Motion graphics with text

Help & Support
1

Hi all and nice to meet the community.

Also, sad to hear GG passed away :frowning:

Im on AVlinux. Ive been using Cin for some months now, and I find it great.

I want to make some videos with modern-looking (yet simple) text animations and Ive been figuring out the quickest/more flexible way to accomplish it.

You can look at a sample of what Im talking about here: https://youtu.be/iO0G5x7BWi4

So far, the best solution Ive come up with is the following.

  1. Create a PNG image using Inkscape, load in Cin, paste into track

  2. Animate the image sliding using the Camera auto

  3. Create a mask covering the initial location of the image to make it emerge from

  4. Move the whole thing using the projector to the desired place on the screen

Please note the following:

A) I REALLY want to be able to control the interpolation curve to my taste, so I need to do the sliding via autos and not via plugin keyframes

B) Id like to be able to modify the text label (text, font, size, colors…) on the fly, as many times as I need, with MINIMAL adjustments to be made – in other words I want the closest thing to a flexible template I can edit and change in an efficient workflow

C) Ive tried several methods of using the Titler effect with no success, because I cant animate it using the camera (I even tried using plugins such as Reroute, Overlay, ChromaKey, Sketcher and more…)

By now, the solution Ive found allows me to:

D) Reuse the same auto keyframes by simply copying and pasting between similar images, with slight adjustments if needed, and also reverse them when the image slides away (Im using the Reverse Video plugin for that)

E) Modify the png in Inkscape and export it with the same name, overwriting the previous file, and it will automatically update when reloading the EDL

This may be flexible enough for me, but Im still wondering if there is an even better solution, maybe even a totally internal one using the Titler…

NOTE: Ive tried using the SVG via Inkscape plugin, which would be a great compromise, but it wont work – I get the same error as in this thread: SVG - video-effect // import as a resource

NOTE2: the titler wont import all of my fonts correctly, but this should be the topic for a different thread…

Thank you in advance to anyone who will help

Tiziano

2

In addition to the masks and camera and composer movements, you can also use the Drag and background functions of the Title plugin. So you dont need to use a png and you can take advantage of the plugin editor functionality. Of course it is only for simple text. Note: it is important that the Title is put on a track all for him.
See:

Unfortunately it is not possible to rotate the text.

3

@tizianomattei

Hopefully, Andreas demo shows you options that you can use also.

About: to be able to modify the text label (text, font, size, colors…) on the fly, as many times as I need, with MINIMAL adjustments to be made, have you already discovered the html-ish choices when you Right Mouse click at a place in your textbox where you want to change the text? This seems easy enough to me but maybe not always. I find that if I use the color option, for example, as soon as I add it in one spot, I immediately move to where I no longer want that color to revert to the original color. Of course, once you know the vocabulary you can just type it in and not bother with the RMB - but maybe that is already what you are doing. For example if you had used the for the size of the letters and you wanted them bigger, you could just change the 5 to 10.

About: titler wont import all of my fonts correctly, awhile back I tested this and it seems to work for what I used. But you must already have a fonts.scale file set up. This is described in the Manual under the Title plugin Font Addition / Font Subtraction section. What I used was the following outside of Cinelerra at the command prompt and you will have to either put this in your login profile or type it in every time.

export BC_FONT_PATH=

for example: export BC_FONT_PATH=/usr/share/fonts
About: SVG via Inkscape plugin it was my understanding that IgorBeg found the root cause to be the version of Inkscape and it works with the latest 1.x version. CinelerraGG tries to stay current with other packages and so in October changes were made to make it compatible to 1.x. If you want, I can provide the old plugin for your Operating System/Version but it would take some work for you to incorporate that. It was quite a surprise to find out that Inkscape upgrade had some compatibility issues.

4

Hi Andrea and Phyl, thank you both for the quick reply and nice to meet you.

** Posted by: @andreapaz **you can also use the Drag and background functions of the Title plugin.
Yes, I saw them, but it seems to me that I cant control the interpolation of the movement using the plugins keyframes, while I have great control over it using the camera automation (as I stated, I really need the movement to match my taste, for exemple I may want it to go faster at the beginning and slower at the end and so on). Am I right? Or it is also possible within the plugin?

** Posted by: @phylsmith2004 **have you already discovered the html-ish choices when you Right Mouse click at a place in your textbox where you want to change the text?
Yes I already have, thank you. This may be useful to me, and the title plugin being so powerful is part of the reason why Im asking if I can obtain the same amount of control over the interpolation using the plugin keyframes.

** Posted by: @phylsmith2004 **About: titler wont import all of my fonts correctly, awhile back I tested this and it seems to work for what I used. But you must already have a fonts.scale file set up.
Yes I have a fonts.scale set up. In fact I didnt need to add a path because I pasted my fonts directly into Cins default folder before updating its fonts.scale using mkfontscale. Sadly, it doesnt work for Montserrat. Only the Regular, Light and Extrabold variants of it show in the Titler dropdown, and the Regular one still doesnt handle italics correctly.

