A credit roll over a non-black background without a dropshadow is almost useless. Is Sony planning on improving this feature?
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No. We have been complaining about this since Vegas 3. They consider the basic editor a finished product that doesn't need improvement. If it's not a bell or a whistle, it's not really that important.

John

i don't belive it's useless, i use it quite a bit & don't need a drop shadow (name me five movies where the credits at the end have a drop shadow).

I do with they had the same controlls, that would be really nice, but i've done some nice things with it even w/o all the control i wanted (hey, limits increase my iminigation!)

I've used rolling credits many times where I pull the brightness of the video down substantially as the credits are beginning. Looks professional and the text is very easy to read. It would be nice to have a drop shadow option, but I've never missed it.

name me five movies where the credits at the end have a drop shadow.

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Any that aren't on a black background. I grabbed two off the shelf:

1. "Fun With Dick and Jane" Credits were on a black background with white letters - no drop shadow

2. "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" Credits were on an color animated background - letters had a drop shadow.

Television programming where the credits roll over a closing scene - drop shadow.

I use workarounds too, but let's not kid ourselves here. The credit roll generator is antequated at best and there is absolutely no excuse for it not being revamped after this long.

John

i can't name five off my self (and they span from the 60's to the 00's).

Yeah, it would be nice, and yeah, it should be better by now, but how many people have said "SoFo/Sony shouldn't waste time on compositing, there's already better dedicated programs to do that!" I doubt even if we have a Boris like credits system we'd be happy. :)

but yes, it should have all the options normal text has. but 90% of all credits out there are solid color text over solid color background because nobody really cares at the credits (look at Terminator 2!).

can't name five off my self (and they span from the 60's to the 00's).
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Most movies roll credits on a black background using white letters. The one's that don't use a drop shadow as in the example above.

I don't know about your credit rolls, but most of mine are not done that way. They roll on a video background and need the contrast provided by a SIMPLE drop shadow. The kind even rudimentary title programs or programs that have titling capability built into them contain. Why should it even need all this justification in a "professional" program like Vegas.

John

AS has been said, you can apply drop shadow to credit rolls using Track Motion

OR

If, as I do, you use the normal Text Generator and Placement Tab to create rolling credits, you can do it within the Text Generator.

I think riredale's suggestion is very good (darken the video behind text). Text and video at the same time will compete for our attention and video will usually win. As in good storytelling we ought to ask "what is important here?" and then help viewers to focus on that.

Norwegian television sometimes put the background out of focus (even if it is still), possibly based on the thought that that is what our eyes does to the background when we focus on something near. Even though the thought has something to be said for it I have not seen them get it right. It looks clumsy.

I do not agreee with the "people don't read it anyway" school of thought. If credits (or any other text) needs to be there, it needs to be fully readable. And the optimum obviously is near-white text over a near-black background. Move away from that, even just a little, and you are compromising already.

If you want to integrate credits into the style and story by letting things happen behind it you should compensate. Drop shadows, yes, slower rolling, yes, larger text, yes, the riredale-effect, yes - that sort of thing.

And yes, the credit roll function in Vegas is not up to it. I have always defended the Vegas text generator - still do - but the credit roll thing is embarrassing. It looks like it was made by someone else; it doesn't have the Vegas touch at all, and it was added because they thought they had to have something like that. Well they do, and they don't.
Tor

PeterWright,
I'll have to try using Track Motion to create a drop shadow for the credits. I have little experience with Track Motion, and will probably get back to you for help when I try it. :)

I have used regular Text Media events to simulate rolling credits, but it can get very complicated when you try to create multiple groups and keep them moving at the same speed... It is doable, but can be tedious.

TheHappyFriar,
Most of my credits (I don't do professional film editing... yet. :)) occur over a video background... and having plain color text with no outline and/or drop shadow looks amateur. I could, as suggested, darken the background video, but sometimes I don't want the background darkened.

I just don't understand why the programming team didn't use the same feature set when creating text for credits as they did for Text Media events.

It would be awesome if someone from the actual development team at Madison/Sony could respond to this request and say either "Forget it, it ain't going to happen!" or "Ya, we heard you and we plan to implement it for 7.0c or 8.0+!"

Does anyone from the development team frequent these forums?

The credit roll generator on the old Adobe Premier 5.0 was tons better than Vegas, but that's the only thing.

JJK

It's really easy.

Create the roll on Track 1.

- Adjust it in track motion to do whatever you want it to do: 2d or 3d. I did one that leaned back like the star wars opening scroll. (Allows names to be read longer.)
- Bump resolution to 1440 x 960 so the titles are sharper. (You should do this for all titles all the time to make them look MUCH better.)
- Pick a color or leave them white.

Duplicate the track to create Track 2.

- Make that track a child of Track 1.
- Change the text color to black (or whatever you want the shadow to be).
- Go into track motion and offset Track 2 to space the black shadow however much you want.

The two tracks will scroll in perfect sync.

If you edit a name or make any other changes, just be sure to make the same changes to the shadow track 2

I'm doing an honor roll right now that has 232 names in it and runs for almost 10 minutes.

It's fast, easy to do and works great.

Thanks Sidecar!

That's so much easier than a drop shadow.

John

Seriously Sidecar. We do appreciate the workaround. Very clever indeed.

If you want to get really fancy, you can add a little gaussian blur and offset the shadow to the right and down a hair.

That would be a great script: a dropshadow script that duplicates a credit roll, sets it to black, blurs it slightly and lays it under the original credit and drops it a hair to the right and down.

Vegas credit rolls are substandard.
Solution: Get a professional application.
We use Cayman Graphics.
But I don't think they support customers in Vegas 7.0 who didn't have the program before.
Also, if anybody at Sony is listening,---CAN WE HAVE A PROFESSIONAL TEXT GENERATOR LIKE OTHER PROFESSIONAL NLEs?
purdy please