Comments

RBartlett wrote on 7/18/2003, 8:35 AM
A second hand copy of India Pro would be quite ideal. Apple bought them last year so therefore the authors no longer see a need to supply/support or develop for Windows anymore! India Pro by Prismo Graphics - was www.dvfonts.com

Some folk use 3d apps or compositors for titles. LightWave, TVPaint.com etc.
Of course these are about the same price as AE, but you did say pizzaz for which you need really to feed AE with pre-generated media - which LW and TVPaint.com serve well and provide video files as output.

http://www.jellypie.co.uk/ has a good demo for extra pizzaz - but not necessarily the full role of CG for films.

Scala InfoChannel Designer http://www.scala.com/designer/ and MacroMedia Flash! also suit/match a lot of the CG you see on TV these days.

Here is the finale. This is well priced (not unlike Vegas being well priced for an NLE): PowerCG+
http://www.caymangraphics.com/

Digital Juice have mentioned plans for a product next year to suit CG. They're the full ticket. Waiting might be cheap but it might not be what you want and perhaps too costly?
TorS wrote on 7/18/2003, 8:51 AM
Look at the video Appreciation, first post in this thread:
Appreciation thread

How much more pizazz do you want?
Tor
Paradox wrote on 7/18/2003, 11:02 PM
Checkout Xara 3D5. It's basic, but fast and cheap.
mfranco wrote on 7/18/2003, 11:30 PM
On the very low end of the scale is Xara3D.

It's not in the same class as the other programs mentioned in this thread, but I feel it deserves a mention. It renders 3d text very well, has some nice 3d animation routines and also allows you to have multiple pages of text within the same sequence for opening credits and such. It also gives you complete control over the frame rate, image size and lighting. You also can animate the text, lighting or both.

It's biggest limitation is that you can't resize an image over time but you can use vegas for that and other effects. Although not a complete titling solution it's a nice 'plug-in' for vegas. I've used it for broadcast productions and psa's and have been quite happy with the results.

Franco
snicholshms wrote on 7/19/2003, 1:47 AM
Have we forgotten Ulead's Cool 3D Production Studio? It's similar to Xara yet offers a more advanced/sophisticated feature set. Video on the sides of a cube is cool. It's not too expensive, either...about $120.
David_Kuznicki wrote on 7/19/2003, 12:09 PM
--A second hand copy of India Pro would be quite ideal. Apple bought them last year so therefore the authors no longer see a need to supply/support or develop for Windows anymore! India Pro by Prismo Graphics - was www.dvfonts.com

I think that India was strictly an NT product, so I don't know whether it would run under whatever OS you're using.
A few months back, dvdirect.com was unloading India for about $250-ish, so they may still have some lying around.

David.
riredale wrote on 7/19/2003, 12:39 PM
Pinnacle's "TitleDeko" is a very powerful titling product. If you can find an old copy of Studio7, then TitleDeko is included. The current release, Studio8, has a much more limited titling product.

I have tried to find a stand-alone version of TitleDeko, but all I've seen so far is a plug-in for Premiere.

It seems kind of funny to boot up Studio7 (a very good though more elementary-level NLE) in order to just use the titling application, but TitleDeko is that good, in my opinion.
filmy wrote on 7/19/2003, 12:43 PM
I posted this already over the last week...someone must have said the same thing in another thread - anyway Title Deko is also a stand alone program. When I installed it I got presented with a bunch of options - one of them was as a stand alone. I only installed the Premiere Plug-in and I remember being 'warned' that if I only installed the plug-in I would not be able to use the stand alone functions of Title Deko. I can't say about the bundled version but I beleive the normal install package allows you to install the stand alone version and/or the plug-in(s).
filmy wrote on 7/19/2003, 12:59 PM
Just a quesion about India Pro as a few people keep mentioning it. From what i have been able to see this is a program that is sort of a visual version of what SmartSounds is for music. You have pre-made tracks that you define. I have read that you can not use any font you want with India pro and that you can only use the pre-rendered "DV Fonts". Is that true? isn't that limiting?

Also I read this: "Most troubling, though, is the lack of support for different DV codecs (aside from RAW). Only AVI, QuickTime, and a few less-popular animation flavors are supported. So rather than rendering out to an AVI file via my DV codec, I had to either render out an uncompressed QuickTime file and convert it to AVI, or create an AVI file and export that." So in itself this may no tbe a problem but it sounds like if wanted to create, say, web only (flash, WMV, Real, etc) you would have to render out a much larger file and than re-compress correct? And if you were edting with VV with Mini-Dv in mind you would have to render uncompressed? Just asking for those who have the program.

Overall I have seen that the program is exceptional at what it does and from the screen grabs I have seen the titles do look pretty awesome but with 24 CDs worth of stuff and limited codec support I am wondering if it would be the 'best' choice to get a discontinued product. (As was already said - it was taken over by Apple. [Has India Pro now become the "Live Type" feature for FCP? Going to the dvfonts site redirects to Apple/FCP/Live Fonts page] So now you get a lot of this: "Sorry! We no longer carry Prismo Graphics INDIA SPECIAL EFFECTS TITLER PRO NT/2000/XP!
It has either been replaced by a newer version or is no longer available from the manufacturer.")