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-   -   Lots Of Text Needed - Solutions? (https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/final-cut-suite/236866-lots-text-needed-solutions.html)

Mitchell Lewis June 6th, 2009 01:04 PM

Lots Of Text Needed - Solutions?
 
For the majority of the long format (corporate) projects I do, I use FCP to edit. But the type tool leaves something to be desired compared to the type engine in Adobe After Effects (and most other Adobe products). So if the project requires a lot of text (Power Point style text with bullets, etc...) then I've normally created them in After Effects, rendered them out as Lossless w/Alpha (animation codec) and imported them in to FCP. If Apple FCP simply allowed you to change the size of the font without creating a new layer, that would solve a lot of problems. I'm about to start another one of these projects on Monday, so I thought I'd check to see what other people are doing in this situation?

How do you prepare a bunch (20+ pages) of Power Point style text in a FCP project? Do you use the FCP type tool? Or something else? What's the workflow?

Thanks! :)

Les Wilson June 6th, 2009 02:20 PM

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I know what you mean. You can use either Motion (attachment #1) or Live Type(attachment #2). Both are included in Final Cut Studio 1 and later. Both tools let you design a screen of text and vary the text size on a multi-line text object. Motion lets you bring in your finished video as a track. You can then lay down your graphics exactly where you want them for the entire segment. You have the option of exporting just the graphics layers or with the video/audio as well. Another way to use it is to create each slide as a separate Motion file and import it into your FCP timeline. YMMV.

I haven't used Live Type but you could do a similar thing where you create a separate Live Type file for each slide and import it into FCP. I could not find a way to bring a background video into Livetype. YMMV

Shaun Roemich June 6th, 2009 02:27 PM

I use LiveType for most of my basic to intermediate titling. It doesn't have a TON of frills and the interface takes some getting use to but I get great results with little effort.

Robert Lane June 6th, 2009 05:56 PM

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Actually there's a little-known but Über-powerful text tool built right into FCP: Boris 3D. The title is misleading making it seem all its does is "3D" text effects but it's an entire suite of text-type tools. Far, far and away more capable than the rudimentary "text" tool in FCP.

I've seen editors purchase text plug-ins with exactly the same functionality and then do a "Doh!" when they saw Boris at work - and it's free!

Try it, you'll love it.

Mitchell Lewis June 6th, 2009 08:27 PM

Thanks for the suggestions! (I always forget about Live Type) I've never tried Boris 3D text. I'll take a look at that and see if I can figure it out quickly (don't want to look stupid in front of the client sitting over my shoulder)

This forum is awesome! :)

Les Wilson June 6th, 2009 09:28 PM

I find Boris to be tedious, slow and hard to use.

Robert Lane June 6th, 2009 10:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Les Wilson (Post 1155083)
I find Boris to be tedious, slow and hard to use.

Boris is 10x faster than Live Type which requires heavy GPU rendering; Boris can be reused in the same sequence without re-rendering.

John Armstrong June 7th, 2009 06:50 AM

An often overlooked application for quick, flexible slides that are easily integrated into an FCP timeline is Keynote, one of the components of iWork.

Here is a web tutorial I produced that integrates Keynote slides with video footage.

YouTube - Take Care of Your Clutch--the Ranger Protocol

Hit the HD and full-screen buttons. Overall quality of the slides holds up pretty well.

Here is a link to a keynote/FCP tutorial by larry Jordan: Technique - Using Keynote for Animated Sequences in Final Cut Pro

May be too late for OP to consider Keynote for a Monday project start. But other might want to consider it.

Mitchell Lewis June 7th, 2009 08:42 AM

Thanks! I really like the Keynote idea. I've been wanting to purchase iWork for a long time now anyway, this gives me an excuse to do it. But yeah, I won't be able to use it for this project, but I'll have it (and learn it!) for the next one.

In the mean time, I'm going to take a look at Boris. I'll see how complicated it is to learn (I'm guessing it's not too bad)

Thanks again for some great solutions! (I'm hoping that FCS3 will incorporate some updates to the FCP text generator)

Mitchell Lewis June 7th, 2009 11:32 AM

I watched a Larry Jordan tutorial on Lynda.com where Larry explains all the different text tools available in FCP. For this particular project, I think Boris will work best for me. I did learn about the cool Motion templates for really fancy text and we might use one or two of those as well. We'll see how it goes. Boris allows me to easily do static text like you'd see in a Power Point presentation. In the future we'll buy iWork and use some Keynote effects as John suggests. (probably the best compromise solution)

I feel much better about the project now that I have a variety of tools available. (Boris, LiveType, Motion Templates and in the future Keynote)


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