Titling situation

[Andreas Kiel]

Yeah, that’s a great job for Motion.
Create a motion template, save it to the default location, relaunch FCP and type in the values.
You could use use my TitleExchange to enter all data in one single step if you got
a) need to do a lot of those graphics in one sequence
b) a matching text file which contains all the text data.

Andreas

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

[Kevin Prange]

Motion and Live Type are much better. Photoshop is much better. After Effects is much better. In fact just about anything is better than the title tools in Final Cut Pro. It’s awkward and hard to place things where you want to. (Can we get the ability to nudge clips up/down/left/right in FCP please? Or do I not know where to find that feature?)

However, when using any other application, test your workflow first, especially when it comes to aspect ratio and size with your specific sequence settings. Obviously, the wrong aspect ratio will make text look stretched or squeezed, but it can also make the edges of your text jagged. So experiment with the settings in the other application and also the distort setting for the clip once you get it into FCP.

Kevin Prange
NAED, St. Louis, MO

[Craig Swanson]

Thanks for the tips guys…

Macbook Pro 17
10.6.2
2.6 ghz
4 gigs ram
GeForce 8600 GT 512 mb
Caldigit HDOne Raid 5
QT 7.6.3 / QT 10.0
FCS, CS4 Production

[Andreas Kiel]

Kevin,

There is no ‘everything is better than the FCP text tools’.

In Craig’s case Motion should be the choice – it’s far superior in handling than any other solution and quality is perfect.

AE and Photoshop would be quite a pain, LiveType doesn’t exist anymore.
Motion also includes motion to make nice effects with this kind of title. Font, font color, size and so on can be changed for a project or sequence globally – no other app will provide this kind of flexibility.
When it comes to ‘3D’ titles Boris might be a choice or AE or PS with Invigorator or Invigorator as plugin with FCP and again also Motion.
Also TV show openers might be better done with any of the above including Motion same with rolling or scrolling credits.

BUT the FCP renderer for text generators is real good quality and anybody who says ‘No’ is wrong.
All open/transparent FXscript based generators or Motion templates can be handled in a batch process by XML – that’s not possible in that easy way by any of the apps you mentioned.

Bad thing with all these FXscript generators might be that you can’t set kerning by letters or leading by paragraphs or style by paragraph or word. But for example with subtitles these generators will outperform all other solutions by handling and keep a really good quality – that doesn’t mean that you should spot the subtitles within FCP, that could be a another pain, but it would be a real pain if you use AE, PS, Motion etc.
And I know what I’m talking about as several really big companies do use FXscript based generators to laser subtitles into their ‘blockbuster’ movies for theatrical release.

It always depends on your work what tools you use.

And by the way you can nudge any clip within FCP if you got any of the 2 wireframe options enabled, and you should never use the ‘distort’ as it always will lower quality and FCP text generators always render at the correct aspect if you not force them to do something different.

Regards
Andreas

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

[Craig Swanson]

Andreas,

Motion template works like a dream for what I’m doing. But I’ve run into another issue you may know a workaround for. I need to enter my text for lower thirds, full page graphics and such in all caps. However, when turning on the caps lock key in Final Cut, I lose the ability to see updates I’m making because that render warning message disables my canvas. Any suggestions?

Macbook Pro 17
10.6.2
2.6 ghz
4 gigs ram
GeForce 8600 GT 512 mb
Caldigit HDOne Raid 5
QT 7.6.3 / QT 10.0
FCS, CS4 Production

[Craig Swanson]

Andreas,

I Found out what I needed to do to get all caps!

Because I used that Motion template, I’m able to use the ‘all caps’ parameter on my Motion layer. That solves the problem. Now in Final Cut, as I enter my text in the Motion template in lowercase, it updates my canvas real time all in caps. I don’t need to get near that caps lock now!

But I feel bad for people that use the normal text titling features in FCP while entering all caps.

Macbook Pro 17
10.6.2
2.6 ghz
4 gigs ram
GeForce 8600 GT 512 mb
Caldigit HDOne Raid 5
QT 7.6.3 / QT 10.0
FCS, CS4 Production