Visions

Makes the footage's own colors richer, strongest on the dull ones. Brightness and hue stay where they are and greys stay grey. Only the color itself deepens, so nothing gets painted on. It is the "everything looks more alive" part of a trip. 0 is off.

Slowly rotates the colors in your shot around the color wheel and brings them back. Saturated colors move the most, greys never move, and each hue swings on its own timing, so differently colored things drift on their own. At 50 a color swings about 33 degrees either way around the color wheel. The swing maxes out at about 54 degrees, which you reach around 83 on the slider.

How fast Color Shift's swing comes and goes, in full cycles per minute. The slider goes to 20; type a number to go up to 30. Low and it creeps up on you. High and the colors visibly wander. At 0 the colors stop wandering and hold one fixed shift.

How fine Drift's ripples are: it sets how many fit in the height of the frame. Higher means more detail, smaller and finer ripples. Lower means big, slow-looking swells; Breathing Walls runs it at 4. That is the opposite way to Geometry Scale, where higher means bigger, which is why this one is called Detail. The slider goes from 1 to 20; type up to 30.

How fast things breathe in and out, in breaths per minute. It paces Drift's breathing and the geometry's lines and glow, which breathe along with it. At 0 only the rhythmic in-and-out stops; the swirl keeps going. The slider goes to 30; type up to 40.

How far back the trails reach, and how many ghosts make them up. At 0.5 Visions blends three earlier frames spread over the last nine; at 1, four spread over the last twenty. Below about 0.17 the trails switch off altogether. Longer trails ask more of your Mac during playback, see Tips and limits.

A clean circle the geometry stays out of, how soft its edge is, where it sits, and whether it follows someone. These four get their own section next, because they work as a team.

The Lattice's pattern: Hex (a honeycomb), Star (a five-pointed star in every cell, each one leaning a little its own way), or Mandala. It holds the form you pick; it never cycles on its own. With Star, when the stars are big on screen (a high Geometry Scale over dark or plain footage), a star's side point can look clipped flat where it meets the next cell. It only shows in those conditions. If it bothers you, pull Geometry Scale down until it stops catching your eye.

Triangles, Squares, or Snowflake: hexagons splitting into seven, each level turning a little, so the zoom spirals.

Cells: irregular cells with gently flowing walls, each growing rings from its center out to its wall on its own timing. Roots: a branching network that climbs the surface in waves, each branch growing from its parent with a glowing bud at the tip, then fading before the next wave regrows it. Rings: growth rings like wood grain or agate, spreading across the surface. Not keyframeable; blade the clip to switch forms partway.

Which way the roots climb. 0° is up the surface, and it turns counter-clockwise: 90° grows left, 180° grows down. "Up" means up on the surface as it was when the clip was analyzed. Not keyframeable, and saved looks keep it.

How strongly the geometry draws. 0 switches it off and costs nothing, and the analysis stays saved, so turning it back up needs no new analysis. Keyframe it to fade the geometry in and out. Intensity scales it like everything else.

The size of the pattern. It grows and shrinks around the Periphery Center crosshair, or more exactly around the spot of scenery that sat under the crosshair where the pattern started. On a locked-off shot that is right under the crosshair; on a moving shot that spot travels with the scenery, so the pattern stays stuck to the surfaces while you scale. Fractal Tiling's tiles are twice the size of a Lattice cell at the same Scale, and a bigger Scale shows more levels inside each tile. Organic Growth's Cells come out about 1.6 times a Lattice cell.

At 0 the lines take the surface's own color, brightened. At 100 they go iridescent: every cell, tile, ring, or root segment gets its own color from a cyan, magenta, and gold palette and cycles through it on its own, one full cycle per growth cycle. Where two pieces share a wall, their colors blend across the line.

How fast the geometry lives. For Lattice, how fast cells grow copies and the glow travels; for Fractal Tiling, how fast the zoom runs; for Organic Growth, how fast the cells, roots, and rings grow. At 1, one level or one full cycle takes about 3.3 seconds; the default 0.3 takes about 11. At 0 the growth and the colors hold still, while the lines keep breathing with Breath Rate.

At 0 the geometry draws everywhere the clip was tracked. Raise it and it keeps to strongly textured surfaces only. At 50, the default, it uses the same idea of "textured" as Drift, so the same surfaces breathe and grow geometry.

How closely the pattern follows the surface it sits on. At 0 it bends with every tracked bit of the picture (leaves and branches warp it) while still riding the camera's pan and zoom. At 100 it only pans and zooms with the camera and never rotates or shears. The default 50 lets walls and doorways bend with the shot while foliage stays calm. Following a deliberate camera roll needs a lower setting.

The breathing of the surfaces and the breathing of the geometry's lines and glow share Breath Rate. Slow it down for a meditative look and both calm down together.

Drift swirls the surfaces, and the geometry sits on those surfaces, so its lines bend along. That is the look. To judge how well the geometry sticks to a surface, set Drift to 0 for a moment, then bring it back.

At Surface Gate 50 the geometry uses the same idea of a "textured surface" as Drift. Raise Surface Gate and the geometry pulls back to the busiest surfaces only, while Drift carries on everywhere it did before.

Periphery Center is both where the clean circle sits and the point Geometry Scale grows around. It still anchors the pattern with Periphery at 0. Move the crosshair and the pattern re-lays around the new spot. With Follow Subject ticked, the followed spot takes over both jobs.

With Geometry Color up, each piece cycles its palette once per growth cycle, so Evolve Rate sets the color pace too. At Evolve Rate 0 the growth and its colors both hold still.

The color swing, the breathing, and the geometry's growth carry straight on across a blade or a trim, so you can cut a clip up without the trip jumping back to the start of its cycle on every piece.

Tracers blend earlier frames, so with Tracers on, Final Cut decodes two to four extra frames for every frame it shows. In a high frame rate project, live playback can stutter even though Visions' own work is small. Render the shot and it plays back smoothly: select the clip in the timeline and choose Modify ▸ Render Selection (Control-R). Final Cut also renders on its own a moment after you stop working, unless background rendering is turned off in its settings. Change a Visions setting and that part needs rendering again. For a long tracer edit, make optimized or proxy media instead (File ▸ Transcode Media) and set the viewer's View menu to Proxy Preferred, or pick Better Performance in that same menu. Switch back to original media before you share. Your export is not affected: every frame renders in full.

Drift is subtle in a scaled-down viewer. Set the viewer's zoom menu to 100% to judge it, and turn the other looks down to see it on its own.

The tracking works by following detail, so a blown-out sky or a plain painted wall gives it nothing to hold. The geometry keeps to textured surfaces by design, and Visions follows the camera through the textured parts of the picture too, so a big empty sky doesn't drag the geometry on the ground around with it. When the camera pans and new scenery enters the frame, the new part can wobble for a moment before it settles.

Visions tracks HDR footage in HDR projects in Final Cut and Motion. Detail brighter than normal white isn't used for tracking, so geometry in the brightest highlights follows the surface around them. The colors are tuned for standard (Rec. 709) projects; in a wide-gamut or HDR project they can read more saturated. 360° video is not supported: you would see seams at the wrap, and Periphery is measured on the flat frame. Very wide strips past 20:1 (LED walls, panorama bands) can't be analyzed, and shapes close to that may not track well.