Gb,
At the moment, I am quite content with my 3rd party titler. What I did state was my personal view of what's lacking in the V8 titler, to match up to an 8 year old titler.

As they say, horses for courses. I have used the text generator for simple titles but for some work it lacks gradient fill. Also the text does not hold it's place,( difficult to explain ), when modified.

But you are absolutely right. I do not need to go any where near the V8 Titler to get what I want.
Shame really:(

Mahesh,
I'm 100% with you on this. I've never been 100% happy with the output of the original titler and I was hoping that ProTitler would be more 'video aware' but so far from my limited tests that's not what I'm seeing. I really hope I'm wrong, heck someone please convince me I'm wrong.

When I started back in the V4 days I did my best to get good looking basic text with the titler. I took on board all the advice I could find, stick to large text, watch color combinations, don't use text with fine lines etc, etc. Some of it was and still is very good advice but I look at the text from OTA TV and it just looks so much better than anything I could wrangle out of Vegas.
I think in the years since V4 I've gotten a reasonable appreciation of what it takes to generate good text for video. This isn't anything new, back in the days when a text generator took a rack full of electronics the issues were well understood and taken care of.
What I can't understand is why it would seem that the issues of being able to generate simple, unanimated, correctly rendered text for interlaced video is still not possible in Vegas. Years ago I noticed I could get better looking text by printing it on a page and shooting that with a camera than Vegas could generate and that's a very old, old school way of doing text and graphics.
As for all the gee whiz animated text in Protitler, all I can say is what use is making it move if it isn't right when it's static.
Like I said, I hope I'm wrong. I'd love to see some comparisons between how the output from Cayman or Inscriber systems hold up compared to ProTitler once it becomes interlaced video. Maybe I just don't get it, maybe I'm doing something wrong.

Bob.

Bob,
I can feel your frustration. For me, the advance in being able to generate titles is aphenomenal advance on how it was when I started in the industry. I remember how people used to worry because UK was going from B n W to Colour and one used stick-on letters (Letrasets anybody) to produce titles.
Probably the nomenclature we use might to be blame. We used to refer to static titler as caption generator and to move it, used animation modules.
I think Cayman had got it right because Jeff McOmie designed a caption generator which tied every thing to TV lines. The animation bit was added to animate the static.

Have another look at the sample I have at image I have at
http://www.crestvideo.co.uk/v8/v8_titler_test.png
The word word Cayman Graphics was done using their caption generator. Vegas V8 Titler line was in the pro titler. The colour gradient in CG looks better defined than in V8.

I, and probably you, have the wrong idea about it's capabilities. Just as you, I would love to be wrong about this.

Don't feel bad, I used to use Letraset!

It wasn't so much the difference in the gradient fill that caught my eye as the difference in the edges of the text. The Cayman output looks soft, until you realise that sharp edges are bad in video. Video cameras typically use a OLPF to stop high frequencies reaching the imager.

Also Cayman specificies things in pixels, not some arbitary scaling factor that ignores the target video format.

Funny you should mention them being called 'captions', the other term I had some problem with when I first heard it was 'plinth'.

Bob.

Bob,
Let's not get into Cayman (CG) vs V8 Titler(V8). I only used it as an illustration. The CG titler is soft because it has blur round the edges. The V8 has shart step transients. It does not show on the sample but as video it has cross colour crosstalk (breathing). Similar to small interference produced by a checker board pattern on tie of checkered shirt. Main reason for this is the low pass filters employed in the distribution and display devices.

If you want to blur just the edges you can probably do that in Vegas.
Duplicate the track and apply a tiny amount of blur to the lower track.
Will only work if the text is on a transparent background on the upper track.

Bob.

Yes, I could do that. But as the CaymanTitler works in V8, its academic for me. I must have a very pedantic view of things as no body else, apart from you Bob, seem to be bothered about these little things missing from the V8 titler.

There are some features in ProTitler that I do like:
Typographic stuff like superscripts and how fractions are displayed.
Also the H and V Blur should help with getting motion to look better, would be nice if it did this for us (i.e. motion blur or at least angled blur).

The lack of a color picker combined with Vegas having no color readout like PS does is a limitation that I think others have mentioned. It really helps the graphically challenged like myself. I try to use text colors that matches something else in the frame, hopefully that way I avoid make a hash of it.

Bob.

I must get to know V8 titler better. It has great possibilities. It seems that omission of colour picker - off screen and blurring the edges does not aggrieve many contributors here. I do sincerely hope that this will be rectified in future upgrades. I would like to move over from Cayman to V8 titler. The use of hardware dongle on Cayman is a burden because a veg file with CG titles will not open unless the hardware dongle is present.:(

Superscripts - why is this not straightforward? and how does one install and use opentype fonts for use in V8 Titler? Workaround found but still...

