superimposing an arrow

I need to point out some parts inside a machine, and to do so, I want to superimpose an arrow over the video at the right moment. This should be simple, but I can't seem to find an arrow in any of the webdings fonts I have. I mean, it's very nifty to have school buses and champaign glasses, but for heaven's sake, isn't an arrow something people need way more often? Where do I find one?

Go to the upper-right corner of your Finder and click on the flag to open Character Palette. Sort "by Category". There's a big category called...you guessed it...Arrows. Click on the "Insert" button to put it into your title.


www.derekmok.com

This sounds great, but I don't see a flag anywhere on my finder window. All I have on the upper right is date and time, system volume and the spotlight /search thingy.

Go to System Preferences
International
Input Menu Tab
Check off Character Palette

You should see a flag up there now.

Proceed...

If you're running an older OS, then go to Apple>System Prefs> International>input menu, tick the box next to "Character Palette" and the character palette icon should appear to the right of the LEFT help bar at the top of your screen. Click on this as necessary to use this very helpful tool.
Hope this helps.

FE Meek

The flag doesn't always show, it's a feature that can be turned on using system preferences > International, go to the Input Menu tab and make sure "Show input menu in title bar" is checked. Also be sure Character palete and Keyboard Viewer are checked. Now the US flag appears in the menu bar, and when you click it you get this nice menu of things you can do with your keyboard.

This only works in OS X, and probably not before 10.2.

Aside from all that, the Zapf Dingbats font has many arrows in it, and you probably have that font on your system already. For more arrow control, there are several FCP plugins that let you keyframe all sorts of properties into them.

Scott

Oh my goodness, the choices! Half an hour ago I would have been happy with any one of these. Thanks, everyone! :-)

Well, they weren't exactly choices, we all suggested the same thing . But on the subject of plugins, try Stib's free FCP plugins which includes an arrow generator.

Scott