Extract text from Apple Motion projects (MOTN)
To convert MOTN projects to another format, you need Apple Motion or other Video software.
To convert other file formats to the "Motion Graphics Project" file type, you need software like Apple Motion or a similar tool.
The .MOTN file is a proprietary project file created by Apple Motion, a professional motion graphics and compositing application. Editors use these files to build animations, title sequences, generators, and visual effects primarily for use in Final Cut Pro. Internally, the file relies on a standard XML structure to store keyframes, layer properties, effect parameters, and exact file paths to external media assets.
Users frequently need to convert .MOTN files when attempting to share an animation draft with clients or team members who do not own a Mac or an active Apple software license. The main disadvantage of the .MOTN format is extreme vendor lock-in. It is completely proprietary to the Apple ecosystem. Furthermore, it is not a standalone video file. It does not contain actual video frames or audio blocks; it only holds the text-based instructions required to build the video, plus local hard drive references to images and clips. If you send an isolated .MOTN file to a client, they cannot watch it, and the project will show "missing media" errors.
To share the visual output, you must render the project to standard video formats like MOV (Apple ProRes) or MP4 (H.264) directly inside the original software. If you attempt to migrate the actual animation data to competing software like Adobe After Effects, you face severe compatibility limits. It usually requires expensive third-party translation plugins, and advanced behaviors or particle emitters are almost always lost.
Because it requires the proprietary Apple rendering engine to generate actual pixels, standard online video converters fail completely when attempting to process a .MOTN file. Just drag and drop your file into convert.guru to identify the format, view it, and convert it when possible. While we cannot render the video blindly on a server, convert.guru can safely inspect the underlying XML structure. This allows you to read text layers, extract local file paths to locate missing media, and examine the technical build of the animation.
Convert.Guru analyzes your MOTN file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted MOGRT and ZIP files.
If you want to convert MOTN file to INI, CFG, CONF, CONFIG, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, ENV, PROPERTIES or RC, you can use Apple Motion or similar software from the "Motion Graphics Project Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert ZSHRC, CONF, RCFILE, GITCONFIG, RC, PLIST, BASHRC, CONFIG, PROFILE, INI, PREFS or CFG files to MOTN, try Apple Motion or another comparable tool in the "Motion Graphics Project Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our MOTN converter.