Lower Thirds - How to?

Ktawfik wrote on 5/8/2004, 3:32 AM

I am trying to create my own library of lower thirds using Photoshop and Vegas. As usual I will create backgrounds in 655x480. I want to create animated lower thirds and render as MPEG2 to use later on in my projects

I am confused about the animation, lets say I will create the following
- Background in Photoshop 655 x 480
- Strip of one solid color at the lower third of the frame
- Now for animation I will do that in Vegas but should I create a wider strip like 900 x 480 so that it can move back and forth over the background?

Also does anyone recommend a site that has free lower thirds or tutorials or do you recommend any software that does lower thirds and other neat animation. I found lots of talk about Ulead software

Thanks for help

Comments

farss wrote on 5/8/2004, 3:45 AM

Encoding out as MPEG-2 wouldn't be a wise move. Best bet would be uncompressed AVI with preserved alpha channel. As for the rest, EXPERIMENT!
You can buy libraries of lower thirds from Digital Juice. Don't know of anyone giving them away.

Spot|DSE wrote on 5/8/2004, 6:11 AM

Ulead's Cool 3D Production Studio is great for creating lower thirds and med level 3Dgraphics. you'd only want to export as a 32 bit avi so you've got overlay/alpha, but it does that too.

Ktawfik wrote on 5/8/2004, 7:31 AM

Thanks a lot for your help, as you might already have guessed I am new to this. Why should I encode to AVI uncompressed vs. MPEG2 is it because of the transparency (Alpha Channel)

Thanks

farss wrote on 5/8/2004, 7:44 AM

Well firstly yes, MPEG-2 doesn't support alpha channel (i.e. transparency) but also uncompressed avi will give you much higher quality. However if they don't have any animation then you can just save them out of PS as .png files.
A better question might be WHY you want to save them as MPEG-2?
Vegas isn't a native mpeg editor. MPEG-2 uses spatial and temporal compression and is best thought of as an output only format. There's MPEG-2 and there's MPEG-2, certainly it's used in some very high end applications but at very high bit rates and encoded with very expensive encoders and still has no advantge apart from reducing overall bitrate over uncompressed formats. As your lower thirds if animated will most likely be only a few seconds long you should be able to fit quite a few of them onto even a CD.