It would have the letters “DZ” in the title. We can also send you a fresh download. Email your name and let us know which Drop Zones pack you purchased (eg. Vol 1, Vol 2, Cubed).

Software Requirements

What software do I need to use the templates?

These templates work with Final Cut Pro 6 and 7. They also work in Motion 3 and 4.

Regardless of which app you use them in, make sure you have all the most recent software updates to the studio. And even if you never use Motion, you still need to have Motion installed for the templates to work because Final Cut uses it to render them.

Can I use these template packs in Final Cut Pro 5 or Motion 2 or Final Cut Express or iMovie or After Effects?

No.

License Related Questions

Are your templates totally royalty-free?

Yes. The only thing you can’t do is sell or give away these templates as Motion files. You can do anything you want with the renders.

How many computers can I install these templates on?

With the regular individual license, you can install them on as many computers as you personally use for editing. If multiple people at your site will be using the templates please consider upgrading to a volume license program. We have reasonable rates for both large and small businesses.

Purchasing / Downloading / Installing

Can I purchase these templates without a PayPal or a Google Checkout account?

Yes. When you checkout with PayPal there is an option for paying with a credit card, even if you don’t have a PayPal account.

How will I get the templates after I buy them?

You will get a link in your email to the download as soon as your payment clears which is usually instantaneous.

Help! I bought the templates but I haven’t received the download link yet.

Occasionally Google Checkout flags an order for review, which can put your order in a holding pattern for 2-6 hours. If you don’t get your download within 15 minutes of purchase, send us an email and if we’re on call we’ll do anything we can do expedite the process.

How do I install the templates?

Quit Motion and Final Cut Pro. Unzip the file you downloaded and open the DMG file that comes out. An installer will walk you through the rest of the process. The files will be installed to HD/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Studio/Motion/Templates.

General Usage

Note: The Final Cut Pro user manual also goes into great detail on using Apple’s Master Templates feature in Chapter 25

Select one of the following tutorials:

Using the Templates in Final Cut Pro

Using the Templates in Motion

Troubleshooting

I put media into a Drop Zone but it’s not showing up in the render.

What probably happened is you forgot to double-click the Template on the Timeline before working with it. By double-clicking on the timeline you can be sure that the controls in the Viewer are affecting the final render. Final Cut Pro also allows you to work with the Drop Zone wells in the Viewer after clicking on a Template in the Effects Browser. If you’re working like this, you’ll need to drag the Template to your Timeline from the Video Tab of the Viewer window.

How do I trim a large clip before adding it do a Drop Zone?

You can trim your media on Timeline and drag it from the Timeline to a Drop Zone Well.

Alternatively, you can use the Viewer to set an “in” point for any clip in the Browser.

When you drag your clip from the Browser to the Drop Zone well the “in” point will be respected. Regardless of which method you use, the Template will only respect the “in” point. It will continue displaying the untrimmed footage after the “out” point.

The “in” templates are really long! How can I trim them down before adding them to the Timeline?

We provide the “in” templates with an extra-long tail (30 sec) because Final Cut does not let you lengthen a Template past its native duration. You can only shorten them. You can avoid hassles in your Timeline by selecting the clip in the Effects Browser, then setting a more reasonable “out” point in the Viewer, then dragging the trimmed Template from the viewer Video Tab to the Timeline, and finally double-clicking the Template on your Timeline to bring the Timeline version into the Viewer for adding media. That sounds harder to do than it actually is. If you’re working with the Templates a lot it’s a good work-flow to learn.

What if my clip has audio?

Final Cut Pro doesn’t import audio into Drop Zone Wells. There are a few workarounds that you can incorporate into your work-flow:

1. Stay in Final Cut Pro

All the Drop Zones in all the Templates from this website start on the first frame – even when the Drop Zone doesn’t show up until a few seconds in. That means you can sync your audio by putting it on the Timeline directly under the template.Here’s a good series of steps to follow: Start by putting the template on your Timeline. Then put the clip with audio intended for a Drop Zone on the Timeline with same start-frame as the Template. Un-link the audio from the video. Then add the video to the Drop Zone Well by dragging it up from the Timeline. Delete or disable the video clip from the Timeline, as that video now lives in the Template. Optional: select both the Template and the Audio track and link them together so you can move it around easier.

2. Work in Motion

When you add a video file to a Drop Zone in Motion, the audio is imported. Then you can export a movie with sound from Motion and add it to your Final Cut Pro Project. While it is possible to put a Motion document on your Final Cut Pro Timeline, that won’t bring any audio in with it so you must export a movie from Motion.

3. Send your Template from Final Cut Pro to Soundtrack

In this tutorial (from Ken Stone’s Final Cut Website) Motion guru “Marky” Mark Spencer explains how you can send a Master Template into Soundtrack to add sound effects and music. Spoiler: he wraps it up by bringing it all back into Final Cut Pro as a sequence. This solution could work for your situation, but might involve too many steps and apps if all you want to do is get the audio from a clip synced with a Drop Zone. Even so, it’s worth checking out if you use Master Templates a lot.

I put media into the Drop Zones and then sent the template from Final Cut to the Editor (Motion) but now I don’t see my clips.

As of today, Final Cut Pro does not actually send Drop Zone media to Motion. It simply re-opens the Template file in Motion. You will need to re-connect the files in Motion. Which could be a pain, because you might have been working with trimmed clips of files in Final Cut Pro.

Shut down completely
Unplug monitor #2
Restart
Open FCP, let load completely
Plug in monitor #2

You must restart and unplug – that’s the key. You cannot cold unplug the monitor.

Thanks to our best fiends at crumplepop.com for answering this one!

My Drop Zones Cubed templates are rendering with black lines going through them:

This issue arose in the latest Final Cut Studio release. In Final Cut Pro you can avoid this issue with some adjustments in the Render Tab of the Sequence Settings. Set Master Templates and Motion Projects to Quality: Normal and un-check Always Use Best when Rendering Movies.

In Motion 4 you can take advantage of “best” rendering and avoid this issue. From the Render drop-down button in the upper-right of the screen select Custom. In the dialogue that pops up make sure High Quality Resampling is checked and Antialias 3D intersections is un-checked

I’m working in a 59.94 sequence and when I go to render the templates they play twice as fast as they should.

Yeah, this seems like a bug on Apple’s part – it’s really funny how it works until you render it! Here are your workaround options:

1. Open the template in Motion, add your media to the Drop Zones, render an MOV (frame rate shouldn’t matter) & bring that into your FCP project

2. Create a new 29.97 sequence in FCP, add your template to that sequence, put your media in the Drop Zones, render an MOV and import that back into your original sequence