Creating Long Ticker-Tape Credit Rolls? How?

Grazie wrote on 9/10/2002, 3:02 AM
I'm wanting to "run" a ticker-tape type of credit - a verrryy lonnngg one - on a clip.

I can now roll a credit/text in the space I want, but the default size for a line in the Text/Backgrounds seems to be a bit mean, something like 40 characters. Is there a way to increase this number of characters? Is there a default setrting I can change? Is there an Internal setting to alter?

I've had some partial success by adding more and more lines to the text enter screen and using the Timed Sequence options with the Slow Enter Right and Slow Exit Left settings IN conjunction with the Move to Next Heading [or whatever it's called!]

At the end of the day, what I'm really after is a method of Copy and Paste, say from MSWord, straight into the Text/Backdrop box. I've had partial success with this except for the "block" on the number of characters. I've even tried making a JPG of the text and using this as a "moving" graphic to achieve this - but the JPG is not transparent [just seen this query in the a recent thread here on the Forum as well]. Sooooo... how does one make a JPG tranparent? Maybe one can't. After all the "white-space" in a JPG might be regarded as tranparent in Photoshop, but becomes dense "white-space" when brought into VF. If there is a "fix" to this, this could also help me.

I've even tried CamScroll, a separate freeware s/w. Its good, but takes time to render first thousands of BMPs and then knits them into an AVI. Subsequently I would really prefer to do this from within VF.

Sooooo Guys 'n Gals... how about some help on this?

Regards

G

Comments

IanG wrote on 9/10/2002, 3:41 AM
So far as I know, you can't make a transparent JPG. VF handles transparent gifs though. I've not tried it yet, but you'd probably want to make sure your text wasn't anti-aliased, otherwise the edges would look very fuzzy as they became transparent.

Cheers

Ian G.
Grazie wrote on 9/10/2002, 4:32 AM
Brilllll! - Thought as much. What on Earth is "anti-aliased" and how do I ..... anti it?! I'll give a Gif a go.

G
IanG wrote on 9/10/2002, 7:17 AM
Anti-aliasing is a technique used to make on-screen images look smoother than they realy are. Imagine a bright red letter on a white background - now zoom in on the edge of the letter. If the letter's been anti-aliased you'll find you've got various shades of pink as well as the red and white. You'll probably also have red and white pixels mixed together. This looks great until you make red or white transparent - then it looks terrible!

Switching off anti-aliasing (assuming it's there in the first place) should be an option in your s/w. Of course, now that you've got rid of the anti aliasing, there's a chance your text is going to look jagged - you may need to play with different fonts and sizes to get a pleasing effect. Maybe a soft shadow would help?

Cheers

Ian G.
Chienworks wrote on 9/10/2002, 8:48 AM
Grazie: check out these two ...

http://www.chienworks.com/media/horizontal_scroll_text.vf ... done with pan/crop

http://www.chienworks.com/media/long_horizontal_text_scroll.vf ... done with text placement
Grazie wrote on 9/10/2002, 9:10 AM
Thanks Ian,

Tried the GIF thingy, but my text length made the whole concept impossible. Thanks anyway.

G
Grazie wrote on 9/10/2002, 9:11 AM
Chienworks, have downloaded - will report back.

Thanks for thinking of me,

Regards

G
Grazie wrote on 9/10/2002, 10:26 AM
Okay, - neat!

I've render and played it back on my PAL system.... and it works beautifully!

Somehow you've been able to place a very long piece of text on one line. I've done this in 72 point and yes I can keep on typing till it reaches the "buffers" and then it will drop down a line. I know you've chosen a smaller type face and yes I can type away and so on and so on. But there is still a limit.

Here's the Thing! If I go to Pan/Crop, [yes I can see and I do understand what you've done] - this is what I was going to try before my typing went to the line below - but what you will also see is the text set against a "grey" background [I can see the F-rame over to the left]. At the moment the grey area is defined on the x-coord as 0.0 to 2,048.0 - see it? How did you increase this? Another thing! Okay. If you place the cursor over the x-coord it turns into a "hand" - left-click and you can grab the scale and move it to the left. You will see the scale go up to 12,288.00 and beyond. Soooo... it will appear one can increase the "text" surface or area by a factor of about 6 at least. My question is - how can I increase the text area by this factor of 6 - or more? If I could do this then I could, theorectically increase the amount of text on one line. Do you see what I'm driving at? You can also see this long cigar shape text area in Text/Backdrop>Placement.

Your thoughts on this pleeeease,

Grazie
Chienworks wrote on 9/10/2002, 10:43 AM
On the "pan/crop" clip, i right-mouse-button clicked on the clip to set the properties. It looks like there's a limit there of 2048. On the "text placement" clip, i left the properties at the project default and just kept on typing. Hmmm. One of these scrolling text thingies i did probably had over 200 words in it and lasted over a full minute, and i was able to type it all in one line. In any case, the text placement method seems to be a lot more capable since it's not dependant on the frame size of the media.
Grazie wrote on 9/10/2002, 11:00 AM
Yes I understand, of course change the frame width. Do you think it is worth investigating how one can increase the 2048 limit? There does seem to be an enticing large number on the x-coord beyond 2048 limit.

Any thoughts?

Grazie
MUTTLEY wrote on 3/29/2003, 4:57 PM
I'm looking at doing the same thing, scrolling along the bottom as news stations do. Sorry but I'm lost as to what the ".vf " file is or how to use it.

Any insight would be most appreciated.

Thanks !

- Ray
Chienworks wrote on 3/29/2003, 7:17 PM
Muttley: the .vf file is a VideoFactory "project" file, in other words, the file you get when you click "File / Save" after editing so that you can come back and edit more later. Right-mouse-button click on those .vf file links and save them to your hard drive, then you can open them in VideoFactory to see what i had set up on my screen to make those credit rolls.