Text Crawl

HiddenDrive48 wrote on 9/25/2007, 5:43 AM
Searched the forums and could not find much of anything related to this. What would be the most efficient way of adding a 'text crawl' similar to what you would see on a CNN lower third? Perhaps with a solid color background. I would like the scroll to read from left to right (obviously). Is there a limit to how much text can be included?
Thanks!
Mike

Comments

dogwalker wrote on 9/25/2007, 7:44 AM
Nice idea! I just popped over and tried this. I don't know whether my approach is the best (I'm VERY new to VMS and video editing), but I just created a text event and entered a long string with no line breaks. In the first frame, I placed the text at the bottom and just barely off right-screen (I chose to scroll to the left). I then went to the last frame and dragged the string completely to the left where it was just barely off screen.

Then I ran it, and sure enough it scrolled right to left, very smoothly.
HiddenDrive48 wrote on 9/25/2007, 7:52 AM
Thanks for the reply! That's pretty much the approach I was considering. How long was your text event? Is there a limit to the number of characters?
dogwalker wrote on 9/25/2007, 7:55 AM
I just threw mine in there, set it 30 seconds, but I'll bet you could easily go a lot longer. And in fact, I was too short at first, so in the timeline I dragged the right edge.

Good question about the character limit. If you do run into a limit, maybe have two text events. You'd have a brief pause after the first one scrolls off one edge and before the next one starts, but actually, that might be very appropriate, if you time it with video events.

Good luck, and I'm glad you posted this. I'll have to use this in one of my home movies I'm converting!

HiddenDrive48 wrote on 9/25/2007, 8:00 AM
Sounds like that's the right idea. (having multiple text events)
I know there are some aftermarket title programs out there to do this but I wanted to do it inside of VMS. Good luck to you too!
HiddenDrive48 wrote on 9/25/2007, 7:22 PM
Actually I tried this and can only get a limited number of words on the screen at once. Any other ideas?
dogwalker wrote on 9/25/2007, 7:29 PM
Hmm, it works for me. I'm not putting any line breaks in. I tried various font sizes. I did have to stretch the event out to give the whole scroll time to complete. What do you mean, you're seeing only so many characters?
HiddenDrive48 wrote on 9/26/2007, 3:48 AM
If I use the text generator, change the font size to 18, I can type 30 words or so and it truncates the text to whatever will fit within the screen size. Using Track Motion to 'pan' the text.
HiddenDrive48 wrote on 9/26/2007, 3:52 AM
OK, I got it! I was using Track Motion. I went back and reread your reply and saw you were just placing the text using 'Placement' Now it makes sense and it's working. My fault - and thanks again!
dogwalker wrote on 9/26/2007, 9:12 AM
Cool, glad it works! I showed that to my son (and actually used a texture behind the scenes to make the text look interesting), he liked it.