http://kickbacktracks.jcmediaservices.com/Lower%20Thirds.htm

I use Titlemotion from an old copy of Premiere which is standalone. When I update a TM graphic and hit Save All it automagically update in Vegas. Almost a plugin!

- R

>>...Not Cheap.

Boris Graffitti 3.0 will also do it and it's a lot cheaper.

if you have photoshop make your own.. If need be buy Richard Harringtons book "Photoshop for non linear editors" Photoshop is the tool that these companies use to make lower thirds then sell them to you at outrageous pricing. Of course you need some creativity and a working knowledge of photoshop.. Hope this helps

Vegas Generated Media is great for lower thirds. There are some .veg files at the Sundance site I believe for this very thing. Easy enough to make on your own though. If you're looking at animated lower thirds, Digital Juice's Editor's toolkits 1 & 2 offer these. They're around $500 per set but well worth the price.

mike

We often build animated lower thirds using generated media. Use the track motion and cookie cutter tools, maybe the gradient tool too, to keyframe changes, plus transitions to roll them in/out.

If you are a lazy bugger like me just use Premiere 6.5's lower thirds templates and render the titles section as an AVI for use on the Vegas timeline. I am sure Sony will do something about Vegas' lousy titling capability in the new release becasue that's the program's only real shortcoming. if it is any consolation, out AVID Media Composer's stock titling tool is pathetic, sompelling us to use Photoshop or some other titling program we had to buy. I don't do the titles so I don't know what the program is.

" I am sure Sony will do something about Vegas' lousy titling capability in the new release"

Titling capabilities are fine.. you're wanting lower thirds.. easy enough to build to custom suit your needs. Very rarely is one program going to have all you need for titling, even Inscriber or Grafitti. Keyframed Generated Media coupled with pan / crop and the cookie cutter f/x like Spot mentioned earlier is fairly quick and painless. If you're looking for stock non-moving lower thirds.. plenty out there on the web.. some even for free.

Mike

I've used lower1/3 from Videofactory, saved as preset in text media, it followed me through Vegas Video 3 thro' to V4a-d - Don't get any better than that!

Grazie

I use moving backgrounds from places like mainconcept (I think they still have five free backgrounds each month). Then use track motion and cookie cutter like spot said.

Thanks to all who responded - you gave me a lot of good suggestions. However, I haven't the time to create them (did this once in illustrator and turned out nice though) - which is why i'm looking for templates. PB, you mentioned rendering Premiere 6.5's as avi files - i tried this and it came up just the lower 3rd with a complete black screen. How did you keep the screen transparent for the video to show?

Boris Graffiti has a number of great thirds presets and works well for credits and Text effects also.

What I do is import the section of video (the whole thing) to Premiere, lay on the title the render the work areas with a bit of padding on either end as an AVI (picture and title) then import it to Vegas. Sounds complicated but with a 2.8 gHz and 2 gigs RAM it takes a couple of minutes start to finish. I know this sounds like a retarded way of doing it but it works for me.

You could also render the title against a black background in Premiere, bring into Vegas and use the parent - child modes to composite it against your video.. that or you can use the keyer and key out the black background... this way if you need to adjust the video or titles independently, you're not dealing with a composited video / title file.

mike