DM Adieu Effects — Support
DM Adieu Effects is a motion graphics and compositing app for the Mac, based on EffectCraft, the open-source compositor by the ArtCraft team. Dependent Media packages it for the Mac App Store and supports it.
Getting started
The Home screen opens when the app starts. Click Open Demo Project to see a finished animation, or New Composition to start your own. Press the space bar to preview. The Learn tab on the Home screen has hands-on tutorials that run inside the app.
Projects and footage
Use File › Save As… to save a project (.ecproj) wherever you like, and File › Open Project… or a double-click in the Finder to open it. Bring in footage with File › Import › File…, by dragging files onto the window, or by dropping them on the Dock icon.
Because the app is sandboxed, it can only read and write the files and folders you choose yourself: in an Open or Save panel, the folder picker, by drag and drop, or from the Finder. It remembers them, so after a restart your projects reopen from File › Open Recent and find their footage. If a project you received from someone else shows missing footage, use File › Dependencies › Relink Missing Footage… and point the app at the folder that holds it.
Auto-save
Auto-save is on by default. In the App Store version the auto-saves go to the app’s own Auto-Save folder, because the sandbox does not let the app write next to your projects. To keep them somewhere you can see, choose Settings › Project › Auto-Save Location › Custom Location and pick a folder. After an unexpected quit the app offers to open the latest auto-save.
Rendering
Choose Composition › Add to Render Queue, then click Render in the Render Queue panel. Renders go to your Movies folder unless you click the output file name to choose another place, or set Settings › Export › Default Output Folder. For image sequences (one file per frame) you choose a folder rather than a file.
Formats: H.264 MP4 with AAC audio (encoded by macOS itself), QuickTime ProRes from Proxy to 4444 XQ with alpha, uncompressed QuickTime, WebM with VP9 or AV1 and Opus audio, AV1 MP4, animated GIF, PNG, JPEG, TIFF and OpenEXR sequences, WAV and AIFF, and Lottie JSON. HEVC (H.265) export is not available in this edition.
Fonts
Text layers can use the fonts that come with macOS and the fonts you have installed with Font Book.
Rotoscope Brush and face tracking
Both work with built-in engines. Optional trained models can make them more precise: in Settings › Rotoscope Brush or Settings › Face Tracking, follow the model’s Project page link, download the model file in your browser, then click Install from File… The app checks the file against its published checksum. The app itself never downloads anything.
Expressions and scripts
Expressions are written in JavaScript and run inside the app. Scripts you choose with File › Scripts › Run Script File… run the same way, with access only to the files you pick. Scripts cannot reach the internet.
What is still rough
The compositor it is built on is young and under heavy development. Rendering can be slower than you are used to, some effects and dialogs behave differently from other compositing apps, and some tools are missing. Save often. If something breaks, tell us what you were doing, which effect or layer type was involved, and if possible send the project.
Contact
Email [email protected] or use the contact form. Include your macOS version and the app version from DM Adieu Effects › About.