[Martin Nelson]

Yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing, Paul. But it makes it really difficult to determine visible durations.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
6 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
FCP 7.0.1
Color 1.5.1
Quicktime 7.6.4
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

“…if you use the Boris Crawl, you can set the ‘Position X/Y’ to what you want it to be. You don’t have to keyframe it.”

Yeah, I just tried that, Paul. The XY Position adjustment works as it does in other effects: it adjusts the location of what’s on the screen at the moment. It doesn’t adjust the crawl position. If I adjust at the beginning of the clip there’s no text yet on the screen and no amount of manipulating the XY Position will do anything about it.

I don’t think I’m being very clear, is it? Let me try again.

After I figure out how long a sentence takes to read — let’s say 10 seconds — I’d like to cut it onto the timeline for exactly that duration plus, let’s say, :15 on either end for fade up and fade out. I’d like it to fade up with the first word already nearly to the middle of the frame and out just after the last word passes mid frame; this is the core of my issue. Both FCP’s and Boris’s crawl seem to insist on the text starting off frame right and ending off frame left (or I can Reverse Direction, but they still start and end off frame).

I could, as another Paul suggests in another response to this thread — and as I suggested in my initial question — keyframe the opacity up and then down when the text hits the appropriate place on the screen, but then the visible duration will be less than 10 seconds. I’m sure, given enough time, I could come up with some algebraic formula to determine how long a sentence of X characters would need to be cut into a sequence so it would move at Y rate and fall in my desired sweet spot for Z duration.

But neither my math nor my patience are that good anymore.

Is FCP simply the wrong tool for this? I do know that ultimately I should step outside to Motion or After Effects, but for purposes of scratch edit, I’d really like to do it here.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
6 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
FCP 7.0.1
Color 1.5.1
Quicktime 7.6.4
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

Thanks Josh,

That’s what the literature floating around the net would suggest (and it’s amazing how few exact hits come up for “CompressorJobController (not responding)”), but my computer is all by its lonesome. I did launch Compressor since posting and discovered it was still trying to finish the job it had been hanging on when last I quit. Apparently it was still trying to work earlier today even after I had quit. Nothing showed to that effect in the Activity Monitor except those to “Not Responding” events.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
6 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
FCP 7.0.1
Color 1.5.1
Quicktime 7.6.4
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

Well, I seem to have it working now. Henry, your comment pointed me in the right direction, though, oddly enough, what worked was sort of the opposite of what you wrote.

I used QT Conversion to Flash Video and under the Crop and Resize tab of Options I selected Resize video and did not change the sizes, but deselected Maintain aspect ratio. I really don’t quite get it, but that gave me the correct composition.

If anyone would like to explain that to me, I’d love to hear it.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
6 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
FCP 7.0.1
Color 1.5.1
Quicktime 7.6.4
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

Jeremy,

That sounded like a good idea, especially as QT Conversion seems to take a long time. But I don’t see where I can create an flv file in Compressor. I have seen, since writing this morning, other threads here suggesting I can use h.264 compression and change the extension to .flv, but until I know what I’m doing, I’d like to play by the rules.

Thanks for ‘pillar box,’ by the way. I had that in my head, but it didn’t sound right.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
6 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
FCP 7.0.1
Color 1.5.1
Quicktime 7.6.4
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

I’m running 7.2. Is there any kind of workaround?

[Martin Nelson]

Sorry about the double post. I had some log in issues and didn’t realize I’d already posted.

Martin

[Martin Nelson]

Rafael,

That’s a great tip. I had no idea you could do that in QuickTime.

Thanks,

Martin