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Positioning text using FCP text generators
Hi. I’m finishing a doc on FCP 6 and will eventually need to version my text. I’ve been reading about using TEP to create an .srt file and to avoid Boris text generator.
At this point, my subtitles are fine, created using the outline text, because I want them to be centred and that’s done by default.
But for locations, character names, etc., is there no easy way to position an outline text without having to fix the X coordinates for every single one! FCP defaults to the centre, even when justified left. It’s very time consuming. Which is why I’ve used Motion up to this point and have just been exporting/importing pro-res files. In Motion, I can justify left, place the text holder at the bottom left within my title safe zone, and every time I add a new name or location, the positioning stays put. But alas, this won’t be helpful when it’s time to version.
FCP’s lower third does what I want but there’s no leading between lines, and I can’t right align when I want to.
What to do…?
My specs: FCP 6.0.6, El Capitan, rMBP 15″ i7 2.6 GHz, 16 GB RAM
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4 Replies
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Some options:
1) With TEP the TextUp generator is installed. Try to use this one.
2) Split your .srt into a “centered” and “left” entries. Can easily be done in a spreadsheet.Andreas
Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil -
Set the X & Y on one that you have positioned to the left as you wish. I recommend using whole pixels so round any values so there is no decimal point positions. Copy the clip. Select the clips you want to be left positioned and paste attributes to all those clips.
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Thanks for the responses. I googled this a little more yesterday and what I should have said was that I’m trying to achieve a fixed left margin. You can’t do that in fcp unfortunately. So for every new city, for example, I have to enter new x coordinates if I want it justified to the same left margin. For a feature doc, that gets to be tedious.
That said, I ran another test comparing fcp’s text to Motion and Motion kills it hands down. I’m using yellow/gold for my cities and there’s a halo effect in fcp?
Andreas, I’ll look into your suggestion a little later. Thanks for chiming in!
My specs: FCP 6.0.6, El Capitan, rMBP 15″ i7 2.6 GHz, 16 GB RAM
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[Christopher McDonell] “I have to enter new x coordinates if I want it justified to the same left margin”
thats not right, you must be doing something wrong, (or I’m misunderstanding?)
i just made a left justified title with a shot name,
copied it, and made the name longer, and it maintains it;s left margin.this is how i do this sort of this, by COPYING a saved template.
so set up a city-name title to be the way you prefer.
copy it into a new timeline (called “titles” or whatever), and NAME the text generator CITY
next time you need to place some city text,
go to your titles sequence, copy the city text generator, paste it into your edit sequence
then open it and edit the text.
the style will remain.but if in future you need to isolate just the city text, you’ve named it “City” so a simple find in the timeline will jump you from one to the next, and a find-all will find them all,
a couple of notes: using the sequence to sort them is better than a bin.
the clips in the bin can become master clips, and if you re-name or colour one, they all change.
ok that was just one note.hope that helps
nick
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