Slate text

Hi all

I'm trying to use the text generator to make a slate between clips, and it seems I have run out of room in the display. In the controls tab, there is plenty of room to keep typing, but nothing else is showing up when I put it in the timeline. I currently have 8 lines of text , and need a couple more Also, if I try and put all the text to the left (as opposed to center), it's getting cut off, even when there is more room on the screen...

In the controls tab in the viewer, you should have an option called "origin". Click on that and re-position your text accordingly.



www.strypesinpost.com

Excellent!
Now, how can I get more than the 8 lines of text?
I can type the info in the text box, but nothing shows
up after the 8th line?

What do you mean by nothing shows up after the 8th line? Is the size of the font too big?



www.strypesinpost.com

I have 8 lines of text in the text box, something like this

Name of video
Company
date
trt
band name
label
etc
etc

When i put this in the timeline, it only shows up to the 8th line of my text.
The fonts are small and it seems like a lot more could be shown. There is more
room in the text box to type as well. I can't figure out how to show the rest...

OK, seems if I make the text size a lot smaller, I can use the wireframe and make it bigger
in the canvas. I'm assuming this is the way to do it?

> OK, seems if I make the text size a lot smaller, I can use the wireframe and make it bigger
> in the canvas. I'm assuming this is the way to do it?

Absolutely not! By using the Wireframe (equivalent to the Motion tab) to blow it back up, you're basically shrinking the text by using the text size, then blowing it back up. You're losing a lot of quality for no reason.

Also, I can't imagine how you can't fit just eight lines of text into one SD frame. I think you may be using too enormous a font size. Leave it smaller, and don't rescale with the Motion parameters. Slates don't need to be that big. Either that, or use two cards overlapped, with one card handling the top half and the other card handling the bottom. You can also use a Photoshop document, which wouldn't have the same limitations in terms of spacing. Make it bigger and scale it back down in FCP. Scaling down is far better than scaling up.


www.derekmok.com

I'm using a 15p font size. What size would you recommend?

Whoa! You know what, it was precisely the other way around. Your font is too small! You're probably double-spacing these and so sent the text downwards out of frame.

Two ways to get around this. One, use strypes' suggestion -- set the Origina parameter in your Controls tab to 0, 120 or so. With the Text generator, you have to think of every card you generate as a literal black card, the same size as your video frame. Center determines where the whole card sits. Origin determines where your text sits in relation to the black card. So your eight lines were going too far down, off the edge of the black card, so you have to use Origin so that the text starts farther up the card.

Second, even better, use Boris Title 3D instead of Text. It'll look better anyhow.


www.derekmok.com

Sounds good, and thanks for the replies
I have managed to get it looking good, even though it
could be the biggest slate anyone's ever seen!
I wasn't double spacing, but was surprised to see
that I had more lines available in the text box, just
couldn't see them in the canvas.

I was going to suggest the Boris Title 3D as well. It's much better to work in you can even Import a file like a word document into it.

------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.