How to make a crawl?

shauntoole wrote on 6/27/2008, 9:56 AM
How would I go about creating a "crawl" across the bottom of a video, a la CNN, CNBC, etc?

I'm using Vegas 6. The "credits" plug-in doesn't do the job. The best I came up with was this:

- Generate text with a long string containing everything I want in the crawl

- On the text event's placement tab, set a keyframe at the start of the text event with the text position setting on "bottom left." Set another keyframe at the end with position to "bottom right."

I had to experiment a lot with the positioning, and I added spaces to the text to make it start and end off-screen. It's a kludge, and I'm hoping there's a more elegant way to accomplish this. Maybe later versions of plug-ins handle it, but since I'm staying with Vegas 6d for now, all suggestions would be appreciated.

Comments

SCS PBC wrote on 6/27/2008, 10:00 AM
Rather than keyframing the position of the text within the Text Generator, you would have better luck using Event Pan/Crop or Track Motion.

Of course, the easiest tool would be Pro Type Titler in Vegas Pro 8, which has a preset for crawling text.
Chienworks wrote on 6/27/2008, 10:10 AM
Actually using the placement tab keyframes is the ideal solution for this. It works much better than using Pan/Crop or Track Motion.
TGS wrote on 6/27/2008, 10:22 AM
I still do it the way you're doing it.
I use the 'placement' tab and drag the lettering off screen, this automatically creates the 1st keyframe. Then I place cursor at the end of the Keyframe timeline and drag the lettering (in placement tab) to opposite side and off screen, this automatically creates the 2nd keyframe. Then adjust the length of the text event, by erasing default & typing it in. Then in regular timeline, drag edge of text event until you find a notch (this will make the event the right length that you typed in)
Adjusting the length will adjust the speed of the text crawl.
By dragging the text off the screen in the 'placement tab', you don't have to make spaces before and after text. You can create these fairly quickly.
shauntoole wrote on 6/27/2008, 11:48 AM
The string is longer than what will appear in one video frame, so Pan/Crop won't do the trick. I haven't tried Track Motion, but I think it would be the same problem.

I'll try your suggestions, TGS. Sounds better than adding spaces (which is a royal drag).

Just went through a 2-hour process experimenting with Boris Graffiti LTD that I would not recommend. It will produce a crawl, but the user interface is lacking intuitive design. The program repeatedly quit when I tried to use a font it didn't like. I had a helluva time figuring out where the duration setting was, and the crawl cuts off before the last of the text moves off the left edge of the screen. The speed, X-axis, and font size all contribute to this problem.

When I finally exported (rendered) the crawl, it produced a 2.62 GB AVI file that Vegas didn't recognize! I made a Quicktime movie that Vegas accepted, but had to chromakey out the black background to put the text in front of the images in Vegas. (There might be a way around that in Boris, but I've had enough of it and won't be learning that trick any time soon.)

I'm glad to know the latest Vegas has a tool for this. Loan me a few bucks, and I'll use it, too. ;-)
TGS wrote on 6/27/2008, 12:26 PM
Just type one long line. In the 'Placement tab' you can drag the entire line off the screen, in either direction, easily. (there should even be a little arrow icon that shows you the text is off the screen)
Getting the speed of the crawl, just as you'd like, is fairly quickly accomplished by just changing the length of the Text event and adjusting the edge of this event up to the notch in the timeline. Don't go past the notch, when adjusting the edge, or it will start repeating.
jetdv wrote on 6/27/2008, 12:28 PM
Vol 4 #3 of my newsletters fully explain this process.