I completed a highlight video for a client using a lot of animated text effects. While I was able to pull off the project using built in titles effects I found them a bit limiting and time consuming. For example the Dramatic tile did what I wanted but it had three instances of zooming text. I couldn't figure how to eliminate the other two so I ended up not using it. I also noticed for photos if you want do ken burns effect the built in has no way to control it so I ended up having to tween size and position which I find cumbersome and time intensive especially if you have more than a few photos.

I played around with Motion but its pretty complicated and time consuming too...

Anyone recommend pluggin effects or quick methods for text animation.

Hi Pete.

I primarily use motionVFX for my titles plug-ins. I also use FxFactory for some of their titles. While FxFactory titles are excellent (and I bought their "XEffects Social Media" plug-in two weeks ago, which is superb!), I find the motionVFX titles to be in a class of their own.

They have a dedicated team of graphic designers and they do all of the "under-the-hood" work in Motion for you so that you have these great titles plug-ins available in FCP X and you never have to leave FCP X when you do your titles work, which makes things really quick.

Also, motionVFX plug-ins allow you to take them into Motion, if you want, so that you can tweak a plug-in to your requirements. I haven't been able to do that with the FxFactory plug-ins and I figure that the nature of their platform must forbid this.

Check out, for example, motionVFX's "mTitle 3D" plugins (they have three volumes of them).

On the Ken Burns side of things, FxFactory has a solution for you. And it's free. It's called "Pan and Zoom". Just download and install the FxFactory software. Then, inside FxFactory, go to their Catalog page and download Pan and Zoom. This might be what you're looking for.

Thanks for the detailed post I'll checkout those plugins.