It just seems far more graphics based and easier to create a cool motion graphics, then export it. The other main thing I’ve noticed is how quick it is, the GPU render and grand central dispatch makes short work of exporting high quality H.264. I’ve got it running on my tripped out Mac Mini and it seems very snappy on an i7 with 8GB RAM.

The big question most are asking is it better than AE? That I consider the short answer to be yes, longer answer no. For a majority of motion graphics, cel animations, compositions then for $60 compare to the $1K alternative then yes Motion is the better buy for sure, it’s when you get into the plugins and superuser scripting then AE is clearly ahead.

Where Motion really excels is with a quick turn around of layers into an actual ready to export movie, the key framing here it far better than the previous version and is a logically set when dealing with many key framed layers with easing the animations. It makes short work of basic motion graphics like supers, idents and additional graphics for FCPX.

Motion’s new chroma key engine does keying extremely well, you can create a very crisp key but the draw back being done in realtime isn’t advised so it does need rendering time. For avid VOD bloggers who would want cheap keying I doubt they’d find it useful without FCPX, unless they’re just doing voice over with motion and animated graphics. However with that said with good quality content you could make some seriously nice matte paints given enough time and ability.

If anything what Motion 5 has achieved is making high end compositing and motion graphics far more accessible for the prosumer and home markets and a great addition to FCPX, many won’t take Motion serious because of this but it will open this specific area up for many from an experimental perspective.

A short round up would say for the price Motion 5 is great value and a must for any designer or design student. If you are a superuser and looking to ditch AE then you’re not going to be that happy because the higher end functionality is watered down or non-existent but with that said for fast motion graphics some AE users might reach for this due to the speed and clearly well designed UI.