Building an FxPlug plug-in manually

Building an FxPlug plug-in manually

Building an FxPlug plug-in manually Create your own plug-in in Xcode.

Overview

Every FxPlug plug-in is contained within an application bundle, and uses an XPC service to communicate with the host applications, Final Cut Pro and Motion. In most cases, you can use the Xcode template that’s installed with the FxPlug SDK as a base your FxPlug plug-in (see Building an FxPlug plug-in from an Xcode template). However, if you’re creating an especially complex plug-in (or if you’re the type who likes to know behind-the- scenes details), then this article is for you.

You can create your own FxPlug plug-in that’s discoverable by Motion and ready to be developed for your specific rendering goals. Begin by creating your plug-in’s structure, making the plug-in discoverable, and building and running your project to check for errors. Next, create your plug-in class, cache the host API manager, and define a properties dictionary. You then implement required methods to specify how the plug-in will render and to establish the plug-in state.

Note This document describes how to create a plug-in with FxPlug 4. FxPlug 3 isn’t supported in Final Cut Pro and Motion. For more information, see Migrating FxPlug 3 plug-ins to FxPlug 4.