** Posted by: @phylsmith2004 **About: SVG via Inkscape plugin it was my understanding that IgorBeg found the root cause to be the version of Inkscape and it works with the latest 1.x version.
This is good news, AVlinux often lags behind other distros with updates because its based on Debian Stable. Maybe Ill find a way to install a more recent version of Inkscape (current one is 0.92).

5

…it is also possible within the plugin?

No, using the keyframes plugin the interpolation is simply linear and you cannot intervene further. But using Title plugin in a dedicated track, it can be moved both with its own keyframes and/or with autos camera/projector curves (and you can also add the Rotation plugin).

6

Well, in fact no: you cant move the title created with the plugin using the Camera autos, because, the plugin is drawn after the camera movement in the pipeline.

You can move it using the Projector autos, but then the mask will move along with it, and so become uneffective.

Do you see the problem now? :wink:

Thats why Ive tried redirecting, but this wont help, because again it is done via a plugin, so it will be drawn at the same point in the pipeline (which is called the temporary, if Ive understood that section of the manual).

7

@tizianomattei

Do you see the problem now?

Yes, you are right.

8

Thank you very much for helping and doing a screen recording for me anyway, its much appreciated!

Also, thank you for your very well made videos in Italian, I was able to learn how to use the program pretty quickly by watching them /

9

Usually I use PNGs like you for that because I need Proxy without Scaler.
But… a different workaround for your request may be here: using a ramp with keyframes. It may simulate a fake curve (depends how many keyframes you use of courses).
Take a look at https://streamable.com/invvsd if it can help.

10

Thats not bad in fact, and I was thinking about it, too.

Id probably use more keyframes. Sure its not ideal for complicated movements but it can be just enough for simple animations. I think I can make the same movements using the drag in the Titler plugin, too, since it is keyframable.

Ill experiment with it.

Also, maybe I can change the background color using the Sketcher plugin, to avoid having to create separate PNGs and to be able to try more colors quickly. It would be great to have a bg color option in the Titler itself though…

Thank you.

11

I think I can make the same movements using the drag in the Titler plugin, too, since it is keyframable.
It is better not because also the text is keyframable. So when you change the text inside Titler plugin, after copy/past or from Clip bin (if you saved your template), only that keyframe will be affected. It is better that Title and Position were in different tools, like you did with PNG and Autos.

Also, maybe I can change the background color using the Sketcher plugin, to avoid having to create separate PNGs and to be able to try more colors quickly.
To make Cinelerra-GG tutorial with subtitle I create the yellow full rectangle with sketcher but it is not easy to do. Remember that Sketcher plugin has not scale function like mask. So you must create a kind of library of shape/size/colour. To do that click on Preset Edit icon (cog icon in SUV theme), and you can Save or Apply your preset.

But you can see by yourself. :wink:

12

Great suggestions, thank you!

13

@tizianomattei

I pasted my fonts directly into Cins default folder before updating its fonts.scale using mkfontscale. Sadly, it doesnt work for Montserrat. Only the Regular, Light and Extrabold variants of it show in the Titler dropdown, and the Regular one still doesnt handle italics correctly.
So the solution I found to work, because there are Montserrat fonts all over my Redhat O/S and it looks like the order that Cinelerra finds them makes a difference and you are not seeing the Cin folder ones, is as follows (there are other ways too):

  • I downloaded the juliet-montserrat ttf files (there were 18) just to get a known set to the Cinelerra bin/plugins/fonts directory and ran mkfontscale there.
  • Before starting Cinelerra, I wanted to make sure I was using ONLY the Cinelerra fonts so that the ones I just put in Cinelerra did not get pushed out by another set. Therefore at the command prompt, type in: export BC_FONT_PATH=:/yourcinelerrapath/bin/plugins/fonts
  • Note that the : in the above makes it so no fonts are found, then add Cins.
  • Now you should see in the Titler, a total of 8 Montserrat fonts available and note that they are in lower case! See the attached screenshot.
  • Why arent there 18, you ask? Well, the way that Cinelerra works is that the Italic and Bold do not show up because you use the checkbox to get to them.

Hope this additional information is clear enough and helps to resolve your missing fonts showing up. I guess I should attempt to explain a little of this in the manual.

Oops, the screenshot does not keep the font set up, but anyway, it shows:

montserrat (misc)

montserrat black

montserrat extrabold

montserrat extralight

montserrat light

montserrat medium

montserrat semibold

montserrat thin

14

@phylsmith2004

Sorry I missed your post!

Ive tried right now and it works perfectly, thank you!

Ill try using my ~/.fonts directory instead because its more practical, I guess its the same.

Thank you all again. Please keep cin going, its great software /