How about another approach: Provide full support for Flash 8 or 9 SWF files, and provide a shortcut key to "Open in external editor" (like ctrl-E opens sound files in Sound Forge) or "edit source project" command. Then you could assign your Flash editor of choice: Adobe Flash, e-Frontier's MotionArtist, Wildform's WildPresenter Pro, etc. That would certainly add a lot of text animation possibilities.

Paul,

I've owned Graffiti 4 for a couple of years. It could be an outstanding titler for Vegas if only it integrated better with Vegas. The two things I find lacking are:

There is no real time previewing while your working with the text. You can see a preview in Graffiti but not in Vegas. In fact, even after you return the text to Vegas, you can't see all of the motion in Vegas preview until you render what Graffiti has done.
When you enter Graffiti from Vegas there is only a transfer of a single frame to Graffiti. This forces the user to render the clip under the title and import it into Graffiti after you activate the plug-in. I think it would be easier if Graffiti were stand alone but alas the keyframer in the full version require Vegas to render.

Graffiti is potentially a good solution to our titling needs but its crappy integration just ruins it for me.

David

Use Gayman Graphics, but they no longer support Vegas.
It's also a pain to operate. Designed by a geek no doubt.
I much prefer the intiutiveness of the Vegas titler, but it needs to be much more powerful for pro work,
And yes,---as Vic suggests,--- any new Vegas titler must have spell check.
It's not an add on,---it's a necessity.
You think it'll never happen to you.
But it will!
And it will cost you money and credibility.
Late night editing sessions can play tricks on our human spell checker.
I see a man in the basement at HQ in Madison poring over these entires and nodding.
PLEASE!!! Tell me I'm right?

We write our text in a word program because it is easier to see any mistakes and the use of a spell checker. Then we copy it to Vegas.

I use Heroglyph by ProDAD, nice effects, cool integration, good quality.

http://www.heroglyph.com/

My two cents.

Ernesto

There is no real time previewing while your working with the text. You can see a preview in Graffiti but not in Vegas.

David, are you sure about this and have you seen the two demos on the Boris Graffiti/Vegas website I had referred to further up? Because as far as I can tell, it looks like you create the text within the Vegas time line on top of your action just like you would with the Vegas titler; or do you mean that you can't run both the animated title and the Vegas' time line action until you first render what you have in Boris?

From an editing standpoint, it's critical to be able to continually tweak the title graphics in realtime, to match them to the video, right?

so using an external editor is no good, unless you're just using it to create intro graphics and credit rolls at the end, type of thing.

but for in-video lower thirds, and other textover effects, it's important to be able to fine-tune where and how long the text stays onscreen, using in-vegas keyframing... so any titling app needs to be able to be keyframed for motion control from within the vegas timeline.


ken

Paul,

All my comments were about Graffiti 4.

I found this excerpt on the BorisFX website under Graffiti 5 features:
Static Generator for Sony Vegas 7 - Users of Sony vegas 7 will now be able to use Graffiti as a static title generator, meaning less rendering and faster title generation.

I can't comment on how it performs... but the description is intriguing. I may have to try the demo.

David

Well, I gave the demos another close look and can see that you can scrub the synchronized motion but not run in real time until you've rendered. For me, this is perfectly adequate, since most of the time I work this way; I scrub when I draw motion, keyframe camera moves or edit scenes. Generally only after tweaking do I run in real time just to confirm what I have been tweaking. This is the nature of all my work; I have become acclimated to interpreting real time in this fashion.

Spelling checker?! Come on. How much KB is that going to add to Vegas? Just use Word (or whatever) and copy it. Then, if it's long, have fun going through it to decide where each line should end, which Vegas won't do. Of course, after doing that, if you edit it in any way, you can have all the fun again of deciding where each line should end after the edit. Stupid, you should have done it right in the first place.

Eh?

Who has added a line here that has stopped my IE from word wrapping?

I hate it when this happens!! And NO, this is the only thread that IS doing it!!

Spell check would be absolutely ridiculous. Get a dictionary. Everyone knows artists can't spell, but that's (just one reason) why they're not in charge of the project...

1 - Non-Synch Cursor - Presently I use LOOPING reviews. It works.

2 - Key Frames to be have a separate TAB timeline - Meaning, the TABS of Edit Place; Prop and Effects - to have their OWN ROW under the existing "Text" row.

3 - Placement Window. A BIGGER placement window so I can see when text is just about "hitting" the Frame

4 - FX for separate lines/words/letters

. . I have others . .

5 - How about CHAINING FXs to the TEXT Chain?