Scrolling Videos In Title Sequence
 

Is there any easy way to scroll small videos with the text in a scrolling title sequence in FCP?

For example, next to the word "CAT" a video of a cat scrolls at the same speed as the text.

I've tried using keyframes and the centre properties but getting the timing correct is impossible.

The text is just a Boris Title Crawl generator.

Is there a better way of doing this? After Effects? Shake?

Any ideas?

Can LiveType do this kind of thing?

Why not:

(a) put your cat video and text together on their own sequence, get the spatial relationship between them correct, then

(b) put that entire sequence into the main sequence, reducing it and positioning it to suit?

That's exactly the kind of idea I was after Martin! Thanks!

However, I'm having trouble pulling it off in practise in FCP.

The actual title sequence (i.e. text) is very long. Takes 2 minutes to go all the way through. Thus, the actual text object is very big (vertically anyway). The problem is in the canvas, you can only see the objects inside the viewable screen. Therefore I can't align the footage to the text because I can't see the text. See what I mean?

I completely agree with your first point, but I'm not sure how I actually do what you suggest in your second point.

Close your cat+text sequence,
- open your main sequence,
- then drag your cat+text sequence FROM THE BROWSER into your main sequence timeline,
- adjust the motion tab of the imported cat+text sequence to reduce it in size and to postion it where you want.

Also investigate "nesting sequences" in the FCP Manual. HTH.

(However, I can understand that if you have lots of text (i.e. a tall paragraph - several screens full) this may not work too well.)

Sorry, I understand about nesting, adjusting the motion keyframes, etc.

The problem I'm having is working with a sequence big enough to be able to "move" my video footage in the right spot in relation to the text.

What I'm going to try now is create the text in Photoshop (as opposed to the Boris generator), and see how that goes.

Aha! OK, sorry about that! Good luck. I sympathise: I have had problems with large amounts of scrolling text too.

Tried using a PSD file, but ended up with the same issue. Final Cut only shows the content of items that are in the viewing screen. If there was a way to enable viewing of items in the "grey" area, all would be well.

I think that rules FCP out of this little project.

Has anyone tried creating something like this before?

I've seen it done heaps of times, espically on Disney movies like The Incredibles.

I'm thinking maybe AE or Shake may be the way to go. Any other suggestions?