Non-English Characters -inconsistency

Hi All,

Has anyone else noticed a problem similar to this?
FCP6.04 ProRes 422 1440x1080 50i (Captured from HDV 1080i50)

I'd created some l3's in Motion (nothing too complex -just a gradient behind name+company) in Arabic (Changed International settings to Arabic and used Baghdad font).

I did it my usual way of sending a spare clip from the FCP timeline to Motion (to make sure the project settings were the same) and then creating the l3 and deleting the dummy clip from the motion project.

Back in FCP, the Arabic was not showing correctly (squares and other symbols and some characters missing altogether) so I went back to the Motion project and even though the text was correct in the Inspector it was displaying the same corruption in the canvas.

I've done a workaround by exporting the l3's without the text and then overlaying FCP text objects but even with this sometimes I'm seeing corruptions and omissions in the Arabic.

I've tried this on my MacBookPro and on my studio's MacPro and I've trashed prefs in FCP and Motion but still keep seeing this problem.

I also tried creating a Motion project from scratch and see the same problem.

Anyone else seen this with Arabic or other non-English fonts?

Thanks,
James

Not Arabic, but I've seen FCP handle other "specialist" fonts such as LiHeiPro (Chinese) and jr!hand (a handwriting font) poorly or not at all. The former would often turn into square blocks when cut and pasted from Microsoft Word, even if the font is already set correctly in FCP, and the latter doesn't work at all even though it shows up in FCP's font choices.

My workaround for LiHeiPro is to paste the text into a Photoshop document first, then copy again and paste into FCP. Don't know why that takes care of it, but it does.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks Derek,

So to confirm -you're pasting into a PhotoShop doc (using the text tool) and then copying the text back to the OSX clipboard?

Perhaps that's somehow cleaning up the clipboard contents and formatting it in a way that FCP can understand properly.

In my case I was typing in Arabic directly in FCP's text tool (and Motion's) and was still seeing the problem. I'll try copying the text from the Motion Inspector (and/or FCP text tool), pasting into a PS doc, copying again and deleting and re-pasting the text in FCS. Simple!

Another thing I noticed with this same problem was that, having made a text anim (in Arabic) in Motion, I quit Motion and went back into FCP. I then had to edit the anim so I right-clicked on it on the FCP timeline and selected [Open in Editor]. This ALWAYS caused the text to be corrupted as opposed to opening the Motion proj from the file menu in Motion which was only sometimes corrupt.

Anyway, thanks for the PS workaround, I'll let you know.

James

>My workaround for LiHeiPro is to paste the text into a Photoshop document first, then
>copy again and paste into FCP. Don't know why that takes care of it, but it does.

Wow. Thanks, Derek. I should try that next time. Boris never seemed to be able to understand Chinese well..



www.strypesinpost.com

Boris is a Russian name. The Chinese and the Russians have historically disliked each other.


www.derekmok.com

We were brothers... up till Mikhail.



www.strypesinpost.com

Derek -I tried the Photoshop copy/paste/copy/paste workaround and yes it did fix the text. Unfortunately when I tried it in Motion it fixed it in the project while Motion was open but when I imported it to FCP the corruption resurfaced.

I guess for now I'll just have to export the Motion projects as Animation Codec mov's.