• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  OT: TitleEchange 1.9 subtitle tool gets some more features – and some more help

  Posted by Andreas Kiel on May 24, 2008 at 2:58 am

  After my last post about subtitles some people asked how to bring spotting to TEP, I leave that to Bouke’s Subbits and Belle Nuit but included both formats as import formats.

  So you now can use Subbits to bring in your timed subtitles and transfer it to virtually any text generator or Motion Template which is available in FCP.
  Also with Belle Nuit it’s now easy to do some collaborate work on subtitles as TEP now reads the XML based file format of Belle Nuit (timed titles only). Anyone can use the free version of it on both platforms – but I recommend to buy it – there is a lot of work in Belle Nuit which should be honored.

  I will do a short video tutorial how to do lower thirds and subtitles using “Motion Templates” hopefully next week – especially for those who are Motion dummies like me.
  Here in short how to do in case I don’t find the time:
  So first of all Motion allows you to build your own “Generator” without knowing anything about programming (and more or less about Motion) – that’s good.
  Motion doesn’t have to many choices about text formating when it comes to vertical align of the text – it’s only one choice, that’s not really good. But if you know that and keep it in mind it’s okay.

  Here some basics:
  If you create a Motion Template which can be used in FCP as “Generator” you have to keep in mind that the FCP “Controls” in the generator will show up with the order of the creation time in Motion – this is a cool feature for subtitles.
  Keep in mind that Motion (and FCP in this case) will wrap the text in this box and that vertical alignment is always from top of the box down to the bottom. Also the box will extend automatically downwards with a text line that exceeds the width of the box

  Simple subtitle (down -> up):
  1) create a new Motion project (use the general settings you need, you don’t have to care about render settings)
  2) switch on action/title zone – maybe the film zone
  3) select the Text tool – or press T
  4) drag a box at the bottom of the “save area” – the Info panel will show up
  5) do the base settings for the font there
  6) type in some text (like “Line 1”) – this text will be the parameter name in FCP’s “Control” tab
  6b) you may (or should) use the “Inspector/Text” to set up some more details for this text entry like outline, drop shadow or whatever
  6c) re-adjust the box size for this settings
  7) press Enter and don’t be afraid when the box shrinks to the text.
  8) hit “cmd-d” to duplicate this “line”
  9) move the duplicate upwards until it fits
  10) enter a new text just by double click the box (maybe “Line 2”)
  11) go to menu “File/Save as Template…”
  12) enter a good name which should include something about the format you selected in the beginning like “My Template NTSC SD”
  12b) select the format you started with in the Format popup
  12c) set “Collect Media” to “Off”
  13) click the “New Theme” button and enter a theme name – this will create a new folder within the Motion Templates folder – so you may name it “Titanic”.
  14) that’s it – quit Motion

  15) re-launch FCP
  16) go to the Viewer – click the little “A” down on the right, go down to “Master Templates/Titanic/My Template NTSC SD”
  16b) your Motion template will show up
  16c) go to “Controls” – you will notice that you can change size and tracking but no other font settings.
  17) enter your text
  18- 1500 or more) enter the text for the subtitles and add to the sequence

  …)

  You may be happy with the subtitles at the end (especially as you can use any font type on your machine – not only TTF). But maybe you’re not or your customer isn’t – but you can make him (or yourself) happy with a few clicks:
  2725) click one of the subtitles
  2726) hit “return” to get it into the viewer
  2727) select “Controls”
  2728) hit “option-return” or select menu “View/Generator in Editor”
  2729) back in Motion you can completely change the appearance
  2730) never render or hit “cmd-r” as this will make this clip independent (unless you want that)
  2731) save the template
  2732) back in FCP – automagically – all of your subtitles are changed – that’s easy, isn’t it, and the customer will cut you some money because it is so easy and fast

  The bad thing for me is that you do not need to use TEP for the above, but you can use it.
  1) in FCP create a sequence with the settings you need.
  2) add your your matching personal “Motion Template” to it
  3) export the sequence as XML
  4) in TEP select menu “Tools/FCP Generator Analysis/Load FCP Generator XML”
  5) in the upper table view check the boxes for matching parameters
  6) click “Add Generator to Data Base” and close the window
  7) re-launch TEP
  8) you’re ready now to import other subtitle formats into your individual format
  8b) what I forgot to say earlier: you can do that with subtitles which come from Avid – there is DS support now as same STL binary Avid format

  For “lower thirds” you can use the same procedure as above, but change the font appearance for the lines, add some “Drop Zones” for logos or add some background or some motion – just play with it.

  There is also a new free app which allows to convert text to multiple “Layered TIFFs” using PhotoShop’s AppleScript support – to read more:
  https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/TitleExchange/PSTiltles/index.html

  Andreas

  Spherico
  https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

  Andreas Kiel replied 18 years, 3 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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