The Worst Piece of Software in the World

Maestro wrote on 7/8/2004, 12:57 PM

No, I'm not going to start a rant about Vegas. In fact, I very much love Vegas to the point you'll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

However, Sony's decision to bundle Graffiti LTD goes positively beyond comprehension. Anyone ever try using this thing for a credit roll? Their "text editor" is unarguably, undebatably, the most unintuitive--no, COUNTERINTUITIVE piece of user interface software I've ever encountered. What should have taken me 20 minutes to line up is now up to and exceeding a three-hour task, simply because of the complete inability to change the style of a piece of text without affecting the entire project. Forget undo--most of the time it doesn't work.

Be warned--this product might be fine for one-line text effects, but avoid it like the plague for something like a credit roll if you value your sanity.

So, although my hands are still shaking because I'm so angry and frustrated, there is a question here: The Vegas credit roll is too limited. Three styles isn't enough for what I do. Trying to sync up multiple rolls is tedious. Graffiti is unadulterated garbage for long text. I've tried a long event pan with a Photoshop file, but Vegas has a limit to the pan min and max.

Has anyone found a good, reliable, flexible way to do sophisticated credit rolls? A technique or third-party software perhaps? Any input is apprecitated.

-Brent

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JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/8/2004, 11:44 PM

Andy,

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.

~jr

Maestro wrote on 7/9/2004, 12:11 AM

"Step 1: Type your text into the text tool and press Update to preview it"

That's the step I take issue with. The other steps are indeed very easy, and the roll looks great once it's set up. But getting the text into their container and formatting it properly without a major miracle just isn't happening. I can deal with the odd way Boris does things, but their text editor is positively excrutiating.

DGates wrote on 7/9/2004, 1:31 AM

yep, they are.

Grazie wrote on 7/9/2004, 1:48 AM

Maestro I really like your, " . .but their text editor is positively excrutiating." . .a tad ironic don't you think? For a Text/Media manipulator/generator?

I'll get to my FULL purchase of BG3.0 when I can . .

Grazie

farss wrote on 7/9/2004, 2:55 AM

I've only played around very briefly with Graffiti and I agree it's a pretty complex piece of software to work with. The documentation is also poor but I think I've got my brain around how it works. If I'm understanding this beast right tehn the documentation really should start out by explaining how it works, then the rest of it would make a lot more sense.
So here's my limited grasp of it.
Unlike Vegas which is just taking basic text and rendering it into a 2D space Boris starts with a simple text editor then converts that text into 3D objects, at that point it's no longer text, no going back, just rip it up and start again if you make a booboo. Having gotten it into a 3D space as objects then you can manipulate those objects, moving lights, controlling reflectivity etc.
That's as far as I've gotten and it's probably not that much help to anyone but when I have some more time I'll put a bit more effort into it as I think once I understand how it works I'll be able to develop a viable workflow with the thing.
I may be way of beam here, I've only put a toe in the Boris waters so far but it seems like a few things I've come accross in a few areas, it just isn't a little bit different, underneath it's vastly different to what you're used to.

Mandk wrote on 7/9/2004, 7:23 AM

Until I went through the video tutorial from Chris Vadnais on how it should be set up and actually saw someone manipulating the software it was pretty much unusable.

Once you get over the hurdle however it becomes almost logical. Underneath it is a great software with many many possibilities.

I purchased it originally for credit rolls - inportant for the videos I create (high school kids and their parents need to see their names at the end also my daughter loves seeing the "Video by" with her name at the end. So credits do have theoir purpose and Boris is great for them. Just my opinion.

Orcatek wrote on 7/9/2004, 7:58 AM

The built in credit roll in Vegas works fine for me.

I've done some fairly fancy things with it. Multiple fonts and styles. Various layouts.

What am I missing? I don't understand what people are trying to do that can't be done with the built in tools.

And before that I just created a great big graphic in my favorite program, set the transparency and panned down it.

With panning and track motiion 2d/3d I don't know what can't be done.

If you get too creative with your text for credits, they can't be read, so ideally they should be pretty simple.

Titling is where some "style" is IMHO.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/9/2004, 8:12 AM

> ...but their text editor is positively excrutiating

Yes, the text editor itself is very problematic to type in. I usually cut and paste from a word processor so I don’t see it as much but the few times I’ve tried to type in the words it was very difficult. Try setting a right justified tab stop and then type some text. The results are not what you would expect in the text editor but they come out OK in the preview.

~jr

Mandk wrote on 7/9/2004, 8:49 AM

What I like in Boris Credit Roll was an ability to import a word file and easily set a variety of formats. The credits I add are easily 200 or more lines - I did one performance with over 700 lines. Each student appearing in the video was listed in the credits. As I said before, kids and parents (i.e. customers) love to see their names on television.

In Vegas I believe there is a limit of three styles within the generator, it was also necessary to import line by line. As has been the subject before, the end results acheived with Boris could be accomplished in Vegas, it just takes longer and requires a work around.

My goal with Boris was to reduce total time spent on titles and allow more time for editing. Once the initial learning curve was overcome and the basic software functions were discovered, this goal was realized.

Just my opinion.

stepfour wrote on 7/9/2004, 10:16 AM

"What am I missing? I don't understand what people are trying to do that can't be done with the built in tools."

I'm not necessarily thinking about what can be done, but it is what can be done with ease that interests me. Little things, like making a line of text that reveals and fades one character at a time. These are text effects and are presets in SOME applications that have versatile text modules in them. I don't have V5 at this time. Maybe there is an easy way to do things like this in V5.

Maestro wrote on 7/9/2004, 10:52 AM

So this might be a path worth pursuing...

