FCP Title Building

[David Parks]

Okay. New FCP user but not new to nonlinear editing. I'm on a project at a new job at a facility with FCP. I've used Avid Media Composer/Xpress, Avid Liquid, Premiere and Edius. Overall very easy, FCP has nice interface, it does everything I expect it to do EXCEPT. Building Titles has become a pain.

Is the titler really setup that it doesn't have a "Save As" to do a series of title builds with the same header??? Or am I missing something? I tried Boris 3d, Live Type and the genric "whatever" it is titler. And I cannot find a "Save As". So far, very convuluted process for me. Lower 3rds, etc. are easy, but the builds are killing me with this edit into the timeline with a title and then "EDIT" that title into the next place on the timeline. There has got to be a better way. Please tell me that there is a better way.

What are you guys doing with building titles, especially builds, easily and quickly. Are you using another 3rd party app?

Thanks for the advice.

[Steve Oakley]

you're perfectly unclear about what you are talking about. what do you mean by "title builds" ? are you talking about have several lines of text build on the screen in steps ? and where / what are you expecting to "save as" ? without any context to what you are trying to do, this is not clear what you are trying to save, and from where.

[David Parks]

Okay. Title stacks. Title builds. Bullet points.

These headers stay the same: Title Header
Sub Header

These change or stay: 1. Point one
2. Point two

A. Point A.
B. Point B.

These change from title to title except for the header needs to stay centered and registered. These title stacks have 5 to 7 bullet points and they add and build one line at a time. In Avid I can "build one line at a time and "Save As" just like in every other CG title tool or titler since the beginning of Chyron.

Right now I'm creating a title in Boris 3d, editing into the timeline twice and double clicking the second one to modify the stack. Is there another way to do this that allows me to build all of my stacks at one time because i didn't see a "Save As" in titler, Live Type or Boris 3d.

So my question is does FCP allow this basic title creation function, or is there a workaround?

[Edward Carlson]

You could make the title in LiveType, then export it as a movie (title1.mov) then add the next line and export it as another movie (title2.mov.) I believe this is under File > Render QuickTime Movie... Hope that helps.

[Robert Lane]

Hi Ed,

I've noted the same issue with titles in FCP; there's no way to create and save any sort of preset title to re-use several times. There's no "save as" at all. All I've been doing is literally taking the same title element used in a segment doing a copy-paste into the another area then editing that pasted version if it needed changes.

"Real" titling is what I think is one of the biggest weaknesses in FCP; although I use Boris for everything (the built-in title function in FC is not really good for much) but there I wish there was a solid, stand-alone titling plug-in for Final Cut that would work the way Avid does and DPS Velocity used to.

[Victor Kellar]

You could create the title, drag that into Browser then bring it back to the timeline when you want

With Livetype,use the open in editor function. Set Livetype as your video or graphic editor

Create the title in LT and export it as a project, not a movie. Bring that into FC. Later, when you want to change it drop it onto the new place, Crtl click to open in editor, make the changes in LT and save as. Changes will appear on the timeline

[Nate Weaver]

Templates using Motion would be a very easy way to do this.

[Steve Oakley]

well there are a couple of things I see here.

you could use Boris RED which does let you save from within the boris UI, and load a settings (proj) file back in but -

why not create the Main title as one title clip, and the bullet points as each their own. you could then take this entire thing and wipe / dissolve on each line, as well as edit each line individually. then drag all of them into their own bin. drag out of that bin next time you need them

another way is to use a motion template. with a motion template, you can create a master layout, then set up text fields you can edit. these text fields can be edited and changed within FCP on the control tab. no trip to motion required.

and.. you do know about option+drag ? select your item while holding down the option key to duplicate it while dragging, then release the option key before letting the mouse go so you don't do a insert edit

[David Parks]

Building a Motion template is working better for me. It really gets sluggish though when I go to edit (changes after the fact), the template in FCP I guess because it is looking back through at Motion. Maybe I should the the changes in Motion? Overall much slower process than I'm used to, especially with a producer over your shoulder, but at least I can build everything at once with her in the room.

Thanks for the advice guys, much appreciated.

Cheers, David

[David Parks]

Has anyone used Keynote to do title builds/stacks? I played with it a little and it has a "Save As" function. It even output QT's and TIFFs.

It seemed to work better for my workflow.

Cheers

[Robert Lane]

Actually I use Keynote all the time in fact, I've done complete motion sequences in Keynote and exported them as DVCPRO 720p files right into my FCP sequences - works like a charm. The problem is that you can't really use it like a titling app; it doesn't output just the titles as an alpha channel (at least I haven't figured out how yet) but, it does make super-clean titles just as if they were imported from PS.

Here's a sample:

[David Parks]

Robert,

Nice. It's good to know that there is at least a tool that can do builds/stacks easily. I cannot understand though why Apple hasn't put Keynotes functionality into a integrated FCP titler.

If I had to judge FCP on the title workflows alone I would say that it is not ready for "heavy" post facility work. Obviously it is starting to be used for in facilities. but most that editors I talked woth over the last few days still feel that Apple has to make some improvements in a few areas before it is truly ready for supervised post sessions.

For the one person shop that doesnt have a Creative Director or client in a supervised edit breathing down their neck to hurry up because they're spot is due in a couple of hours, then FCP, it is a good editor. But it is kinda painful in how it does effects. Motion is fine if you're got the time, but otherwise AFX or a Discreet Logic flame is faster and doesn't slow down the overall process.

SO my feedback to Apple would be to incorporate Keynote functionality, with Alpha, and title over video preview. And I would be a very happy editor.

Cheers.

[Robert Lane]

Originally Posted by David Parks

SO my feedback to Apple would be to incorporate Keynote functionality, with Alpha, and title over video preview. And I would be a very happy editor.

Cheers.

Ditto. Three times over. (laughs) Although I wonder if Boris RED would be worth the investment; sure would fill-in the gap of what FCP can't do natively but geez, it's 3/4's the cost of the entire FCS suite. Hard to swallow for just one component - and would it be easier to use than Live Type? (I hate LT - not intuitive at all)