A new version of your product often means entirely new Motion Templates have to be created. An important issue needs to be tackled: what to do with the old version?

The Motion Templates specification does not include the concept of obsolescence as it exists in plug-in SDKs. Once a template has been released as part of a commercial product, there is no way to tell Final Cut Pro X to hide the template in the effects browser. Deleting any obsolete templates from disc is not a viable solution, since it would break project compatibility.

Despite this limitation, when you work on an FxTemplates product in FxFactory you will notice an option that lets you mark any template as obsolete:

This option is based on the optimistic assumption that at some point in the future, Final Cut Pro X will let us do something smart with our obsolete templates. For the time being, when you enable the This version is obsolete option, FxFactory will simply append a suffix to the template's name in the Final Cut Pro X effects browser. This gives users a hint that the effect they are browsing has been replaced by a new one.

The next step is to use theme names to prioritize the various templates in your product. The newest version should always displayed above old ones. Here is an example:

In order to implement this strategy, do the following:

1. Keep all templates (new and soon-to-be-obsolete) in the same category.
2. Mark the old templates as obsolete and add the suffix ”(Previous Versions)” to their theme name:
   
3. Assign the correct version number to your new templates, and specify a theme name. The theme name is usually the same as the product name and/or category:
   

The strategy outlined above has certain desirable properties:

1. Current versions appear before old versions in the effects browser.
2. When browsing by theme, the old versions are grouped into a different theme. This should prevent the user from accidentally using the old version of your product.
3. If and when a proper “obsolescence” mechanism is added to Motion Templates, FxFactory will already know which templates need to be treated as such.