When you import a file into Graffitti, what editor are you importing from and what format (.doc, .rtf)? I've tried the import function and what actually showed up in the Boris text editor didn't look anything like my rich text file--formats, styles, alignments were all off. Again, I can see the Boris developer laughing at me in spite.

One thing I've found is that you can't have different paragraph alignments in the same block of text, right? I had a top title that I wanted centered and the text under it to be justified. BZZZZ! Can't do it. Applying a paragraph alignment affects ALL the text in the box, not just the selected text like every other text editor on the planet. Frustrating.

Maestro wrote on 7/9/2004, 10:56 AM

"I've done some fairly fancy things with it. Multiple fonts and styles. Various layouts."

The problem is that you can only have three styles at a time in the generator. If Vegas allowed (virtually) unlimited user-defined styles then yes, it would be very powerful and flexible. For now if you need more than three styles you have to "link" your credit rolls: align them and time them so they flow evenly. Change the timing of one or add/delete a single line of text and it throws everything off.

stormstereo wrote on 7/9/2004, 11:57 AM

2Road- "Little things, like making a line of text that reveals and fades one character at a time."

You can do this in V5 by using the bezier mask. No fancy animation though.

Best/Tommy

Jay Gladwell wrote on 7/9/2004, 1:06 PM

In the "For What It's Worth" department, I read a statement years ago by Stanley Kubrick, whom I have always admired. He was saying that he had seen too many films where the opening credits were the most interesting and entertaining part of the movie. Point well taken! I've seen some of those myself. He went on to say that he was of the opinion that the opening shot must be the most interesting thing the audience had seen since their butts hit the seat. Besides, (where money/budgets are involved) every dollar that goes to making fancy, complicated credits takes away important dollars that could be put into the film to better tell the story. I understand his points and agreed with them and try to apply them in my work.

Woody Allen is another director who uses simple, straight forward titles.

However, their are those occasions where the client and/or project demands fancy, high-impact titles. In that case, I hire that out to an individual who specializes in that kind of thing.

Jay

InterceptPoint wrote on 7/9/2004, 1:10 PM

Maestro:

One thing I've found is that you can't have different paragraph alignments in the same block of text, right?

That's why you have "Containers". You just have to add new Text elements within the Container when you want to make a style change and then set the vertical positions so the spacing is OK. A little extra work but you get total independence of styles within, for example, a single credit roll.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/9/2004, 2:33 PM

> ...what editor are you importing from and what format (.doc, .rtf)?

I usually just import a tab delimited text file from notepad or I do a cut and paste from a Word document. I then have to add tabs in Graffiti so that the columns line up correctly. I add the Styles right in Graffiti. I agree with you that formatting is all but lost on import so I don’t even try anymore.

I’m not saying that I like the text editor, but at least it allows tab formatting which is more that the Vegas text editor can do. There is lots of room for improvement. I guess the Boris programmers must have figured that it was hard to program therefore it should be hard to use. ;-)

~jr

farss wrote on 7/9/2004, 3:41 PM

Having read a LOT about this very topic here's the thing. The ONLY way to get a decent looking credit roll is by specifying the roll in lines per frame. It's that simple and that critical. If your text is moving at anything other than X number of lines between each frame unless you have sub pixel rendering it will look like garbage. You will get jumping on the leading edges of the text and that sure doesn't look like the work of a pro.
I've considered trying to pick up an old text generator from the days of analogue video, the guys who designed them knew of these issues. The only thing holding me back was finding the space for a 19" rack full of electronics and the power to run the thing. This is one area where with all our digital wizardry we seem to have gone backwards. If anyone knows of any software solution that can get this done right I'd be might pleased to hear about it.
I know you can get it right in Vegas, just use trial and error and a decent monitor so you can see the difference, hardly a viable solution in my opinion.

wolfbass wrote on 7/9/2004, 6:57 PM

JohnnyRoy

Thanks for the reply. It's been a while since I tried this, my problem from memory wasn't getting it to work in Grafitti, but making it work in Vegas.

I'll have another bash and let you know.

Cheers,

Andy

Maestro wrote on 7/9/2004, 10:37 PM

"That's why you have Containers"

Yup, that's what I ended up doing. After resigning myself to trying to make it work in a large block of text, I divided the entire roll into logical groups to make it much simpler. Not the ideal solution, but admittedly less work than getting multiple credit rolls in Vegas to align and time right.

Orcatek wrote on 7/10/2004, 7:36 AM

Yeah, if you link them to use more styles it does majorly throw things off if you have to change. Been there, done that, avoid that.

My solution. First section of credits tends to be the stylized ones. These are done as non-scroll pages with transitions. Then when I get to the "roll" section the 3 styles seem to be plenty.

I think I'll check some credit roles out on some of my DVD's and see how many styles they use.

That beings said - a great credit roll add-on would be very popular.

Dirk from BorisFX wrote on 7/13/2004, 1:07 PM

Sorry to hear that you're having a bad time with Graffiti LTD. Contrary to what you've suggested here, I assure you the developers at BorisFX don't derive any enjoyment from the frustration of software users.

I'm confused though by some of the behavior you're describing in the Text Window. Changing the point size popup menu should indeed only apply to selected text - however, the 2 buttons to the right of the point size popup menu are there to provide a quick way to increase or decrease the size of all the text in the window. I could see how this is potentially confusing, but it's meant to allow you to scale all the text up or down at once without making it all the same size... Do you think you were using one of these buttons when the size change applied to everything rather than just the selected text ?

When you were seeing garbage characters when copying and pasting, I'm curious to know what you were copying from ?

I agree on the Home and End behavior you mention and I'll report this as a bug.

Dirk
dirkd@borisfx.com

Glenn9 wrote on 7/13/2004, 5:12 PM

I use Wild Form FX Pro...very easy to use and very powerful as far as effects go...
www.wildform.com