OK. I confess. I really like LiveType. Motion is a great program, but LiveType is like an old friend. I’m going to show you some LiveType tricks you may not have discovered for yourself. Because even with old friends, it’s nice to have new things to talk about.
LiveType supports a variety of video formats. Its default setting is broadcast NTSC. However, you can easily change this by choosing Edit > Project Properties and choosing a different video format from the Presets pop-up menu (FIGURE 23.1).
There are three HD categories: DVCPRO HD, HDV, and HDTV. Pick the video format and image size that matches your sequence. If you are working with ProRes 422, or your video format isn’t part of the list, use the HDTV category and match the image size of your project. Final Cut will render the LiveType project to match your sequence as necessary.
When you enter text into LiveType, the letters are automatically placed into a track in the Timeline, represented by a blue line in the Canvas. The LiveType manual doesn’t really give this blue line a name—I’ve always called it a “baseline,” meaning the line upon which the letters of a font rest. So, you can call it a track, the blue line, or the baseline. Whatever you call it, it doesn’t have to be straight.
The nice thing is, getting the baseline to curve is easy:
In the Timeline, select the clip containing the text you want to curve.
Control-click (or right-click) the blue dot at the beginning or end of the baseline and choose Curve In or Out from the shortcut menu, depending upon which end you select (FIGURE 23.2).
About a half-inch in from the endpoint dot you click, if you look really carefully, you’ll see a blue dot a little bit wider than the blue baseline. (With its typical graphical restraint, Apple has made this dot darn near invisible.) Grab this larger blue dot and drag it. As you do, the baseline starts to curve (FIGURE 23.3).
Do the same with the blue dot at the other end of the baseline (FIGURE 23.4). Drag the blue control dots until your text is curved to your satisfaction.
One of the limitations of LiveType is that it doesn’t create images. However, since we can create virtually anything inside Photoshop, this isn’t a big limitation. Here’s how to get a Photoshop image into LiveType:
Create your image in Photoshop. If you want your Photoshop gamma (that is, the mid-tone grays) to match video gamma, use the sRGB color profile.
In LiveType, choose File > Place (Command+I). This places your graphic on one of the foreground tracks; that is, one of the tracks above the heavy gray line in the Timeline.
If you want your image to be placed in the background, choose File > Place Background Movie. This places whatever file you select, and it doesn’t have to be a movie, below the heavy gray line separating the foreground (above) from the background (below).
Note
The advantage to placing movies in the background is that you can control whether background images are exported with a simple preference setting. This makes it easy to use a movie to help place the position of a lower-third super without exporting the movie as part of the final project (FIGURE 23.5). To set this, choose Edit > Project Properties.
From the Media Browser, select the Smoke category and apply the Fog Machine clip to the sequence background.
In the Inspector, select the Attributes tab, click the Glyph button and rotate the clip 180°.
In my example, I then imported a snowboarder logo to use as a foreground layer. I scaled the logo to 80% size, and then dragged it to the lower-right corner of my frame in the Canvas (FIGURE 23.6).
One of the secrets of LiveType is that all video is matted into something. We can take advantage of this to easily matte video into our Photoshop logo—in this case, I’ll use video of an actual snowboarder.
In the Timeline, select the track that contains the logo.
Choose Inspector > Attributes, select the Matte tab, and choose Movie or Image from the “Matte to” pop-up menu (FIGURE 23.7).
Select the video clip you want to matte into your image. In this case, I used a close-up of a snowboarder (FIGURE 23.8).
Note
LiveType matches the In point of your video to the start of the logo. If you need the insert video to start in a different place, the easiest way to do this is to move the In and Out points in LiveType. Also, LiveType centers the clip in your image, and this positioning cannot be changed. If you need more control, create a traveling matte inside Final Cut Pro.
To make the logo stand out a bit more from the background, I added a drop shadow by choosing Inspector > Style, selecting the Shadow tab, and then tweaking the Blur, Opacity, and Offset settings until I liked the look (FIGURE 23.9).
You can deform the shadows by using this strange “deform” box at the bottom of the Shadow settings window (FIGURE 23.10). Drag any color dot in the corners of the box and watch what happens to your shadows. (You can, if you want, type in specific pixel coordinates using the fields on the left—but that is nowhere near as much fun.)
Click in the center of the box and drag to offset the shadow. This is also a very easy way to create cast shadows—by dragging the top dots, while leaving the bottom dots alone.
In fact, LiveType carries this effect even further in that you can deform shadows, glows, and outlines. You adjust them all the same way.
Keyframes allow you to animate changes over time. If you don’t need something to change, you don’t need to use keyframes. In this case, however, we want our shadow to change shape over the course of this effect. Here’s how:
Select the logo track and reset the deform dots by clicking the “X” next to the deform dots.
With the logo track still selected, choose Track > Add New Effect. A purple bar appears under your logo clip. This is the effect clip that contains all the keyframes needed for this effect. Unlike in Final Cut, where each parameter has its own keyframes, in LiveType all keyframes for all parameters of an effect are contained in “master keyframes” stored in the effect itself.
Since we want the shadow to animate from the beginning of the clip to the end, drag the starting point of the effect so it starts at the beginning of your clip, then drag the end so it ends at the end of your clip (FIGURE 23.11).
Figure 23.11. The length of the effect clip determines the speed, and duration, of the effect. In this case, we want the effect to run the length of the logo. Notice, also, that the In and Out points have been shifted so that the video starts at a point other than the beginning. LiveType exports only from the In to the Out point.
As we do in Final Cut, we can move between keyframes using keyboard shortcuts. Select the effects clip, or track, then press Shift+K to jump to the next keyframe to the right. With the effects clip or track selected, Option+K will jump to the previous keyframe to the left. To start creating the effect, position the playhead on the first keyframe of the effect.
Drag the shadow deform dots so the drop shadow looks the way you want (FIGURE 23.12).
Press Shift+K to jump to the last keyframe. Again, drag the shadow deform dots so the ending position of your shadow looks the way you want.
Play your clip and watch what happens. Ta-DAH! Instant animation.
For all its simplicity, LiveType has a lot of depth in it. When my goal is to create animated text, LiveType is always my first choice. And, like an old friend, sometimes it can surprise you with some new tricks.
