The fact that Velvet Matter wrote the Radiance plugins and then sold them back to Sony is well known and has always been officially acknowleged by both parties.

I was referring (in response to Jay's question) specifically to the rumour that Velvet Matter were also the authors of the Pro Type Titler, something that as far as I am aware has never been officially acknowledged by Sony. And as far as I can see Pro Type titler is not specifically referred to on the Velvet Matter website either. It may be that their phrase "some of Velvetmatter's underlying video FX technology" is meant to include PTT, or it might refer to the Radiance FX only.

Mark

Sorry Mark, I misunderstood your post. Though I have absolutely no information to substantiate this, I strongly suspect that someone other than Velvet Matter was the author of PTT. This is purely based on the fact that the style of the interface is so very different from either VM's or Sony's products.

Peter

We may never know who wrote PTT. Most likely whoever wrote it won't be giving it a prominent spot on their resume :{.

Jerry

I looked at a few Protype tutorials out there and found this one helped me understand PTT a bit better. If you want a better overview of PTT than you can get from the help file, this video is a good investment of 9:45.

One thing this tut explained was the use of the Curves tab in the preview window. You can drop these predefined curves on a PTT timeline curve to redefine it. I had already figured out the Collections tab. But for the life of me I can't find a drop target for the items in the Effects or Gradients tabs. I would have thought you could drop these on selected text, but doesn't seem to work for me. Anyone know what the drop target is for these items?

Jerry

Drop it in the Effects tab on Gradient Fill Swatch.

Sidecar...if I had a dollar for every coder that told me software was easy to use. There are lots of examples of "having to learn an interface" (for fear of starting a flame-war, I just can't get used to anything Apple writes - it's all nightmarish dystopian big brother-esque "we'll do the thinking for you" stuff).

As for PTT, I tried to take to it...I really did. It has some of the same icons and conventions as After Effects, which I use extensively. I thought it would be a great time-saver to be able to do titling in Vegas, rather than adding the AE step to my workflow. But when the pick-whip graphic in AE was actually a timeline thingy in PTT, I knew I was in trouble. I've just never been able to get the hang of it because it's like nothing else out there. It's slick, and I'm sure there are people who can use it, but I'm not one of them.

And for the record, I ran the demo of Boris FX, and even game myself 3 full days to get into it (I mean, three 8 hour days of doing nothing but Boris). When the demo period was up a I got a nice email from one of the sales reps, who I promptly told "your interface needs work." The reply was, "lots of people have no problems with it."

For anyone who uses AE and has Red Giant / Trapcode plug-ins, they're relative no-brainers. Watching a demo will get you using the plugins because the use the same interface and operate like every other plugin in AE (Magic Bullet Looks being the obvious exception).

But maybe WE, as users, are to blame. We were HOWLING for better native titles and text in Vegas. We got it, but at the cost of making sense. It's the old addage: be careful what you wish for. :-)

I can't speak for the other products since I have not used them, but as an owner of Boris Red I completely agree about the complexity of the user interface. It took me a lot of effort until I one day I suddenly "understood" the Boris interface paradigme. Now I love the product, as it is a very powerfull tool. But again, the paradigme is completely different and must be understood in order to work with the product.

Peter

Sellavision, I've been experiencing the same problem with the ProType Titler. When I use the presets, I replace the "sample text" with my own title words, and the preset vanishes. I started with Vegas 8.1 and had the same problem. I upgraded to 9.0 and the presets worked perfectly. Then I installed the update 9.0b and the problems reappeared. This is obviously a software glitch, not just a learning issue. I'm using the 64-bit version with my Vista 64 OS. I have a trouble ticket in with Sony support, but it sounds like I won't get a resolution based on all the comments posted here.

Max

Im glad Im not the only one being totally stymied by PTT. I don't even try anymore and it felt like I was missing out on a key part of Vegas, even though it dosent fit with wedding video, which is my main project type.

What Max is saying seems familiar, not even sure.

I just wish the basic text titling function gave crisper text.

Jeff, have you tried setting the resolution on the text events to twice the project resolution? That will effectively halve the softness.