Yanobox Motype Review
by Kendal Miller
www.yanobox.com
$99 USD

Yanobox Motype software is designed to be a motion titling application that piggybacks on the FX Factory framework within Final Cut Pro, Motion, After Effects, or Final Cut Express. The first step in the process is to download and install the FX Factory framework on your system. After the installation of FX Factory is complete, you may then install Motype through FX Factory.

Motype offers twenty-six different presets to get you started on the right foot. With several quick clicks you can access Motype through your host application and select a preset and voila! Your custom text is fit into the preset and instantly animated. Beyond the custom presets Motype offers several parameters for further customizing your motion graphics; 3D Camera movement, Motion Mixer, Per Letter Particles, Cyclorama, and Random Characters as well as a full range of color, font, and timing parameters ensure you can tweak to your hearts content. All parameters are keyframeable allowing even further animation. After Effects gurus with experience will probably find the parameters to be somewhat limiting. However in the event you need just a quick and dirty title Motype will get you there quickly. My personal opinion is that Motype offers several nice graphics packages although a few of them feel rather basic and could be easily replicated in After Effects, or Motion. There are a number of presets that with some minor tweaking can look very good. It terms of usability the process for customization is very easy.

I do have a few minor complaints about the software in general. My first titles in FCP rendered out all the text as white blocks when exported through compressor. I re-exported as a QuickTime file from FCP and they all rendered correctly. This problem only occurred one time and subsequent efforts to render through compressor worked flawlessly so I’ll chalk the initial error  up to the software gremlins. Secondly the user interface only has a single field for text input which can make it rather difficult to properly layout multi-line text elements. This is a pretty big limitation in my opinion and near impossible to work around, for multi-line text.

While Motype offers a pretty strong suite of tools, it appears to be aimed mostly at those with weaker motion graphics backgrounds. At a price tag of $99, power users will probably prefer to spend that money on other plugins more suited towards their skillset. However, those looking to quickly and easily create motion titles that can be customized with very little effort will find the money well spent. You can find more information and download a trial version of Motype at www.yanobox.com.