Text Fonts and Sizes in Text Generator

[Kevin Monahan]

You’ve got the wrong book then. LOL. Check out “Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro” which will tell you to AVOID scrolling text and all other legacy generators altogether.

In this case, you’d use “Title Crawl”, which is a far superior tool for rolls and crawls. You can select any part of the crawl and change fonts, font size or any other parameter of type.

If you don’t have Title Crawl and Title 3D installed, you probably are running FCP 4-4.5 when it was not auto installed. In that case, you can check your Extras folder on your install disk. It’s called “Boris Calligraphy”.

The Legacy Text generators should be put on mothballs. Title 3D’s been around since FCP 3 or so.

Kevin Monahan
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[Robert Garry]

Well there’s several ways to do it but using FCP’s built in text generators really isn’t your first or best choice.

Everything is really dependent on the apps you have available and the amount of text you are planning on scrollilng to you so I’ll give you a few suggestions:

Photoshop/Illustrator
– I’ve made many title crawls in PS/IS and they give you great flexibility. File size can hunker you down if you are creating a large amount of text so it may take some experimetnation on your part but you have the ability to change any fonts and even add cool grfx to an otherwise boring credit roll. They both have presets for NTSC frame sizes to help you get started, just adjust the canvas size to acccomodate your needs.

LiveType
-Why use anything other than Apple?? 🙂 Again good flexibility and the added benefit of being able to keyframe outside of FCP, see if you like it, and then bring it into FCP quickly. Plus any changes you make update automatically from LT to FCP (with a Save in LT that is….)

Boris
– This is plug in for FCP that may be the simplest option but man do I hate to use it. The interface sucks and requires locking you out of FCP to do your text work. It does let you change sizes and fonts but I really prefer other methods. Maybe it’s just me but I seem to get crashes when using this plug in as well.

Lastly I would say that if you have a small amount of scrolling text you could try to dual layer the element suing FCP’s built in text generator. On Track 1 you have the name of the product. On Track 2 you have the TM symbol. Synching up the movement is going to be your issue but with a little trial and error you should be able to make it look right. I’ve done this kind of thing in a pinch.

Hope it helps

Best
Bob

[Arturo Celleri]

Wow, that’s great! I’m in a time crunch and I’m wondering if you could walk me through how to use the title crawl. I have entered my text on the wordprocessor sub page that it offers me and I’ve made my edits but now I can’t seem to get it to play back for me.
Please help.

[Bret Williams]

[Robert Garry] “you could try to dual layer the element suing FCP’s built in text generator”

Now, now there’s no need to go around suing anything! Besides, I hear Apple has some pretty deep pockets. They’d tie you up in litigation forever.