nothing in life is permanent ;-P

have you played with protype in v8? if not, download demo and have a look - it's light years ahead of what was in earlier releases. that said, it's a steep, unintuitive learning curve with some quite disheartening idiosyncrasies, and no worthwhile manual...

what do you want from your titler?

i have worked my way through most - and am now reasonably happy with prot, rather than heroglyph, cayman graphics, et al. not that it's better, just that it's there. then again, my titling demands are relatively simple, and if i want really good titles, i'll create png's in photoshop....

bob, (farss), swears by pro animator, which i have to say is absolutely the bees knees for 3d titles, but since i hardly ever use 3d titles, it's not worth my investment. horses for courses....

leslie

>>I'm looking around for a functional titling program that's as easy to use as the one in Vegas 7, but that can do more.<<

ProType is not AS EASY to use. Probably all will agree on this point.

>>what exactly does the new titler do that the old one didn't?<<

Vegas says this:
With the ProType Titler, you can create static text, animated text effects with splined paths, per-character animation, and advanced curves. Add shadows, glows, blurs, and gradients for unique text treatments.

I say that cascading is the most powerful thing, meaning you can automate the animation of a single character, word or line of text. Example: imagine each letter of your title enlarges for a split second and returns to normal size in turn on down the line in rapid sequence. A nice effect. ProType automates this process making it easy to achieve.

Thanks for the input.

The ProTitler sounds interesting to be sure, but the problem is that this supposed nose bleed learning curve doesn't bode well for someone who's challenged by a fountain pen.

Bill

That's funny, but I don't think the learning curve to the protitler is that bad. I have seen some titlers that require a degree in engineeering just to construct the letter "A" and get it into the safe area!

Granted it does take a bit of getting used to since it does not QUITE follow the flow to the rest of Vegas, but if you play with it for a few hours you'll not only get the hang of it, but you'll appreciate the flexibility that has been built into it. Even the simple to use presets do quite nicely for a large part of the work.

It really depends on what you mean by "professional"
To me that means text as good as what gets broadcast in terms of aliasing, forget the 3D, hand carved wood stuff flying around the screen for a minute and just think about white text on a black background. This isn't a trivial task and so far both the old Vegas Titler and the new ProType just don't cut it in my opinion. I see minute text on broadcast and I can still read the stuff and my eyesight ain't that good. General consensus if that's what you want then you need to look at Cayman Graphics or the likes of the Inscriber systems. All these guys do is text for video and I suspect they've got decades of experience behind them and their stuff isn't cheap.

That aside the new ProType is very good, one thing I really love in it is the support for Openlook, bravo to whoever put that in there, that just oozes professional, text is about type and typefaces and being able to control this is brilliant stuff. Also ProType adds control of vertical and horizontal blur, this is very important in making moving text look correct. It's not real motion blur but good enough to fool even me, bravo again.

Proanimator is also very good, it does 3D and it can make stuff that looks very twee but so can anything. I think there's heaps of custom textures around for it which would help ironing out the look of it. Don't forget its got a lot under the hood, you can animate even the lighting, just that by design the complex stuff requires you to drill down a bit. If want to throw something together in a hurry you can without the complex bits getting in the way.
So if the choice came down to between ProType and Proanimator it really depends. Keep it mind that even with the current discount it's expensive compared to the V8 upgrade, anV8 gives you a heck of a lot more than just ProType.

All that aside in my opinion moving text is a dang hard thing to really get right regardless of the tools you use so I really try to avoid it. Firstly my clients just don't pay enough for me to futz with titles for days, secondly I don't have the artistic skills anyway and last I think something simple done well blows something complex done badly out of the water every time.

If you want to see some really simple looking but excellent titles check out. I've tried replicating this in Vegas but the fine points eluded me.

Bob.

Wow! That was pretty cool Bob. So was that done with a plugin to After Effects?

If you want to see some really simple looking but excellent titles check this out. I've tried replicating this in Vegas but the fine points eluded me.

I wouldn't call that simple... there's ripples, blurs, motions (rotating & x/y), fades....

looks like a fun thing to try to replicate imho.

If you guys figure that out, please share it. That's pretty awesome.

Thanks, Bob for your, as usual, cutting edge input.

I took another look at the ProAnimator demos last night and also played with the demo copy a good while. Having done that, I think that I did not originally correctly articulate the point I was trying to make concerning the LOOK of this program's output. What is bothering mean is that I feel that the colors are dull as compared to the old Vegas titler.

