[Simon Ubsdell]

I’d like to just make the point that if you’re not using Andreas’ extensive suite of tools as the mainstay of your captioning/subtitling needs, you’re missing out on the best solutions available anywhere.

Literally no-one understands this stuff better than he does.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Don Smith] “You went to a lot of trouble for all of to see the effect this Motion bug has.”

Sorry I couldn’t come up with a solution for you ☹

I’m a big supporter of Motion but there are areas like this where it’s really weak and that of course feeds through to what it can deliver for FCP X.

Very occasionally Apple do respond to bug reports so it’s definitely worth logging one for this.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

Thanks for confirming the font. I just tried it with that and as expected it exhibits the same issues as any other font in Motion/FCP X when used with All Caps. Which is to say that the further you reduce the All Caps Size from 100% the worse the character spacing becomes.

Here’s a test that shows this happening, with the top line set to 100% and each subsequent line reducing by 10% so that the bottom line is 30% … which obviously looks terrible. Even 80% (the default) has issues – only 100% is problem-free.

What All Caps Size are you using? Does your version look worse than these tests?

I fear there is no workaround for this – the only thing you can do is to fix the character spacing in FCP X once you have typed in your text using the kerning function. And that’s a long way from ideal.

I’ll make sure to file a bug report and would suggest you do too. This has been a long-standing issue and I simply avoid All Caps for that reason.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Robin S. Kurz] “But sure… for the record.”

That’s all it was. Additional information that some users might find useful.

Nothing to do with the original post – which I couldn’t begin to fathom.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[john titor] “When I key out the green in premiere I get pitch black inside the area of my mask which I’ve made in AE and the background doesn’t come through. “

Any mask that you apply in Ae should create transparency (zero alpha) in the clip and this will translate as transparency in Premiere.

If you apply the keyer the masked area will still be transparent. Presumably this is what you want since it sounds as though you are using the mask as a garbage matte rather than a hold-out matte.

Are you sure you are seeing black and not simply transparency (zero alpha)?

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Robin S. Kurz] “FRAMES start at ONE, TIME starts at ZERO.”

To be pedantic about this (and I’m sure you know this), it depends on how you have set up your preferences.

If you have Time Display set to Frame Numbering/Starts from Zero, then the timeline will show the first frame as zero.

But you can also set it to Frame Numbering/Starts from 1 and then the timeline will show the first frame as 1 and count up accordingly.

This is critical for some operations so it’s worth pointing out.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

It’s worth understanding why you can’t simply shorten the 3D Text on the Timeline. If you shorten the 3D text so there is nothing at the current frame, you will get the following errors in the Console:

Renderer3D1 cannot get Parameter for SceneInput at time 50
Merge1 cannot get foreground image at time 50
Merge1 failed at time 50

This is because there is en empty value going into the 3D Renderer node, and as a result the Merge also has an empty input and hence the composite will fail. Fusion doesn’t let you have an empty value for the 3D Renderer – if it has nothing to render it can’t render and fails. It’s not like other types of image sources which can be shortened at will.

(Ideally the 3D Text tool would behave like other 3D tools and not show anything in the Timeline until you add keyframes to avoid the confusion you are experiencing here.)

[David Mathis] “My other question is about using a portion of a clip but have it be somewhere in the middle, say like 10 seconds in. Is that too complicated?”

I’m not sure what you mean by this. You can certainly use the Timeline to slide clips around so that they start and end in different places, and you can shorten or lengthen them in the Timeline too. In that sense the Fusion Timeline is no different to any other timeline you might be used to.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Artem Belev] “So I have a couple of questions, the first is: how can I force fusion to “lock” particular frame size despite the image size?”

Add a Background Tool that is set to the dimensions you want and make sure everything else is composited over the top of that.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

It sounds as though you are using the Timeline in the wrong way.

If you want your title to appear 2 seconds in, simply set keyframes for the Merge/Blend at the 2 second mark. Once you have keyframes you can adjust the keyframes in the Timeline panel.

What you are probably doing is dragging the 3D Text start and end handles, which you should be able to see from the Console view throws up errors.

Fusion doesn’t work that way.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

It’s also worth mentioning that the smaller you make the All Caps Size value (the default is 80%) , the greater the issues you will have with problematic character spacing.

Conversely, in most cases, if you set the All Caps Size to 100%, you shouldn’t run into too many problems, although this entirely defeats the point of All Caps in the first place which is that it’s meant to return lower case characters at a smaller size than upper case characters.

In this example, the top line is true upper case for reference, the second line is All Caps with All Caps Size at 100%. The third line is where the problem shows up: I’ve set the All Caps Size to 50% and doubled the point size to compensate while also bringing in the tracking so it matches the reference. As you can see the spacing is so badly off that we lose the “i” altogether.

Out of interest what is the font that is causing you difficulties?

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki