Why is the Premiere Pro titling tool so horrible?

[John Pale]

If I need anything more than a quick and dirty title, I use After Effects. The integration with Premiere is pretty good.
That being said, they did make some nice workflow enhancements in the Premiere titler in CC2017. Definitely borrowing from Photoshop.

[Andy Patterson]

[John Pale] “If I need anything more than a quick and dirty title, I use After Effects. The integration with Premiere is pretty good.
That being said, they did make some nice workflow enhancements in the Premiere titler in CC2017. Definitely borrowing from Photoshop.”

I was not using the new version of Premiere Pro. All the motion graphics and track mattes in my video could have been done with Premiere Pro 1.0. Most of them were. Premiere Pro has always been really easy to use and has always mimicked Photoshop. I think people bad mouth the titling tools in Premiere Pro because they don’t know how to use them.

[Bret Williams]

I personally don’t know much about the Premiere titler but it seems pretty standard. Bevels glows gradients, etc all of which you can do (the trend has been toward flatter cleaner stuff for a while now) with the standard FCPX titler as well. Fills, alphas, mattes, all that. Text 101. Of course FCPX has the ability to do true 3D text complete with complex surfacing and even environment map lighting. Pretty slick stuff that outperforms a bevel any day. That said what I think is the true power of the X titling is the text sequencing and animation engine. You didn’t touch on that. But the ability to sequence characters, lines, words in very complex ways without having to resort to AE or Motion AND do it in 3D at the click of a button is pretty powerful IMHO. A lot of folks don’t realize that nearly the entire Motion text engine is right there in FCPX under that unassuming title labeled “custom.” Give it a whirl.

But in the end AE/Premiere or FCPX / Motion, they’re just tools. Both completely capable.

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https://BretFX.com FCP X Plugins & Templates for Editors & Motion Graphics Artists

[Tony West]

Thanks for putting together the video Andy.

Just a couple of points.

Those canned templates in X that you used can be just a jumping off point that you change a bit to fit the project you’re working on by simply opening in Motion (you pointed this out yourself) or as is or anything in the middle.

Then your new templates are there for you in X for the next you want them.

That can cut some of your time in half but Apple is not making you use those. Start from scratch if you want.

A third party 3D program is not going to work as seamlessly with X as Motion so I personally don’t see the need for it.

You said that some people don’t have Motion. It’s only a onetime cost of 50 bucks so if people don’t have it they just don’t want it and that’s up to them. They are designed to be used together so that’s how I use them.

When talking about the mask sample video you said that the creator “HAD to pay into” He CHOSE to pay into those. Like you said, he likely could have made all of those himself but didn’t want to spend that much time doing it.

Time is money and everyone has to weigh that.

As I have said before, unless you created the NLE you are working on yourself you are using the work of other people. It just depends on how far you want to take that line of thinking.

I was hoping to see you animate the Chevy logo in Pr to compare the time, cost and look to the one Charlie did.

I think the titling tool is quite capable in Pr I just personally prefer to work with titles directly in the canvas like X does instead of in that secondary window over a still image that they have been doing for sometime.

That’s just a personal taste thing for me.

[Andy Patterson]

[Bret Williams] ” Bevels glows gradients, etc all of which you can do (the trend has been toward flatter cleaner stuff for a while now) with the standard FCPX titler as well.”

I stated in my video that you can do the same thing with most titling tools not just Premiere Pro. I pointed that out because I have used Vegas, Liquid, Edius and Avid. My point is that how can people claim that the Premiere Pro’s titling tools are horrible? That is why I made the video.

[Bret Williams] “Text 101. Of course FCPX has the ability to do true 3D text complete with complex surfacing and even environment map lighting.”

It is not really the same as ray-tracing and with out any drawing tools it is limited. That is my point.

[Bret Williams] “Pretty slick stuff that outperforms a bevel any day.”

