Which is best? Photoshop, Live Type or Generators for text supers

[Walter Biscardi]

[Donal O Kane] “That got me wondering, is there a preferred or best way to handle text supers for FCP?”

Not really. My methods change depending on the project I’m working on.

For episodic series like the example in my tutorial, I find it easier to build all the graphics at once in Photoshop.

For many of our corporate projects, we build using the Boris3D titler.

We really only use the base Text tool for placeholders as we find the Boris 3D titler cleaner and certainly more flexible.

LiveType I’ve never been a huge fan of as the movements always seem a little stuttery when it comes back to FCP. If I want animated text, I actually use Motion for that.

So the short of it is, there is no “best” method for text in my opinion. Just like everything else in FCP, there are different methods depending on the project you’re working on.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Paul Escandon]

LiveType works well as it is part of the FCS package – however I’ve never found much use for it. It can do some cool things – so that’s definitely an option.

I do most of my non-animated graphics in Photoshop – but I’ve never really liked the way Final Cut handles the PSD files directly. I think this may have changed a bit in FCP 6 – although I’m still using 5.1.4 at my day job and it has problems – especially when you start making heavy use of layer styles. What I’ve always done in Photoshop was reduced the graphic to one layer when I was finished and saved the file as a 32-bit PICT with an alpha channel – Final Cut has always worked really well with this file type in my experience.

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Paul Escandon – Lead Editor @ Outdoor Channel
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[Walter Biscardi]

[Paul Escandon] “although I’m still using 5.1.4 at my day job and it has problems – especially when you start making heavy use of layer styles. What I’ve always done in Photoshop was reduced the graphic to one layer when I was finished and saved the file as a 32-bit PICT with an alpha channel – Final Cut has always worked really well with this file type in my experience.”

FCP has always handled PSD files here just fine, but of course the Layer Styles don’t come through. You just make each layer a Smart Object and then everything transfers fine. No need to merge the layers down or even add an alpha channel. That’s what I do.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Arnie Schlissel]

[Donal O Kane] “when I need to change 100+ subtitles fonts size by 1 point.”

For that kind of thing, you should look at Traffic from xmedit.com. It’s purpose built for just this kind of thing.

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog

[Winston A. cely]

I tend to use Title 3D for just about everything, unless I need something elaborate that I can only get in Motion (or in rare cases LiveType). Title 3D is quite powerful and very easy if you know some quick workarounds.

The basic thing to do is to open up Title 3d (Boris) and create your text just the way you like it. Don’t worry about the size or position. Those can be controlled much easier in the Controls Tab than they can be inside the actual Boris editor. You can adjust anything you need to – Scale, Position, Tumble, Spin, Rotate, Opacity, Tracking, etc. The only times I ever go back into the editor are to actually adjust the overall design or if I’ve misspelled something (which is more often than I care to admit… though, I think I just admitted to it….) If I want the titles to move some specific way that a simple transition isn’t going to work, I’ll do it with the controls in the Controls tab. It takes some getting used to but it’s super quick and avoids going into Motion, Photoshop or other program.

Even if you have a ton of titles, all you have to do is past the values from your first clip into the other clips. True, that does take some time, but it’s easier than actually going into the Boris editor.

Having said that, there are some great workarounds in Photoshop (like creating an action to do multiple files) or Motion (like AutoMotion from Digital Heaven). As Walter said, it’s typically project and task specific. It’s super easy for me to use Title 3D, but other find Photoshop easier, so it depends on what you’re comfortable with too.

I guess this didn’t really help answer your question, but hopefully it gave you something to ruminate on! 🙂

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

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