I'm sure there will be questions on the titler, so I'll start it out.

1. I drug an empty frame to the timeline.

2. I click and open the top icon on the frame to open edit.

3. I select "Collection" at the bottom of the opened editing window, and up pops some collection with some neat animations. I can drag that down to the box in the low left corner, and that cool animation is added, and the small time line shows what happens with that particular item.

So question, how do I create and edit my own similar type custom items ?

No clue. But I am impressed that you figured out that you needed to drag the effect to the box. You got farther than I did!

I really like Vegas, but IMHO, the usability of the Pro Type Titler is pretty poor. I wish it were more intuitive, like the rest of the tools in Vegas.

No clue. But I am impressed that you figured out that you needed to drag the effect to the box. You got farther than I did!

I really like Vegas, but IMHO, the usability of the Pro Type Titler is pretty poor. I wish it were more intuitive, like the rest of the tools in Vegas.

And that, Jerry, is the reason for having forums like this! So that we can share our collective knowledge to further each other along.

-gb-

Okay, so messed around a bit more.

If you drag the Collection items to the box at the bottom left, you now can go in and edit text to change it.

Plus, you have some kind of envelopes and controls on the mini time line. The envelope appears to be from the curve controls at the bottom of the title window. Click on that and you can add more curves to the time line, shortening and lengthing. You can also grab certain points on the line, and adjust the curves, and action of the text more....

Next step is to learn what to do from scratch, but I got an idea now how that works.

This is getting to be a something more that originally thought.....

And that, Jerry, is the reason for having forums like this! So that we can share our collective knowledge to further each other along.

-gb-

Well said, and it's what keeps bringing me back! There's always great info here.

And that, Jerry, is the reason for having forums like this! So that we can share our collective knowledge to further each other along.

-gb-

Absolutely agree with that sentiment Jerry, although it would still be nice to have somewhat more than a passing reference in the User Manual and rather better guidance in the Help file!

For me the best learning aid has been the tutorial in September's Sony Creative Software News, here: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/news/article.asp?articleid=37&keycode=3504

Certainly for me the new tool is a significant improvement on the old text generator but intuitive it is not!

Ian . . .

Ian, thanks for that link...and it certainly provides that basics for moving along in Pro Titler.

Yes the link helped, but its still not very intuitive....
Going to have to spend some time with it...

Bob T.

After following discussions about the Pro Type titler and using it now in practical, real applications in the past 2 or 3 days, I have come to the conclusion that it is very well designed for animated text. I hadn't recognized this at first glance because
1, I'm not interested in flying text,
2, as a full time animator I don't get that impressed with keyframable motion the way a photographer won't get easily impressed by a built in flash bulb.

But isn't the main purpose of a titler to allow us to set text as in print, with the idea of choosing the best typeface, layout, spacing and background to get the printed idea across in the most efficient way?

The fly abouts are candy, fluff and playtime. The real goal is to give the viewers something written in the most economical and unobtrusive way and if anyone is familiar with the vast studies that go into road sign design and the careful attention art directors give to their layouts in advertising, you will understand what I'm getting at, and that is where I see Pro Type fail.

I don't think it is such a huge problem to program a titler to offer better layout mechanics; I just think the designers forgot what the main function of a professional titler is.

Paul:

First, I think the standard titling capabilities which are still there with Vegas 8 will handle the levels of titling layout you speak of, and I think the primary purpose of this ProType tool was to add the capabilities you are critiquing.

Now I am not defending the standard titling tools. They are limited. I like Premiers much better, but that was what I used before I started with Vegas, and it was what I was used to. The level of sophistication in Vegas's standard titler seems to be limited, but on other hand, I am not sure what should be added. Can you tell us what titler you are comparing Vegas 8's capabilities with ?

Cayman Graphics Power CG comes to my mind first. It's designed to let the user create clean text layouts along the traditionally well established parameters of print.

It allows you to compose your layout right on top of the preview window and you can pick colors with an eyedropper right off the screen for ideal color coordination.

You can tweak in very small increments the distances between lines, words, entire blocks of letters and it offers automatic justifications in all directions with automated kerning.

Power CG even has its own built in spell checker and warns you when your color selection drifts into the TV illegal range.

These are some of the things I think should come first, before any title motion features.

Paul:

Okay, will check it out.

Ah, but at what price?

Totally agree with your views about the ProType Titler, Paul, and certainly the Cayman Graphics product looks good - but it costs more than Vegas in the first place!

I think many people looking to spend nearly a grand to get better control over titling might choose the After Effects route (I did) and in doing so get so much more besides.

Chris,

I understand from longer owners of Vegas that Cayman Graphics was once bundled with Vegas and everybody liked it. Then Sony dropped it, or Cayman dropped Sony and that's where it stands now.

I still own it and can use it as a standalone application but every good NLE should have a native titler and that's what we are discussing here. Vegas is better than just a good NLE. I wouldn't trade it for anything else and I can even make the new Pro Type titler work for me with enough patience, which is what I do. I just wish it to be more advanced in the basics.

Ian,

Cayman Graphics is way overpriced and I never liked their customer service. These two elements alone could easily be behind the Vegas/CG divorce. Even more reason for Pro Titler to improve the layout part before it works on anything fancy like 3D titles.

Cayman Graphics once sold a plugin for Vegas but I don't recall it ever being bundled with Vegas. Boris Graffiti has been bundled with several versions of Vegas.

Edward,
my poor choice of words; how exactly did the plugin work? How interactive was it with the Vegas preview window, do you remember?

