Re: MAGIX - MEP Titles

"Ken Maltby" <kmaltby@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Terry Pinnell" <terrypin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:cr96o35mlfpaobhdqgb0o8e0ln16kduuqo@xxxxxxxxxx
"Ken Maltby" <kmaltby@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Terry Pinnell" <terrypin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:8c25o39ddnejlt6brns26pr773ve1jc4as@xxxxxxxxxx
Ken,

More trials & tribulations with titles!

I get some baffling behaviour when I include differently coloured text
in a title. For example, this one * has a yellow header yellow and
white body, but the header comes out grey on the monitor, not yellow!

[* I was going to include a screenshot here, but of course the monitor
can't be captured, so I'll have to leave it to your imagination! It's
just an Arial 12 yellow top line, then a blank line, then several
comment lines in Arial 10 white.]


(What are you using for the text effect?)

Well, the problem arises with *any* of them. In this case I started
with 'Scrolling text on right', modified it to suit and saved it as my
own template.

So you have the yellow Arial 12 top line (your "header"
I guess) in track 3? And the several white Arial 10
comment lines (the body?) in track 4?

No, all in one title in track 3. First line is header (yellow Arial
10), then blank, then 4 lines of 'body' (I'm just using the term in
its word-processing sense) in white Arial 10, separated by blank
lines:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Images/MEP-Titles-01.jpg


Yet if I change that yellow to light blue, for example, it correctly
gets displayed as light blue. Why such a bizarre result? What's wrong
with yellow, orange, light green, etc, all of which display as grey in
this title? Actually it's as if there's a 'mask' superimposed over the
chosen colour. But only in *some* cases...

And other apparently identically constructed titles earlier in the
timeline show the correct yellow headers. Presumably there is
something different about this one, but I'm darned if I can find it!

BTW, if place the cursor in the empty line between header and the
first white line below, the colour box in some cases shows it as
*blue*, which seems very odd. And if I change just one character (say
a blank) in that line to say red, all the characters below appear as
red too, even though they were not first selected.


I don't follow what you are doing. A normal text object has
only one font and color, there is a special text effect that lets
you set colors for each letter, but that is not the norm.

Hey, looks like I'm ahead of you here for once! As you saw from the
screenshot above, I'm just using the font type, colour and size
features to change selective parts of the title.


Well you have me there, I hadn't tried using different settings
for different parts of a defined object. Most of the time that has
been a questionalable practice. I did find that once you have
entered the text, you can highlight a portion of the text and make
changes that will (often) apply to just that portion.

I also found that some times the change would result in an
unexpected result in the preview. I never got the Gray text
you mentioned, but I did have a line of text disapear. When
I went back and changed to another color then back to the
color I wanted in the first place, it worked fine.

Yes, all pretty erratic. A few weeks ago, when I started with MEP, I
assumed that virtually every glitch/obstacle I encountered was down to
me. Many still are, but the ratios are changing. My first reaction now
is veering towards 'Hmm, another quirk/bug?', instead of 'What am I
doing wrong here?'! This titling area seems fairly typical. I'm sure
there's lots I can accomplish with the many features, but they sure
aren't yet intuitive or predictable IMO!


(I used the "Standard" preset/template to make the same
title as the "Scrolling text on the right" preset except without
the vertical line .jpg or the white box, so it all fits on one track.)

Good thinking. Presumably all text titling effects that don't rely on
a separate file (like that JPG) can be implemented the same way.

[for your examination of the .tfx files; note that the "Scrolling
text ..." presets are constructed of three files on three tracks.
One of the files is a .jpg of the vertical line applied with a black
box. There seems to be a white box there as well, empty as
far as I can tell. The third one is the .tfx file itself, and is the same
as the one I made with the "Standard" preset.]

Thanks, understood.



Turning to the topic of templates. If I save this 2-colour combination
as a template, will it capture the separate style elements? Sometimes
it seems to apply just one style to all the lines.


I don't know what you mean by "style elements".

I was just trying to work out whether, when using the template in
future, it would reproduce exactly what you saw at the time you saved
it, such as the yellow Arial 12 header and the white Arial 10 detail
lines. That would have been intuitive, and a neat feature. The answer
appears to be No. You get just the top element. IOW, the detail body
lines are also formatted Yellow Arial 12 in this example.


And what effect does the choice of 'background colour' (apparently
restricted to only black or white) have when the title is overlayed on
another clip?


The choice of black or white for the background of the
text effects is for Luma keying (aka Alpha keying, in some
half right descriptions) as opposed to Croma keying. In
this very controlled situation the threshold to apply the
transparency and the degree of the transparency to be
applied, can be such that only the text and it's applied
effects will appear, the background will be totally
transparent and can be treated as not there at all.
Basically, if you want to use pure Black or White for
your text, then you will need to use the opposite color
for the background. If you use any other colors for
the text it won't matter.

OK, thanks, understood. BTW, in Womble you can set 'background' to any
colour, not just b/w. For time being I'm going to ignore this aspect,
unless of course it turns out to be playing a role in the quirky
behaviour I described.


The "background" could be a different setting/thing in
the two programs.

Yes, maybe.

In short, I'd love to learn 'the rules' that apply in the title
editor, as the logic eludes me at the moment.

Meanwhile I'm going to finish off this particular short DVD (a
diversion on Las Vegas implosions while I was making my 'USA Tour
1997'!) and come back to this whole issue later. I've started looking
at these template files with a hex editor. I haven't yet studied these
much less worked out any 'rules', but if you're interested here are
two extracts from the respective 'OK' and 'Problem' files, made by
using Save As Template. The extracts were obtained after some
trial/error but I can now get them consistently by: searching (in the
hex editor, Hex Workshop in my case, which I dusted off just for this
exercise) for an opening curly bracket '{', and then copying up to the
closing curly bracket.

Since the effects are defined by these template (also called "title
presets" in MEP12) there is some real potential in gaining an
understanding of how they work. You may indeed be getting
ahead of me in that area. As you have found it is pretty easy
to make your own presets/templates. And remember that you
can use the Ctrl mouse to drag off copies of objects on the
timeline.

I'm glad you mentioned that, as it gives me a good excuse to discuss
another quirk! I've been using that approach a lot, ever since you
recommended it, and so far it's one reliable method in an uncertain
field. But it seems to me that MEP screws even that up.

With any title clip A on track 3, I Ctrl-drag it rightwards to make
another similar one, B. As I'd expect, A is now unselected (yellow)
and B is selected (red). I therefore use Ctrl+t to bring up the Title
Editor, make my changes to the text content, and click OK. But the
result is now in A, not B! More exactly, the clip on the left has the
new content. It is selected (red). The clip on the right has the
original content and is now de-selected (yellow). I have to manually
re-position it back to its original position, and drag the 'new' one
rightwards again.

Do you get same behaviour in MEP-12?


---------

Still on the subject of text titles, but yet another 'quirk'. Better
here than starting new thread.

I wanted to add a stand-alone title at the front of my movie. As I
want a different style/effect, the natural method seemed to be to
start a new one, rather than Ctrl/drag one of the existing titles.

So I lassoed everything, moved it rightwards about 30 secs, placed the
start marker near the extreme left, and used Ctl+t to add a title. Any
ideas about the various parts of the error message I got please?
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Images/MEP-Titles-02.jpg

Have you seen same behaviour in MEP-12?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK



--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK


.

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