Text Captions in Platinum Movie Studio Suite 13

MistyRicardo wrote on 8/20/2015, 11:05 AM
Hi, wonder if anyone can help me with this.

I make cooking videos (British Indian food) for my youtube channel, and put up to 30-40 captions on each video, for ingredients, technique, comments etc. I align the text in a column on the right hand side of the screen, leaving the rest of the view area for the frying pan action etc.

I have become completely frustrated with the basic text editing offered in Movie Studio. There's no word wrap, so I constantly have to use the RETURN.ARROW, BACKSPACE keys to get each individual line of text to the be aligned in a tidy column.

It would be so much easier if I could type the whole caption as one big paragraph (i.e. not pressing RETURN unless I want a deliberate new line) if I could just resize the text box and have MS automatically rearrange the text. I have found no way of facilitating text editing in MS.

Does anyone have any ideas on this ? 3rd party plug ins ? I'm relatively new to Movie editing.

If you take a look at one of my videos, say this one for Garlic Chilli Chicken, you will get the idea of what I have to do...


Comments

UKharrie wrote on 8/20/2015, 12:02 PM
TEXT is a real weakness in SMS, although you can open-up a new large can of Worms if you have NewBlueTitler installed - sadly it's easy to miss during "Install" but should be in yr "Suite" version. I don't use v13, being limited to v12 presently and waiting to see what v14 offers, now that Win10 is said to be improved over Win8.

Just tried it in v12 Suite and there is no Copy/Paste facility . . . must have seen it in v10.

If you find a Fix, let us know . . . .


Seems SMS has "overcome Text shortcomings" by inviting NewBlue - but there is far more to Text than fancy effects - and I think it's a shame there isn't a good Desk Top Publishing package in the Stable - which Movie Studio could use a cut-down version, with many features a Compositor takes for granted. NB is very clever and "fancy" but does not address basic text-handling like a DTP needs - and I suspect that's really what you desire, if Text is important.

A DTP package would also be very useful to make sleeves for DVD/BD and could come with a range of "Technical characters" which would be useful in any scientific presentation..e.g Degrees C, or Degrees K...it's just too hard searching Symbols....in SMS.

Hope that helps . . . it's imperfect.
MistyRicardo wrote on 8/20/2015, 12:04 PM
Thank you Harrie, yes answered my query very well.. I also use NB, but it's even worse for text editing.

May have to look at other software packages.
Markk655 wrote on 8/21/2015, 7:53 AM
Misty, what version of the NB Titler are you using? The latest versions offer a way to change all formats all at once for titles. For example, very easy to change text for Lower thirds (or all formats - all at once). Have you watched their tutorials?
richard-amirault wrote on 8/21/2015, 7:33 PM
I make cooking videos (British Indian food) for my youtube channel, and put up to 30-40 captions on each video, for ingredients, technique, comments etc. I align the text in a column on the right hand side of the screen, leaving the rest of the view area for the frying pan action etc.

Not sure I understand.
"align the text in a column on the right side of the screen" Yes, that is clear ... but then you say: " ... I constantly have to use" ... "to get each individual line of text to be aligned"

"line of text" suggests more than one word per line... try this (by the way I only have the Pro version, but I'm pretty sure this should work for you)

On the text entry box there are JUSTIFICATION icons (left, center, right) in Pro it defaults to center. Select LEFT justification ... enter your text line, then the next line ...

NOW, leave the EDIT tab and go to the PLACEMENT tab. You should see your text in a dotted line box within the window of your video frame (not in the Preview window, but the TEXT edit box) Grab that box and slide it over to the right side of the video frame watching the PREVIEW window for proper placement.

This will give you your text with an even, left justified, column on the right side of your video frame.
MistyRicardo wrote on 8/30/2015, 2:53 PM
Brighter side thank you very much for the reply. That's the method I currently use, just find it very fiddle that's all.. Thanks again. Mr.