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Most efficient way to create resizable overlay graphics + text
I’m creating a few help videos (screencasts) for a web application. I want to occasionally display a pop-up-video-like title with some explanation about what’s being shown in the video. These titles are basically white boxes with a coloured outline and a triangle pointing out on one side.
I could just make the images in Photoshop, but then I have to go back to Photoshop every time I want to change the text in the title or resize the box, and I’ll end up with dozens of little PSD files to manage. I’ve created what I want as a Motion template, but when I bring it into FCP, my only customization option is to change the text. I really like this workflow – being able to change the text within FCP is great. But I really need to be able to change the shape of the box as well.
So, I can think of a few ways to get the effect in the finished product, but I’d like to do this as efficiently as possible. I want to spend as little time tweaking the graphics as possible. (I’ll probably do a lot of them, and want to be able to flexibly change things as the need arises.)
Any ideas on the best way to do this?
Thanks,
Patrick
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5 Replies
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I don’t know if this provides enough flexibility, but check out;
https://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/fcplugins/dh_subtitle.phpJohn
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Now that I think about it – I had a similar scenario a little while ago, and what I did was I created 4 different Motion templates [one for each possible size variation] and used the appropriate template where necessary.
That may be a good poor-man’s workaround.
W
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Digital Heaven also has a Motion batch program called Automotion. From their site:
“Who Needs AutoMotion?
If you’re a designer or editor who spends a lot of time creating multiple graphics based on templates then AutoMotion is for you. Traditionally, creating multiple graphics has involved manually changing the text contents in Motion and saving each version to a separate file. AutoMotion radically accelerates this task by merging text data with Motion templates to create multiple versions in seconds.”https://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/automotion/
John
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Thanks everyone for your replies – I think the “poor-man’s” workaround is best for me. 😉 I’m going to try to make as few basic sizes as I can, and try to reuse them.
Thanks again,
Patrick
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