scrolling text?

[ingie01]

I apologize for the trivial nature... I want to put a title scroll over an animated bkg. Please point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance.

[slowtiger]

FX Stack -> Keyframer.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Actually a title crawl is not a trivial thing to get right. Here is another advantage of having an NLE such as Vegas (but I am sure all NLEs have scroll and crawl these days). It is much more advantageous to set a crawl in Vegas because there is a lot of tweaking involved to get the timing and fluidity of the pacing just right. To do this with KeyFramer will probably be a real pain, but I agree, it is the only way in TVP.

[slowtiger]

For those who already own it I can recommend Flash for that task. Its typographical features are good enough, and it can handle loooong texts without problem. If any fancy effects are needed, one could type and test in Flash and make the final pass in TVP.

[Paul Fierlinger]

For those who already own it I can recommend Flash for that task. Its typographical features are good enough, and it can handle loooong texts without problem. If any fancy effects are needed, one could type and test in Flash and make the final pass in TVP.

Something that should go on TVP's wish list...

[ZigOtto]

... I want to put a title scroll over an animated bkg.

Simple Text_FX or MultiLine Text_FX,
just type/set your title, then create 2 keys, select Frames from Keys and Apply.

notice also you can copy/paste a text from your clipboard.

MultiLine Text_FX still needs some improvement to be really competitive,
such as the ability to edit/modify text settings on a bunch of lines in once.

[Paul Fierlinger]

By God, this is the first time I see this FX!! My eyes always drop straight down to "Simple Text" and have never rested at this trolley stop.

[Hervé]

Don't forget the (experimental) charaters generator.
http://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=955

[slowtiger]

OK, but I miss some controls for kerning, spacing etc. Since I did a lot of typography for printing, I wouldn't do any but the simplest titles without more sophisticated controls.

Anyway, I'd do the titles in any other program and render them as a bitmap, which I then import and animate in TVP. Best of both worlds.

I remember doing titles with hand-lettering, then copying them on cels and put them under the camera ... more or less the same workflow.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I've followed so many debates on the issue of kerning and spacing and widening and all the other things one can do in CG applications but can't do in Vegas, TVP and all the other graphics applications that are not specifically just CG applications, and it always comes out that these tweaks are no small feat to program. This is why the few CG software packages out there cost from $ 600 upward and still only the $ 1,000 ones get close to getting everything right.

What I do for title rolls in Vegas (but will now do in TVP) is to type my scroll copy in Word (with a spell checker in attendance and the spacing in Word isn't all that bad, actually) and when it comes to some spacing needs in short but large titles I create in TVP's Simple Text, I use cut and paste. Once you try it, I believe you'll find it doesn't take much longer than tweaking and nudging letters around in one of the CG applications. I find it to be also a lot of fun.

[idragosani]

OK, but I miss some controls for kerning, spacing etc. Since I did a lot of typography for printing, I wouldn't do any but the simplest titles without more sophisticated controls.

Anyway, I'd do the titles in any other program and render them as a bitmap, which I then import and animate in TVP. Best of both worlds.

I remember doing titles with hand-lettering, then copying them on cels and put them under the camera ... more or less the same workflow.

I've had pretty good luck using Anime Studio Pro for animated text (which I then import into TVP for compositing)

[slowtiger]

With "CG applications" do you mean some 3D software? I don't use any of those. But of course I use the whole range of graphic designers' tools here, like Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator and the like. I even have Fontographer, in case I need to design my own font - something I haven't done in years ... Special tools for special jobs.

Anime Studio is easy to use but lacks finer text controls, so I don't use it for titles.

Good typography is a fetish of mine, maybe because I learned hand lettering with pen and brush from my father when I was a boy. It's nice to see that title cards and credit sequences got more attention over the last years, there's whole websites devoted to this art. Unfortunately today's clients don't care much about good typography.

[Paul Fierlinger]

By CG I mean Character Generators and applications devoted specifically to lettering.

[slowtiger]

Ah! Those which stem from TV studios ... I remember seeing them live in '93 and found them of poor ability compared to a decent Macintosh (at that time it was the Quadra), even the Quantel Paintbox had less control over typography. I guess the high price was achieved because they were easily integrated into existing video hardware which, at that time, wasn't much digital. Just connecting a Mac to a Paintbox was adventurous, nearly with spitzzensparks and blowenfusen every time.

Today, when they can connect everything to anything, and use whatever input directly to type to screen, TV seems to be more unreadable to me than ever before. Especially those cluttered "news" with their plethora of live tickers, subtitles, station and sponsor logos, timezone and weather forecast all in one frame ...

[Paul Fierlinger]

And don't forget the Kindle. That e-book which turns pages with a press on a button, lets you search the meaning of new words on the Internet, buy (download) a book in seconds so you never pay for delivery and you pay close to half the price... I know you would hate it, but my guess, if you are anything like me (and I think you are in this regard) you would fall in love with it after a week.

Print is leaving us, newspapers and magazines will be gone within a decade or even less... so the easier it gets to write text on everything, the less people read (we are told) and the more words are stuffed onto our screens for the read less masses. I have adjusted and don't read or even see those words messing up the screen anymore, I just have a smaller screen. What does this all mean within the context of this thread? That people's perception of the aesthetics of print has been blunted by overkill and the old formalities connected with "good print" are leaving us; we'll read anything... except a good kindle.