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.