Importing titles in from Word Document

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You should simply not use the FCP native titlers, but instead use “Title 3D” which is a Boris product and is INCLUDED on the original FCP 4 install discs (you must CHOOSE to install these extra Titlers from the disc).

You will still need to use “Copy and Paste” from the Word document (and manually choose Boldface, etc.) but you will have much greater “control” in Title 3D compared to the native FCP titlers.

Another choice is to do several pages of credits in Photoshop and import them into FCP.

[Arnie Schlissel]

I’ve usually used PhotoShop for these. It’s just my habit, plus I know PS really well, & have a lot of control over what happens. And drop shadows & other text effects can be added in PS without slowing down your render times.

Just my personal preference, your milage may vary.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Rich Sims]

Hi Matte,

Thanks for the advice on using Title 3D. I have built a bunch of titles but after viewing them they are really of poor quality. Even though everything is set to highest quality and I am going out of my Kona-2 card component the letters sometimes are falling apart, even in the larger font sizes. I tried to click the 1:2:1 diflicker button, not sure exactly what this does and doesn’t look any different from not using it. Some of the titles almost look as if I was using a lower resolution setting. Any suggestions or is the quality you get the quality you get? I’m just fading up and down so there are no moves being empoyed, pretty simple stuff. Just the first time I’m doing it inside FCP.

Thanks again,
Rich Sims

[Outis]

Would Boris also be your best suggestion for adding subtitles? Are there any other plugins that would do this job better? Agree that fcp text sucks to titles/credits in general.

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I have not used these myself, but there a couple of packages that are usually mentioned.

Belle Nuit has a popluar subtitling package
https://www.belle-nuit.com/subtitler/

The subtitle plug-in from Digital-Heaven is a very inexpensive ($10)
https://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/indexflash.htm

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

[Rich Sims] “Thanks for the advice on using Title 3D. I have built a bunch of titles but after viewing them they are really of poor quality. Even though everything is set to highest quality and I am going out of my Kona-2 card component the letters sometimes are falling apart, even in the larger font sizes.”

But are you (even unintentionally) positioning the test with the Motion tab?
(I’ll bet you ARE, its difficult to get the characters to the lower 1/3rd without doing so.)

VERY IMPORTANT:

If you re-position graphics or any video image in FCP, make SURE the VERTICAL setting for each KEY-FRAME (start, stop or hold) is always a EVEN INTEGER (Even Whole Number). Examples: 4, not 3 / -144, not -143.27 / 336, not 335.62 / 12 not 11.

The positioning settings/info (as well as many other settings) are found under the “Motion” tab in the Viewer.
Vertical position is the number in the RIGHT window in the area called “Center” (the horizontal position is displayed in the LEFT window).

I sometimes forget to check this and I can end up with images that look fuzzy when moved into position.

This info applies to re-positioning anything on the Timeline: moving video, freeze-frames, internally-generated titles, and imported graphics.

It can be quite detrimental to the quality of your final output to not double-check this every time you reposition and/or re-size an image.

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AND…
Have you RENDERED the Titles at the highest level?

You must fully render all effects to view them at full quality resolution (“realtime” is just for preview).

[Rich Sims]

Matte,

Yes indeed I had moved the titles. That cleared things up quite a bit. Thank you. I also started an experiment with building them in Photoshop. This does seem quite a bit clearer. As someone who seems to have done this quite a bit in FCP and Photoshop do you have a normal build routine you follow? ie text smooting, rasterizing etc.

Thanks again,
Rich

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

[Rich Sims] “This does seem quite a bit clearer. As someone who seems to have done this quite a bit in FCP and Photoshop do you have a normal build routine you follow? ie text smooting, rasterizing etc.”

Unless its an animated title (LiveType) or a logo (Photoshop) I make all of my standard titles in “Title 3D.”

Once you understand the issues of working with DV codec, it becomes a matter of knowing what works well and what to avoid.

Great Titles with the DV Codec
By Philip Hodgetts

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/hodgetts_philip/titles/index.html