Text in Vegas

JaysonHolovacs wrote on 7/20/2004, 12:16 PM
In Vegas, it seems like there are two major ways to do text:

1. Text Generator
2. Credit Roll

Does anyone else here feel the the product would be better served with a combination of each? For me, I did a bunch of text with credit roll in my current project. This is nice because it is easy to scroll the text in and out, or fade it, or whatever. Plus, it can do a number of text items in sequence. Very simple and fast.

BUT, as I quickly learned, credit roll doesn't allow any kinds of embellishments to the text like the text generation does, specifically, shadow and outline. Now, if your text is on a black background, all well and good, but if you are captioning video, it's easy for the text to be difficult to read against the background, especially if the background is made up of many colors. In these sorts of cases, shadow and outline make a HUGE difference.

Now, alternately, I can use the text generator and use effects like pan/crop and opacity fades to simulate fades and text motion, but this is a bunch more work for something that could be so easily accomplished with the credit roll.

Anybody else think it would be nice to add shadow/outline to credit roll, or in/out effects to the text generator, or some combination of both? Or am I just being too picky or missing something obvious?

-Jayson

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/20/2004, 12:49 PM
Jayson,

If you only need a drop shadow, you can parent the credit roll track and add Track Motion Shadow to the parent track. That will provide a shadow for the credit roll track.

Otherwise, just do your credit roll with the copy of Boris Graffiti LTD that came with Vegas 5. You can add all the shadows and outlines and whatever else you want. I just used it for a video and the results were really outstanding. I have a short Boris Tutorial on my web site. It doesn’t include the credit roll but its easy enough to do:

Instant Credit Roll:
Step 1: Type your text into the text tool and press Update to preview it
Step 2: Add a Title Container
Step 3: Change the Animation Style of the Title Container to Roll

You’re done. Your text will now roll up the screen. The Animation settings also allow you to control the speed in pixels per second, or mask and/or blend the top and bottom so the text fades before the top/bottom of the screen, etc.

Also, if you’re running credits over live video and the credits are hard to read, you might want to blur the video a bit to make your eyes focus on the credits more.

~jr
InterceptPoint wrote on 7/20/2004, 1:30 PM
I agree with JohnnyRoy - take the time to learn Graffiti. The learning curve is highly overrated. Go for it.
johnmeyer wrote on 7/20/2004, 3:43 PM
A lot of people on this forum have been recommending Bluff Titler to augment the weak titling feature in Vegas. I haven't used it myself.

Graffiti can probably do anything you want, but as has been discussed in several threads over the past few months, the learning curve is steep.
JaysonHolovacs wrote on 7/20/2004, 4:41 PM
JR,
Great suggestion on the track motion drop shadow... I had forgotten that track motion included that sort of option. I was able to add shadow to my entire title track at once... what a time saver! It makes things much more legible.

I haven't taken the time to learn Boris yet... in my experience, the "lite" or "limited" versions shipped with other products often let you do just enough to realize that you can't do anything you want without the full product. Is the Boris LTD version good enough to stand on its own?

Thanks again for the response.

-Jayson
TimmyD wrote on 7/20/2004, 4:54 PM
Don't forget, you can also add an edge as well as the drop shadow at track level.

I use .swf files quite a bit. Often I may have several layers of flash, so I will parent/child them together, then add an edge and drop shadow to the whole sub-set of tracks at once.

td