Creating text bullet points

I'm in a rush on a promotional video for an exhibition in a couple of weeks time. There is a lot of text involved, and I'd like to fly in text bullets rather like one can in PowerPoint.

I'm OK with the flying text with keyframes etc, but is there a quick way of creating attractive 'bullets' in the text?

I'm hoping to do this in FCP rather than importing from LiveType or Motion as I don't want to dive into another huge time sink.

Any hot keys or simple ways to achieve this?

Many thanks, Nick

If you want a plain bullet, OPTION-8 will give you this: ?

Well that's certainly simple.

I guess I can change colour and size if necessary with the other standard text controls - I'll experiment this evening (after my day-job!) but this definitely gives me a quick solution so I don't have to fret about importing etc....many thanks Derek.

The other option (excuse the pun!) is to use a font like Webdings or Wingdings or Zapf Dingbats that are full of alternative characters, some of which can be used as bullet points.





For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

I've used that method before in MS applications Ben - but in FCP in the simple 'text' options can I use different fonts in the same line of text? It seems the 'font' option is a separate box and affects the whole text content.



Post Edited (03-30-06 16:38)

Nick, use Boris Title3D for these - you can mix fonts, styles and color in the same title, and they look a whole lot better.

Scott

hmm - been coming round to thinking that Boris is probably the best way to do this.

Does [OPTION]-8 work in Boris as well to 'bulletize' text ?

Once I have the perfect flying text and bullets for one window I can then copy and paste the title track clips multiple times and just enter new text, so a little work up front is fine.

<<Does [OPTION]-8 work in Boris as well to 'bulletize' text ?>>

Oh yes, quite nicely. Boris text is vector, which is way cleaner than the standard FCP Text tool. You can scale it huge and retain perfect sharpness. But you have to do it right - scale it in the Controls tab of Title3D (ScaleX, ScaleY) instead of the Motion tab (Scale). The control you get using Title3D is far beyond anything you can do in the Text tool, and it's cleaner.

Lots of people miss Title3D in FCP 4.x and 5.x because it no longer was automatically installed along with FCP, but you'll find itin the Extras folder in the install disk, and it's well worth using.

Scott

Good tip on the scaling, and confirmation of [OPT]8 Scott thanks.

I agree Boris 3D is excellent value and have been using for other projects. For some reason I ended up in FCP's simple text for this one, but will revert, especially as I understand the bullet option better now.

Many thanks again. This forum is like having a free tech support desk on-hand 24/7. I'm in software so I know how valuable that is

A lower case "u" in the "Wingdings 3" font will give you a nice pointer-type bullet.

This might help... A year ago we cut a video that contained a host of bullet points - we used the font's (Aerial Bold in this case) special characters which contained lots of different bullet symbols. I seem to remember that this was an Apple thing rather than anything to do with FCP. We just opened up a window that displayed all the symbols relating to the font, picked the one we wanted and I think assigned a keystroke to it. Repeating the keystroke in the text window of FCP pasted the bullet - quick and easy.

It was a somewhat bizzare process to view and assign the symbol but not difficult - it's all in the OSX manual or Apple help - and I think you can assign and use any font's special charaters independ of the text font used.

Richard Thirkettle
Sunflower Post Production

I believe Richard is referring to the "Character Palette," System Prefs>International,(United Nation's flag)>Input Menu>check "Character Palette.
As has been discussed here before, its use is not universal, but can certainly speed things up when using symbols, (accents, copyright, trademark registration, mathmatics, etc.).
This can be a useful workflow strategy of adding the appropriate symbol quickly and accurately...in most but not every case, (pun intended).

<<I believe Richard is referring to the "Character Palette,">>

Frank - thank you so much for making this clear. I'd just about forgotten how I did it - but knew it wasn't difficult.

Perhaps it should be one of those 'tips of the week' topics as it is very useful for those special characters used in the media industry.

Richard Thirkettle
Sunflower Post Production

look in the LiveType templates...think there's some very nice "bullet point" production pieces already done up that you can alter.... Andy

Thanks for all the input guys.

FYI I ended up using Boris 3D and just the normal [opt]8 bullets, and with soft drop shadow and the right font and colour the results are outstanding. I'd agree that the Boris fonts are sharper than the standard FCP text. Good tip. Also the Boris menu options are very fast to operate when you know your way around. I had been a little 'daunted' earlier by all the options vs. FCP text, but this was definitely worth the small extra start up effort.

Live Type and the Charater Palette would give me even more flexibility, but the above solution is working for me on this project. I'll play more with those additional options at a later time.

Cheers



Post Edited (04-02-06 16:44)

Found the Charater Palette. Here is a great little tip from Ripple Training:

[www.rippletraining.com]