Text Overlays - Overlapping Text Overlay Boxes

[seashell]

Good Morning Members,

 

VideoPad Ver. 2.41

Windows7

 

I've been working on my video project for weeks now and I'm finally close to completion. I only have this one particular issue with my scrolling credits. I have created 3 text overlay boxes for my ending credits. Why 3? The text in the first text overlay box is "centered". The text in the 2nd overlay box is "Left justified" and the text in the 3rd text overlay box is "centered".

 

In VideoPad, you cannot create a single text overlay box that includes both "centered" and "left justified" text. Thus I had to create a total of three separate overlay boxes for each text alignment type (center, left and back to center).

 

To get all three text overlay boxes to be "spaced" evenly during the scroll (from bottom to top), I discovered that the text boxes can be dragged so they intersect each other. This is a very interesting feature that I stumbled upon. If you keep each text box separate (not intersecting each other) then the result is that each section of text in the final rendered movie is too far apart from each other.

 

Therefore I dragged the three text overlay boxes so they intersect each other (overlapped the text boxes). To check the spacing and scroll time of all three boxes I simply dragged the "red" timeline cursor across all three boxes (from left to right) and viewed in the clip preview window. If one text box is scrolling faster than the other, you will see this in the preview. Thus you need to drag the end of the chosen text box to speed it up or slow it down so all three speeds match. Very interesting observation.

 

After previewing the spacing and syncing the scroll speeds of each “overlay text box”, I had it set perfect and it looked great. However every time I rendered the final movie, the final outcome displays a "large gap" between text box 1 & 2 (between the centered justified and left justified sections of scrolling text). The resulting spacing between text box 2 & 3 is perfect as initially viewed in the preview window before rendering.

 

At first I though that the 1^st text box (center aligned) and 2^nd text box (left aligned) weren’t getting along somehow. I checked the possibility of excess spacing at the end of the text in text box #1 and also the possibility of excess spacing “before” the text in text box #2 but all checked out OK. I was puzzled!

 

I’ve been at this for days until I made the correct assumption that “what I’m viewing in the preview window may not be what I actually receive after rendering the final movie.

 

Thus in order to reduce the excess gap in the rendered movie (between the text in text box 1 and 2), I dragged text box 2 “further-into” text box 1 until the last line in the text in text box 1 “overlapped” the first line in text box 2. I thought doing this would really tell me if the preview window is giving me a false display.

 

Sure enough, what looked bad in the preview window (the text in text box 1 crashing into the text in text box 2) eventually looked perfect in the final rendered movie. The excess gap closed-up significantly and the spacing was a lot better. It was off slightly as its all hit and miss until each time I re-adjusted the amount of “dragging” in text box 2 until the rendered movie was perfect.

 

I still have no idea why I had no issue with text box 2 and 3 as they were spaced perfectly in the rendered movie as previewed in the preview window before hand.

 

I call the solution to this issue a “work-around” as it apparently is not a fix. Has anyone else encountered this issue?

 

VideoPad Ver. 2.41

Windows7

 

Thank you very much for your time.

[Nationalsolo]

Hi Seashell

 

You can also use the overlapping overlays to position up to 9 images on the screen by setting each image in position using each of the 9 arrows in the matrix and adjusting their size so they fit together. (They obviously have to be the same aspect ratio to cover the screen properly) With a bit of ingenuity you can even have more images and set some to scroll up/down/right or left to pass over each other and by displacing the overlays and varying the overlaps and altering their lengths you can acheive a pretty interesting visual display.

 

If you try this you will need to remember the order you placed them on the screen as the the first one stays on top but is on the bottom of the sequence line.

 

As you may also have noticed, setting text in the window and using the arrows to position it can be undone by introducing a scroll....annoying, but probably not what the designer had in mind.

 

Nat