[ This article was first published in the February, 2006, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe. ]
This technique grew out of a conversation with Gloria Messer, of New York City, who started it by writing:
Your latest newsletter is fabulous, as usual. The fact that I could not change colors, fonts or sizes in a scroll in FCP has always been a source of frustration. I am thrilled by your solution. Now, why didn’t I think of that???
Is it possible to center a name on a line under a lower-third title? Would you just skip a line on the 2nd scroll on V-2, or would you use the asterisk and how?
Larry replies: Gloria, your question gave me an incentive to relook at the text tool. And I discovered two features that I didn’t know existed.
First, though, to answer your question, the text generator in Final Cut has been generously described as “limited.” While all scrolling titles are centered, lower-third supers are only flush-left, for no rational reason that I can understand.
However, here’s the cool part. Did you know you can create Text and Drop-shadow favorites? Neither did I. But, if you have a lot of text titles, or drop shadows that you want to add, using Favorites is a very convenient way to do it.
Here’s how.
In this case, I’m using 80 point Impact as a full-screen title to a Snowboard sequence.
As a note, you will need to restart Final Cut for the Effects menu to recognize the changed name of the drop shadow favorite.
As someone who as grumbled countless times about not being able to save drop shadow settings, this is a wonderful timesaver!
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