Cascading Graphic - Two Part Question

Jay Gladwell wrote on 3/2/2010, 3:38 PM

This is not about PTT, but regular ol' Vegas text generator...

First question: Has anyone seen Standing in the Shadows of Motown? At the end before the closing credits there is a cascading of song titles that "rain" down from top to bottom. There appears to be at least three different font sizes. Each layer moves at a different speed.

Second question: Does anyone know the trick or formula for figuring the timing on such a motion graphic?

My client does business in 75 countries. Rather than just scroll a list, I want to have the individual countries rain down, for lack of a better word, using three different font sizes at three different speeds. But it ain't happenin'. I can't get the timing to save my neck.

Can anyone provide some guidance in this, please?

TIA!

EDIT:
Okay, luckily, I found the clip on YouTube. The effect starts at 6:47. This is exactly what I'm talking about... trying to achieve.

Won't embed for playing...

Comments

xberk wrote on 3/2/2010, 3:53 PM

I'd take my first shot at this with PTT and see if it can do it..

For anyone else, here's the link to

, the raining titles come at the end.

Jay Gladwell wrote on 3/2/2010, 4:20 PM

I doubt PTT can do it any easier than the regular text generator.

Besides, it's the timing I'm having trouble with.

xberk wrote on 3/2/2010, 4:27 PM

Ok. Here's a start Jay, using PTT. Let's say you have 75 countries and you want to use 5 different fonts and sizes raining down the screen. Each PTT text box would have 15 countries in a specific font and size scrolling down at a specific XY offset.
Create the box with something like 5 spaces between the titles like this.

United Kingdom

Australia

Tonga

Then set PTT for the length you want for the entire credit roll, say 60 seconds.
PLace the box out of frame at the top and set keyframes for that offset. Then place the PTT timeline cursor at the end ( at 60 seconds) and pull the box down all the way to the bottom and out of frame. Set the X offset to match the beginning keyframe for the X offset. Create 4 more of these and you are done. Look workable to you?

xberk wrote on 3/2/2010, 5:00 PM

Besides, it's the timing I'm having trouble with.

I played with this further and the regular text generator will do this also in similar manner. One keyframe at the start position, one at the end position for the scroll down. The "length" of the generated text will determine the timing. If one set of titles comes down top to bottom in say 15 seconds, you can offset another set to come down at say 13 seconds or 12 seconds to get the effect of one title passing the other. It likely is easier to do in the Text Generator vs PTT but PTT would offer more options to enhance things. I see that now.

I think the over all timing is a math problem. How many countries? How much time for the entire credit roll? How many different fonts and sizes? How many video tracks with generated media going at once? Does that make sense?

farss wrote on 3/2/2010, 5:32 PM

My advice, give the task at an After Effects guru (NOT me!).

I can see how it'd be a piece of cake in AE, I just don't quite have the skills to say for certain I could pull it off quickly. Between Expressions and Scripting in AE someone who knew what they were doing should be able to knock it over for you in a couple of hours max. One thing that AE has that Vegas doesn't is a random number generator and that can be used in expressions to easily pull off what you'd think would have taken ages of doing things by hand.

Bob.

DGates wrote on 3/2/2010, 5:40 PM

"Let's say you have 75 countries and you want to use 5 different fonts and sizes..."

5 different fonts would look too amateurish.

xberk wrote on 3/2/2010, 6:40 PM

I can see how it'd be a piece of cake in AE,

Maybe I'm missing something. Looks pretty straight forward for Vegas. It's a simple scroll times X number of video tracks. The issue of timing each track is subjective unless all the tracks scroll equally but in any case timing is easily controlled by the "length" of the generated media. I know nothing about AE but I don't see why Vegas can't do this fairly easily. I tried it and got a fairly good start in 10 minutes. - Paul

Former user wrote on 3/2/2010, 7:07 PM

I think it would be easier done by creating the titles in a graphic program like Photoshop. Several different screens.

Then layer then on different tracks with different speed moves and zooms.

That is how I would do it.

Dave T2

Terry Esslinger wrote on 3/2/2010, 7:34 PM

You could use three or four different vertical planes in 3d space and using the z axis space them from near to far. You could then have the scrolling all be at the same speed but would appear different due to proximity to the "camera". The closer ones would be faster. the farther away ones slower.

farss wrote on 3/2/2010, 8:17 PM

Agree it shouldn't be that hard to do in Vegas.
I'd put each line of text onto a 3D track and use depth to set the scale.
It'd be tedious with 75 tracks but you'd get there.

That said I'm pretty certain it can be done very quickly with the Text Anarchy plugin from Red Giant. I picked that up ages ago when it was on special at DJ. I *think* you can feed it pages of text and it'll parse the text and produce exactly that effect as well as The Matrix text walls etc. Certainly not worth the effort and cost of AE for a once off but if clients keep coming back for more....

Myself I've used that plugin once, I think it's paid for itself, just.

Bob.

[edit]

Went back and refreshed my memory on Text Anarchy. It can sure do some amazing and wierd things with text but nothing as simple and elegant as what's wanted here, darn.

xberk wrote on 3/2/2010, 9:20 PM

You could use three or four different vertical planes in 3d space and using the z axis space them from near to far.

Hey. Terry. That works for me. Very quickly too as each generated media can be the same length. I just tried it. Not exactly the same effect but easy to do and looks like with a bit of tweaking would be quite nice. But, of course, with all those names scrolling down the screen at once, one covering the other at times, this is a subjective thing in terms of what timing and spacing works and how close to the original "rain" like effect you're getting.