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.