With most plugins, it seems they open their own windows where you do all the changes. Once you close the window, the preview is live but not until then. For example, when you open Boris, you only get the first frame of video unless you open Boris as a stand-alone app in import the video directly.

I have Boris and can't use it for that reason either. Commonly, my titles will be composed atop a scene in motion, which makes it so important to design the text's layout directly in the timeline. I'll get by; I don't need to do this every day.

That's one of the beauties of the new ProTitler - it works as you expect and the preview updates automatically as you change any setting similar to the old titler.

. . . with the exception of animated properties, of course.

I have to say I feel a little guilty about knocking the new titler - it's not THAT bad - it's just somewhat less exciting that I had hoped for. "ProType Titler" sounds awfully grand and I guess I was expecting more than I should.

Paul,

I wonder if there is a pervasive viral infection that attacks the minds(?) of software companies, leading them to ever more daring and death defying leaps of technical grandeur and fantastic new functionality - all the while ignoring the basic reason that people use the product.

I use a low cost (and quite a good deal for the money) CAD package called DesignCAD and every release adds more and more funtions for 3D visualization and lighting and fly-through tours of the gizmo under design.

All the while ignoring problems with the basic functionality that people buy the program for, like drawing lines, or selecting objects, or having intersecting solids work reliably.

Maybe because the "candy" as you call it is so nice to write about in an advertising blurb.

I have nothing against flying text if the flight of the text adds some visual interest or helps relate the text to the images - but generally I agree 100% with you that, particularly in situations where the text (or the viewer in the case of road signage) is in motion, the actual basics of typeface choice, character spacing, etc are critical to comprehension.

And without comprehension, text soon becomes a distraction!

Jim,

In this case, I've noticed that the candy is what most Vegas users were begging for and now applaud. I have a habit of checking member's websites (I'm curious about what people do for a living in general) and it is striking how popular this busyness of graphics has become, possibly influenced by CNN and other news outlets. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that this is also what their customers expect if they have to pay good money for a custom made DVD.

So it's trickle up economy; from the videographer's clients all the way up to the software developers. Imagine how well a promo for a video titler would do if it said "The best straightforward type compositor every elitist has ever dreamed of!"

Personally all the 'flying here' and 'bouncing there' stuff puts me off in the same way that faux-3d or huge, blocky, graphicy, multicoloured, drop shadowed, Life of Brian-style lettering does.

None of the presets appeal to me either. They kinda fly in the face of "less is more" and scream "amateur with toys but no taste"! If I was making fun vacation movies, maybe, but I'm not!

It's still a VAST improvement on what we had before, though.

But I have noticed that it's easy to 'break' an animation by customising a preset. And not everything works as expected. For example, I just tried to put strikethrough on some text - can I apply it to the whole text? Can I hell!?! And then my animation elements broke!

Luckily I'm not likely to ever use these effects on text, but it would be nice if it worked as you'd expect.

Oh, one last niggle (for now). What a shame you can't double/triple click on the text to select a whole line or paragraph.

Paul,

Of course everybody wants the candy. I've seen it on so many software prducts (to say nothing of automobiles - how many new features have anything to do with how the car actually drives?)

Usually it starts when someone notices that a high end expensive piece of software has some neat features and immediately starts to want the same thing in a lower priced package.

Since it would probably cost too much to really develop the same functionality for 5% of the money, the development mindset becomes one of trying to figure out if you can provide5% of the function but sort of make it look sort of like the high priced spread. Net result is that people wind up paying for the candy in lowered stability etc because all the "new features" stress the software in new and unknown ways.

(FYI I used to be a software developer)

Two thoughts on this:

* Remember the Pareto principle -- 20% of functionality is what will be used 80% of the time. Does this release provide that 20%?

* This may not be the all singing all dancing titler people were hoping for, but there is a good chance that the platform for the bells and whistles has now been put in place and can be extended more easily in the future.

From what I can see, Vegas is built of a very sound software and design architecture, and SCS seem to be intent on preserving that. More power to them.

Just thoughts, nothing more.

Ciao,

marks
(still a software developer)

How did we get into a philosophical discussion of how the masses don't really know what's good........ I started this thread to talk about and learn what we could do with the ProTitler. Has anybody really commenting about it really tried it and can you provide some insight on features you have found ?

I would love a collection of veg files with different text moves all saved in the titler. Seems possible. The titler does seem very snappy and I can use the normal undo button, seems well integrated just styled differently, kind of like xp to windows 98.

I just discovered "punctuations and symbols" and am fascinated. For me, this is a first in any titler I have experienced.

Believe it or not, you will find it by right clicking on the text as you type (yes, there is a RMB function after all). It not only knows where to properly paste the diacritic but there is a way you can browse through your fonts collection and see which typeface will accept a diacritic and which not. This is proof that there is Intelligent Design.

The only drawback, a minor one, is that the diacritical symbol's style does not adapt to the typeface, but I don't think anyone expects to see that in this age anymore anyway.

EDIT: I was mistaken -- the symbols do adopt to individual fonts. This feature is a small wonder and will certainly please many non-English language users of Vegas.

Way to go!!!

[QUOTE=Paul Fierlinger;744224]This is proof that there is Intelligent Design.

QUOTE]

Every aspect of Vegas is proof of Intelligent Design.

I've said to plenty of people since taking up video 18 months or so ago, that these brilliant tools we have, worked out by brilliant information engineers - who seem to me to have thought of eveything, enable us peasants to do things we never would have dreamed possible not too long ago. Frankly, I stand awe of the skill of those who put such things together.

I've just been fiddling around with the Titler and at this point have no idea how I can use it. But clearly these guys have and have made it possible for me to also at some stage in the future.