You can bevel on top off bevels using inner and outer stroke and that will make a big difference. You can infact create beveled edges that FCPX does not have. Don’t get me wrong I know FCPX has 7 or 8 different bevels with modification. FCPX is better for 3-D titles but as I showed in the video the FCPX users has spent $500.00 on plugins to create masks and mattes. I have stated I need to uses masks and mattes more than 3-D titles and I can do do in Premiere Pro very easy.

[Bret Williams] “That said what I think is the true power of the X titling is the text sequencing and animation engine. You didn’t touch on that. .”

There are more things I wanted to mention about Premiere Pro but the video is 20 minutes long. People already claim FCPX has an awesome titling system. I wanted to show that Premiere Pro’s titling tools don’t deserve all the negative comments that it receives. It is going to be different than FCPX but claiming the titling tool of Premiere Pro is horrible isn’t true.

[Bret Williams] “without having to resort to AE or Motion AND do it in 3D at the click of a button is pretty powerful IMHO.”

Mattes and masks are more useful to me.

[Bret Williams] “A lot of folks don’t realize that nearly the entire Motion text engine is right there in FCPX under that unassuming title labeled “custom.” Give it a whirl.”

My point is Premiere Pro can do some cool things as well but all any body want to do is talk about how great FCPX is and trash Premiere Pro. I am not saying FCPX is no good. I am saying Premiere Pro’s titling tool is not horrible and hopefully no one will claim Premiere Pro has a horrible titling system after watching my video.

[Bret Williams] “But in the end AE/Premiere or FCPX / Motion, they’re just tools. Both completely capable.”

That is my point. Hopefully after watching my video everyone else will agree with us.

[Andy Patterson]

[Tony West] “Thanks for putting together the video Andy.”

Thanks for the kind words.

[Tony West] “Those canned templates in X that you used can be just a jumping off point that you change a bit to fit the project you’re working on by simply opening in Motion (you pointed this out yourself) or as is or anything in the middle.”

You actually paid attention. Thanks. I mentioned you can probably tweak things but my point was if you did not have a template to start from would you have created something better or worse? I think that depends on who is using FCPX.

[Tony West] “Then your new templates are there for you in X for the next you want them.

That can cut some of your time in half but Apple is not making you use those. Start from scratch if you want.”

I hear you but I can also reuse the animation sequences from other projects and just simply tweak them out a bit as needed. I think with the new Premiere Pro we can create templates but I have not downloaded it yet to test it out.

[Tony West] “A third party 3D program is not going to work as seamlessly with X as Motion so I personally don’t see the need for it.”

In my video I stated if you only have FCPX I think it would be wise to get Motion as opposed to third party plugins but everyone has different needs. On a side note Cinema 4-D (part of AE) is powerful and the integration between Premiere Pro and AE is awesome but if you want to do 3-D character animation really easy Poser would be your best bet. Character animation is not easy in Cinema 4-D. It is powerful but not easy.

[Tony West] “You said that some people don’t have Motion. It’s only a onetime cost of 50 bucks so if people don’t have it they just don’t want it and that’s up to them. They are designed to be used together so that’s how I use them.”

Some people see cool plugin demos and buy the plugins.

[Tony West] “When talking about the mask sample video you said that the creator “HAD to pay into” He CHOSE to pay into those. Like you said, he likely could have made all of those himself but didn’t want to spend that much time doing it.”

I agree but it was worth mentioning because I have stated masks and mattes are more useful to me than 3-D titles.

[Tony West] “As I have said before, unless you created the NLE you are working on yourself you are using the work of other people. It just depends on how far you want to take that line of thinking.”

I agree. The programmers make it all possible.

[Tony West] “I was hoping to see you animate the Chevy logo in Pr to compare the time, cost and look to the one Charlie did.”

I image I can find a 3-D Chevy Logo online and in that case it would import in a few seconds. Once it is in the 3-D program I can animate and change the shaders just it as easy as you can in FCPX. That is why I showed the 3-D software. It is easy to use. You just have to make sure you set up your composition in the render camera correctly. I might have time to model it from scratch. That is why I think the 3-D titling system in FCPX sucks because there are no drawing/modeling tools. I would much rather animate logos in 3-D space than text. Importing logos as fonts is a pain in the butt and you have to use 3rd party software to do the conversion.