Is this a valid objection or I am sufficiently color blind so as to not have a clue of what I am talking about? If you tell me that the colors in ProAminator are as vivid as in any other titler I will accept your judgment and post haste get myself to an ophthalmologist.

As far as ProTitler goes, I will most definately take the free trial for a stroll when I get the time.

Meanwhile, you said that if it comes down to between ProAnimator and ProTitler that it really depends. On what does it depend? What are ther respective strengths and weaknesses?

And what exactly is Openlook?

Thanks much,

Bill

Query: Does anyone on this forum have a sample of what the ProTitler can do posted on the web somwhere?

Query: Does anyone on this forum have a sample of what the ProTitler can do posted on the web somwhere?

Try this thread for a couple of examples. And The Happy Friar has a few posted on Ed Troxell's site (www.jetdv.com)

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=550086

As far as I know you can make the text colors in PA anything you want, and the bevels and the side faces. It even has a Cartoon preset!

Openlook lets you control typographic things with Openlook fonts, for example how a fraction is displayed, you can have it with a slanted slash or the old school teacher way with a horizontal line and the numbers one above the other. To try it out you need to be using an Openlook font, these appear in with a "O" icon.

For anyone that looked at that Essex titles, it seem the water was done with Psunami, a $200 plugin for AE. It generates the water and the light rays using ray tracing, very cool. The bit that really got me was how the 'mist' flows off the text, especially the last title, very effective. Recreating that in Vegas is one thing, having the artistic skills to design something as beautiful looking is another matter entirely, well at least for me.

What differentiates Protype from PA?
Biggest issue is what you want to do really. The "I Want Something More" is way too general. You can buy very cheap programs that do "More" than the old vegas titler, if you want text with vines growing out of it they might be what you want...or not. And don't foget that even with the old titler and Vegas you could do one heck of a lot, you just have to work at it.

Bob.

so that wasn't just AE, that was a plugin. :D

I'd hazard a guess that more than one 3rd party plugin was used.
But that's the thing with AE, the range of 3rd party support. Arguably the best keyers run in AE, Keylight and Primatte, the former from The Foundry now ships as a freebie with AE Pro.

Which is not to take anything away from Vegas, it's a fine NLE whereas AE is a compositor that's a really lousy NLE. Horses for courses.

Bob.

It is now 11:53 P.M. E.D.S.T.

It would have been nice to take Vegas Pro 8 around the block a few times on Sony's dime before pulling out the Visa card, but with 15 minutes to go before the intro price went the way of the sound dollar, the time for pestering the forum members was officially over.

After all, if Bob likes it, how bad can it be.

I bought it.

Thanks all,

Bill

Wish Vegas had as many good plugins like AE does. Heck, a plugin that runs AE plugins would be awesome. :D

But AE has to exist because Premiere doesn't to all that Vegas does, so Adobe needs something else. I'm betting that whole credits scene could be done in Vegas with nothing but pre-supplied footage, an image editor & Vegas. I wouldn't even suggest that with Premiere, I'd say use AE.

> And what exactly is Openlook?

He means OpenType.

> how a fraction is displayed, you can have it with a slanted slash or the old school teacher way with a horizontal line and the numbers one above the other

Actually that's not really what it's about (the two types of fractions (or the characters to create them) are either part of the font or not (very few fonts include horizontal ('nut') fractions)). The point is that with OpenType the correct glyph (the actually form used for the character) can be substituted automatically if it's part of the font (one Unicode character code may correspond with a variety of glyphs): for example, one could type 1/2 and it would be rendered as ½ (although I believe such substitutions are actually now deprecated in the case of fractions).

Incidentally, have a look at the slash used in a fraction: it's not the same as a slash used in a URL (for example). Fractions (at least diagonal or 'em' fractions) are properly created with special numerator and denominator figures (they're not just scaled down and repositioned) separated with something called a fraction bar (different in length, angle and baseline positioning from a slash) and all kerned correctly.

If anyone's interested, I'm happy to put together a demonstration of all the OpenType features available in ProType Titler.

Not to sound picky or objectionable but for the sake of clarity the "Openlook" font is actually called "Opentype" font. Sorry I'm come from the graphic design realm. You're correct on how it works though. Opentype fonts allows greater flexibility with shaping, and distorting and therefore have better resolution than truetype fonts.

If anyone's interested, I'm happy to put together a demonstration of all the OpenType features available in ProType Titler.

does vegas only run in windows? :)

Opentype is explained extensively here.