Exporting an FxPlug plugin
You can turn your Vuo compositions into custom effects,
transitions, and generators for Final Cut Pro X and Motion.
By default, plugins exported from Vuo are installed in Final Cut
Pro under the Vuo category. To choose a different category,
before exporting go to
,
click on the Exporting tab, and enter an FxPlug Group.
In
,
under the General tab, you can change the name of the plugin
displayed in Final Cut Pro.
When creating a composition to be exported as an FxPlug, the
composition will have the published ports required by the
protocol. It may also include some of the optional published
ports for FxPlug listed in
Making
compositions fit a mold with protocols.
You can add non-protocol published input ports as well. These
appear in the Inspector panel in Final Cut Pro.
Non-protocol published input ports with the following data types
are controllable in Final Cut Pro or Motion:
Published input ports that have menu input editors in Vuo may
behave the same or differently in Final Cut Pro, depending on
the port’s data type. You can check the port’s data type by
clicking on the port to open its popover. If the data type is
something other than Integer — for example, the Blend Mode type
of the Blend Images node’s
Blend Mode port — then Final
Cut Pro will present a menu. If the data type is Integer, then
Final Cut Pro will present a slider to select by number, with 0
corresponding to the first menu item.
You can adjust the default, minimum, and maximum values for a
parameter in Final Cut Pro by editing the published input port
in Vuo. Right-click on the published input port and select
to change the
default value or
to change the minimum and maximum.
When Final Cut Pro provides images to your composition via the
Image Filter’s image
input port, or the Image
Transition’s startImage
and
endImage
input ports, Vuo assigns the image a
Scale Factor
based on the scale of the image relative to the Motion Template.
Some image filter nodes use the Scale Factor to keep effects
looking consistent between Final Cut Pro’s Better Performance
and Better Quality modes (see the
vuo.image node set
documentation for a list of these nodes). All image filter nodes
give their output image the same scale factor as the input
image.
Vuo creates Motion Templates with resolution 5120x2700. If, for
example, your Final Cut Pro project is 1920x1080, the input
image’s Scale Factor will be 0.375 (1920/5120) in Better Quality
Mode, or 0.1875 (1920/5120/2) in Better Performance Mode. If you
use a Blur Image
node with radius 100 points,
it will be scaled to 37.5 pixels in Better Quality Mode, or
18.75 pixels in Better Performance mode, resulting in the same
effective blur amount in both modes.
Maintaining compatibility between plugin versions
Each FxPlug has a unique identifier (UUID). Vuo generates this
unique identifier based on your composition’s Bundle Identifier,
which you can set in
,
under the Exporting tab. Final Cut Pro X uses this identifier to
keep track of which plugin provides the effects for clips on the
timeline.
For example, say you release version 1.0 of a plugin, and people
start using it in their Final Cut Pro X projects. Then you want
to release version 1.1 of your plugin which fixes a small issue
— if the new version has the same Bundle Identifier as version
1.0, then the updated plugin will automatically be used
throughout people’s existing Final Cut Pro X projects when they
install the plugin. You can even change the name of the plugin
(,
under the General tab), and it will continue to be associated
with people’s existing Final Cut Pro X projects.
Then, say, you want to release version 2.0 of your plugin, which
differs significantly from version 1. You don’t want the updated
plugin to automatically be used in people’s existing Final Cut
Pro X projects, since the changes in 2.0 might cause unwanted
appearance changes to their projects. In this case, you should
change the Bundle Identifier — for example, add a
.2
suffix, as in
com.mycompany.myplugin.2
— so people will be
able to continue using the old version of your plugin in their
existing projects, while also being able to use the new version
of your plugin when they pick it from Final Cut Pro X’s Effects,
Transitions, or Generators browser.