[Tony West] “I think the titling tool is quite capable in Pr I just personally prefer to work with titles directly in the canvas like X does instead of in that secondary window over a still image that they have been doing for sometime.

That’s just a personal taste thing for me.”

I agree. I want to thank you for realizing it was not a FCPX VS Premiere Pro video. It was simply to show that Premiere Pro’s titling system is not horrible like so many people claim.

[Tony West]

You put a lot of effort into it so I wanted to at least share my thoughts.

I enjoy watching videos like that, thanks again.

[Andy Patterson]

[Tony West] “You put a lot of effort into it so I wanted to at least share my thoughts.

I enjoy watching videos like that, thanks again.”

Thanks. It did take a while and I had to edit a lot out. I really could only mention things here and there. It was originally going to be more of a tutorial but it is what it is. Glade you liked it.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Thanks for putting forth the effort. I know these types of things take some time. I really do appreciate it.

I didn’t see the part where Premiere could make a 3D hexagon and have the text reflected in the hexagon.

Also, FCPX is track matte capable, you can also draw masks and shapes to use for compositing. I don’t think it’s a great tool for this, but it is possible. You can get gradient fills, you can have “transparent fills”, you can have a “hollow” 3D object within FCPX.

What I don’t like about Pr’s titling isn’t about 3D vs 2D or even overall capability, it’s about usability in the pop up window without canvas control, and the sheer amount of files it generates in the project that have to be managed. I think this may have changed in the latest version of Pr, but I haven’t installed since the new media cache clearing function was deleting media as well as the cache. I’ll have to revisit after I gain the confidence to install the latest version and patches.

Again, thanks for the effort. It’s nice to be able to talk and react to concrete examples instead of hypotheticals.

Cheers.

[Andy Patterson]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I didn’t see the part where Premiere could make a 3D hexagon and have the text reflected in the hexagon.”

I never stated Premiere Pro could make a 3-D hexagon (polyhedron). I had wanted to see what FCPX could do a with a polyhedron. I could make a flat 2-D hexagon in Premiere Pro like you did but I was more concerned with the interaction of surfaces and other elements in the scene than the actual shape. Premiere Pro is not going to make true 3-D glass nor did I say it could so I didn’t bother.

[Jeremy Garchow] “Also, FCPX is track matte capable, you can also draw masks and shapes to use for compositing. I don’t think it’s a great tool for this, but it is possible. You can get gradient fills, you can have “transparent fills”, you can have a “hollow” 3D object within FCPX.”

I never stated you could not do that in FCPX. My video was in response to all the people claiming Premiere Pro has a horrible and outdated titling system. Now everyone knows that is not true. Had people known Premiere Pro has the same titling system as Photoshop I would not have made my video. That was the purpose of making the video. Not to show what FCPX is capable of. I also wanted to pose the question if canned effects are the best option. Keep in mind a FCPX user posted the video in the Cow about the guy who used the canned effects plugins. I thought it was worth showing because for me masks and mattes are more useful than rotating titles in 3-D but everyone will have different needs.

[Jeremy Garchow] “What I don’t like about Pr’s titling isn’t about 3D vs 2D or even overall capability, it’s about usability in the pop up window without canvas control, and the sheer amount of files it generates in the project that have to be managed”

It works OK for me but things can always be better.

[Jeremy Garchow] ” I think this may have changed in the latest version of Pr, but I haven’t installed since the new media cache clearing function was deleting media as well as the cache. I’ll have to revisit after I gain the confidence to install the latest version and patches.”

I finally downloaded it. It kind of sucks as of now because you don’t have all the options of the old titling tool. People have stated Adobe knows it and things will get better over time. I hope so.

[Jeremy Garchow] “Again, thanks for the effort. It’s nice to be able to talk and react to concrete examples instead of hypotheticals.”

Thanks for the kind words and thanks again for letting me use your video.