Need help with scrollable credits for a video.

April 9, 2010 7:44 PM

Is there a program that will allow me to do credits for a video that make it look like they are being typed on a computer one letter at a time, sort of like how the computer typed in the movie War Games?
posted by adfeb to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I know that EditStudio Pro has a text typewriter transform built-in - you enter your text, select the length of the transition, and it 'typewriters' your text the video one letter at a time.

IIRC though, it's not very good at combining effects with text - so if you wanted to do something like a greenscreen monitor effect with raster lines & glow/blur you'd have to render out the text effect, add a raster mask & glow, then re-render to your final video.

Despite some limitations it's actually not a bad little NLE / effects program and well worth the US$90 or so, especially if you're doing the occasional home movie and want something more than the usual freebie editor that comes with your hardware.
posted by Pinback at 8:13 PM on April 9, 2010

imovie does it...if u have access to a mac...its just a matter of having the right font...
posted by sexyrobot at 8:22 PM on April 9, 2010

Avisynth and the TextSub plugin can do this pretty easily if you have a few minutes and a text editor.

First, you'd make an Advanced Substation Alpha (.ASS) subtitle file (Aegisub may be helpful in this regard) that looks like this:

[Script Info]
; This is an Advanced Sub Station Alpha v4+ script.
; For Sub Station Alpha info and downloads,
; go to http://www.eswat.demon.co.uk/
; or email [e-mail]
;
; Advanced Sub Station Alpha script format developed by #Anime-Fansubs@EfNET
; http://www.anime-fansubs.org
;
; For additional info and downloads go to http://vobsub.edensrising.com/
; or email [e-mail]
;
; Note: This file was saved by Subresync.
;
ScriptType: v4.00+
Collisions: Normal
PlayResX: 384
PlayResY: 288
Timer: 100.0000

[V4+ Styles]
Format: Name, Fontname, Fontsize, PrimaryColour, SecondaryColour, OutlineColour, BackColour, Bold, Italic, Underline, StrikeOut, ScaleX, ScaleY, Spacing, Angle, BorderStyle, Outline, Shadow, Alignment, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, Encoding
Style: Default,Tahoma,16,&H00000000,&H00ffffff,&H00ffffff,&H00c0c0c0,-1,0,0,0,100,100,0,0.00,1,2,3,2,20,20,20,1

[Events]
Format: Layer, Start, End, Style, Actor, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, Effect, Text
Dialogue: 0,0:00:01.00,0:00:02.00,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,J_
Dialogue: 0,0:00:02.00,0:00:03.00,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,Jo_
Dialogue: 0,0:00:03.00,0:00:04.00,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,Joh_
Dialogue: 0,0:00:04.00,0:00:05.00,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,John_
Dialogue: 0,0:00:05.00,0:00:06.00,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,John _
Dialogue: 0,0:00:06.00,0:00:07.00,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,John S_
Dialogue: 0,0:00:07.00,0:00:08.00,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,John Sm_
etc.

, which would write out "John Smith" in the font style and color of your choice at the rate of one character a section.

Then, you'd call that script in Avisynth like so:

BlankClip().Trim(0,10000)
# Use this to get a flat black background of 10000 frames duration
# You can also use any other function to
#decode video and overlay subs on that.
TextSub("C:\somefile.ass") # overlay your subs and play them back in correct time.


Then just save that text as somefile.avs, open that file in your favorite NLE (Premiere, etc.) with the proper plugin to read Avisynth scripts (or simply use MakeAVIs from the ffdshow tryouts package to make a fake AVI from your Avisynth script) and fire away!
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 11:22 PM on April 9, 2010

Keynote on a mac should be able to do this. It exports its slideshow animations to quicktime format.
posted by drmarcj at 11:04 AM on April 10, 2010