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I'm using Motion 5.5.3 on a 2021 MacBook Pro. Used Motion for 8 years, never had this issue.
None of my objects appear on the canvas. I can get overlays, but no graphic elements.
I looked at all of the view options above the canvas window and in the menu, switch monitors back and forth, trashed pref's and other files in Application Support.
I browsed several very old threads on this issue, but none of them fixed it.
MacBook Pro
How do you feel about getting me a copy of the project? If it's alright, Save As a different project and **make sure** you set the option to Collect Media to ON, zip up the entire folder and post it somewhere I can download it.
Before you do that, try restarting Motion first and reopen the project.
How do you feel about getting me a copy of the project? If it's alright, Save As a different project and **make sure** you set the option to Collect Media to ON, zip up the entire folder and post it somewhere I can download it.
Before you do that, try restarting Motion first and reopen the project.
Yes, it was a pretty large project originally. I used this project as an example instead of the smaller lower 3rd I was working on at the time. Any file I open, the canvas is blank. The play range is short on this timeline as the last time I was working on it, I only needed to export the intro segment. Pressing the X, I do see the objects. Exports look fine. I had to create/export a dozen lower 3rds today without a canvas view. I don't typically use blend modes and none were applied. Here's a more collapsed view.
I realize it's the timeline. You wanted to see the relevant objects/groups on the timeline window. Yes, it's 2 displays. Here's the canvas with the objects displayed 'x'. If I'm experiencing a blank canvas with any project I open, it's not specific to this one, but all.
Could you provide a (command-shift-3) screenshot of the Motion window with the project that's not showing anything. If your cat ran over the keyboard (or similar misadventure), they may have toggled off visibility.
Well, this is a surprise! Your project is so "long" I cannot see the top of the layers list, or see which layer is selected so cannot determine it's positioning in time. Also, I don't see any corresponding groups in the timeline view and the canvas view images — that is a huge project!
Your time line Play Range is extraordinarily short. The playhead position is at frame 74, so the play range length looks to be about 90? frames, yet the entire project looks to be several minutes long. It does not look like there's a "master" group containing all other groups, so I don't believe the visibility has been toggled off.
Type the X key — do all the (supposed to be visible) layers appear in the canvas? (type it again to put things back).
Did you Solo a layer that is not active at the current playhead position? Finding a Solo'd layer that you forgot you soloed or soloed accidentally can be a pain... I think if you Select All layers and type Control-S will unsolo a lone layer.
Do most of the layers appear *under* a "blocking" layer (color solid set to black intended as a background?) Sometimes you would think that creating a new group somewhere in the list puts it in order, but Motion raises it to the top - adding graphics into it puts them all on top of everything else.
Check blend modes - anything with stencil/silhouette alpha or luma?
It's just really hard to determine what you've got going on here.
Okay - this is NOT the Canvas - it's the Timeline. Did you select Window > Show Canvas on Second Display? (and don't have a second display... The menu item will have changed to Show Canvas in the Main Window).
It may be worth trying to delete the preferences. Motion, like FCP, can behave erratically if the preferences file gets corrupted.
To delete preferences, hold down command and option while starting Motion and click Delete Preferences.
I was about to do that, but did the trash prefs on startup instead of manually deleting them, restarted again and the graphics appeared. I think what may have happened is Motion didn't have access permissions to the external drive. After a recent OS update I'm getting permission prompts a lot, but if I'm not prompted by the application, it could cause any variety of unexplained issues. Knowing root cause isn't my primary concern... I go through the logical steps, check the forums, ask for ideas. Very grateful to fox_m and Luis for your persistence. I accomplished the work I needed with the blank canvas as it was a simple template for lower 3rds, but glad to have it resolved. 3x a charm.
In recent versions of macOS, applications need to be granted "Full Disk Access" in order to acess files on external drives.
That seems to be the case.
If you did not already, go to System Preferences->Security & Privacy->Privacy->Full Disk Access, and add Motion to the list.
Thanks for the quick reply. Timeline and Canvas screens. Perhaps I'm missing something?
Motion 5 - Nothing appears in the canvas
