Scrolling Text editor sucks!!!

I cant believe how idiotic the text option is for FCP. I am trying to do a whole huge list of credits written perfectly the way it should look in word, but when you cut and paste it, its all in one line. AHHHH!! Is there an easier way to format text maybe a third party software that works better. If not is there a certain way to change the spacing for it to work and paste corectly. Please anyone help me, if not then this is gonna take forever!!!
Thank You.

Jai

ahhh, dude... your first problem is that youve started out on the wrong foot.

when discussing text you simply CANNOT use the words "written perfectly the way it should look" AND "in word" in the same breath.

text ALWAYS looks like **** in word and its only going to get worse when copied and pasted.

im an old(er) shcool typography FIEND. and to me the ONLY way to get precise and good looking text in video on a mac is to lay the type out in illustrator (because you have FAR greater individual character control there than ANYWHERE ELSE).
save that as an .ai file then bring that into after effects for your scrolling (this can take a while and get HUGE depending on your length of text). export that with an alpha (if its going to lay over any video images) and bring that into fcp.

i have yet to see a better way to achive, high-quality, designer level type...

im open to other suggestions though

Have you tried the "Scroll" in Title3D? This is Boris Calligraphy and is a plug-in you access from the Viewer window. I have done exactly the same thing from a Word document and it worked flawlessly.

Boris Title 3D / Title Crawl will preserve line breaks and produces vector text, which is sharp at any size. Avoid the FCP Text Scroll in all cases, it has limited quality and features. The Boris generators are on your FCP install disk, in the Extras folder.

Scott

And it's even better with Boris Graffiti



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

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

wayne -
I'm going to accuse you of not having tried very hard with title 3-d or the scroll equivalent. It IS a very different interface, and takes a while a few minutes to get used to.

I'll grant that your way delivers superior typographical control in 2-d. It ought to anyway. I'll also grant your point the most typography is sloppy and that machine imposed atrocities to type aesthetics are a common thing.

I won't grant your system makes for a superior work flow, and I won't grant that any one else would be able to tell the difference at DV resolution between the look you get, and the look we get.

You've got a surprising amount of control in Boris, and the styles library available for free from Boris kicks the generator into high gear. You can organize a series wide set of presets in a few minutes, import RTF files and in a few seconds apply consistent custom look to the files. All in full true 3-d. All in your FCP timeline without ever leaving the program. It all stores with the project file, so you don't have exterior file management issues.

When working with big files, turn styles off in the text window and speed window response dramatically.

Ian

This doesn't really address Jai's problem though. It sounds to me to be a simple matter of having the "no wrap" option turned on in Title 3D. Jai, if you open up Title 3D and then click on the second tab down (it looks like a paragraph icon) and select "wrap" from the drop down bar. Now when you paste your text, it should paste correctly. You'll also probably have to set the text to "centered" (top tab that looks like a T).

Andy

Just to throw in my two cents: I'm a staunch user of FCP's own built-in text options. I don't ever use Scroll or Crawl because they take *&^% forever to render. People have been championing LiveType and Boris a lot and I certain concede to their expertise, but the fact is, I work with DV most of the time, and the resolution of the picture itself isn't that great anyway. Besides, when working in film, the best-looking titles tend to be small, so the advantages of vector graphics are less apparent. The more complex the motion effects applied to the title, the less cinematic it tends to be -- flying text almost immediately evokes videography, the realm of the small. Which could be precisely what you like, but since my most prominent work is on film, the number of text options I need just isn't that large.

Are FCP's own text generators great? I don't think anybody would say that. Can't do two fonts on the same card, no tab options, no wraparound, aliasing, superwhite blowout. But I still use the Text object a lot because it's the fastest to access, render, and do things with. Doesn't require opening another application, and easy to change. Which for my own specific purposes -- which is strictly to contextualize the edit and set the tone, not necessarily for theatrical exhibition -- works well enough. I've seen too many After Effects whizkids get bogged down with what lighting effect to use on the opening titles when they don't even have the structure or tone of the show yet, and then the deadline hits and the executive producer turns to me...with my basic FCP text and simple fade-in titles.

I have always found these highly recommended:

Professional plugins for Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express by chv-electronics
The Text-collection V4.01 - $49
[www.chv-plugins.com]

HTH,
Bryce

Don't worry Mr. B. I have a cunning plan...

Thank you guys so much for all your help. I cant seem to find a scroll option uder the boris tab. Is it within the title 3d plugin? i try to paste in from word and it only gets the last line of the credits. If i need to import it then what format do i have to change my word document to? Thanks alot everyone. I took hours manually figuring out the text so im almost done but what a waste of time if i could of done it this way. If someone could get back to me soon i really appreciate it.

Mahalos
Jai

Save from word as an RTF. Import that using the button mid bottom on hte text input window.

If using text-3d, you need to keyframe motion as you would any other shot. If you use the boris scroll, it uses the total length of the generator instance, and also looks at setting sliders in the generator.

Ian

Look for "Title Crawl" - that is the name of the Boris "scroll" generator. On the Controls tab you'll find an Animation pulldown that has choices for None (static), Roll (vertical) or Crawl (horizontal). The text formatting options are the same as for Title 3D.

Scott

You can also create a special "Page Size" in Word which fits you text length and print the document to PDF (Word does a transparent background with PDFs), then import into After Effects and do the scroll, put a little vertical blur on it and it will look fine.

Andreas