I have a project where the client name has superscript and needs to be in the title, so:

For ProTitler, nothing about "super" anything in Help or User Guide. Hunting around its interface, the only option I found was in "OpenType" - never heard of this. Experimented with its "superscript" option (under Variant) but no effect produced. Indeed in retrospect the Help on OpenType settings says this only has effect on OpenType fonts. Never heard of these.

So how does one get (or know when one has selected) an OpenType font? Scrolled through all available fonts in ProTitler's Text page, none made the superscript appear, so presumably none are OpenType (?). Googling revealed [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms746705.aspx] which explains that OpenType is a different family of fonts from TrueType. A free sample set of such fonts is downloadable from [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms771464.aspx]. Downloaded it (a self-extracting exe) and executed (extracted) it. Then attempted ControlPanel > Fonts > Add. It seemed to install fonts but these had ".ttf" file extensions - which sounds like Truetype to naive me. Not sure I've succeeded in installing the proper OpenType, maybe just some equivalent Truetypes... Tried V8 again and the new fonts indeed appear to be just further standard fonts - they don't respond to ProTitler's superescript option.

How should the sample OpenType fonts be fully installed for use as such in Vegas?

I run Windows XP SP2 with .NET2, as installed from the Vegas 8 trial. The msdn2 pages (above) say something about .NET3.5. Don't know if I need to upgrade to this in order to install/use OpenType fonts. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework] confirms at least that later versions of .NET can be installed on XP.

I'm stopping at this point, finding myself in the "deep end of the font", pending any advice from someone more knowledgable.

Aha! There is a workaround giving similar appearance to superscript: Do a Navigate-to-child, select the letter, drag it upwards. Got the job done somehow...

Prior to this, I tried the standard text media generator. No superscript option exists there. However, I attempted a possible "work-around" of making superscript text in OpenOffice then pasting. Interestingly, within the standard text media generator's text entry field, the superscript was indeed visible as such (after a fashion). However it still appeared as just ordinary text (not superscripted) in the Preview. So close but so far...

Anyone know how to install and use OpenType fonts, or any other way to get proper superscripts (as oppose to patching / workarounds) ?

I don't know, Bob. You attitude toward the V8 Titler, as expressed on thread 671, seemed to me to be different, and it was on the strength of your posts on that thread that I purchased V8.

Bill

Bill,

Possibly you are confusing me with farss. I think some people have done that before, on other threads.

I am fausseplanete, a different man (from a different planet).

Dave

Aha, the final required step in font installation seems to be to reboot. Now I have done so, the OpenType fonts work as I had hoped, and the superscript option works on them ok.

I only wish that ProTitler's font-list had some way of indicating which of the fonts were OpenType or TrueType, as I can't remember their names. Maybe "O" and "T" icons?

You young whippersnappers just don't know how good you have it. I'm old enough to remember doing credit rolls by wrapping printed copy around a drum mounted in front of a camera without even the benefit of a motor, yup! it was hand cranked all the way...

Dear fausseplanete:

I wasn't confusing you with farss. I was specifically replying to him, but even though I clicked the REPLY button appended to his post, my post ends up at the end of the queue, just like this one.

Bill

Letters look pretty bad. There really shouldn't be any jagged edges in the fonts.

John

"I don't know, Bob. You attitude toward the V8 Titler, as expressed on thread 671, seemed to me to be different, and it was on the strength of your posts on that thread that I purchased V8.

Unfortunately as threads get renumbered I can't specifically find the one you're referring to but regardless you are correct. Initially I'd seen some things in Protitler that impressed me but in my enthusiasm I'd let myself be fooled and I should have investigated further.
One thing that I thought PT did was real motion blur and it doesn't, nor does Proanimator not just about everything else that I've looked at, at best they do the same type of "Supersampling" that we've had in Vegas all along. The only app that I've found that now boast doing proper motion blur is Fusion and that's a very expensive application and given how it's working propably takes a long time to weave it's magic.

You can sort of fudge motion blur using Guassian Blur which is what was being done with what I'd seen in PT, it's close but not perfect and more work to get looking as best it can.

The output quality of PT does look a little better than the old titler but that's not that easy to judge with the tools I've got at hand so you should take that comment with a grain of salt as well.

In the end though, as I've learnt the hard way, never trust anything anyone says until you've had it in your hand and used it yourself. Many years ago a bought a certain piece of hardware based on the review of it by a well respected member of this forum and it was a dog and still sits in the back of the bottom draw. Wasn't his fault, worked fine for him and others have used the same unit without issue and yes I think he wouldn't object to me saying we're good friends. All of the gear we work with today is very complex, way better people than most of us combined still miss things, some of us working in PAL have had issues with Vegas and DVDA that haven't effected NTSC users, the list of issue with all hardware and software in this game is endless, to rely on anyone's opinion is not wise. Even when people say something is a POS, it might be perfect for you.

Bob.