Lower thirds generator (supers)....
Posted: August 12th, 2008, 1:13 am
Hey guys,
I'm new to scripting, but I wanted to share something I just slapped together, based on bits of info I found on this forum, creativecow and motionscript.com. It all works on my machine (intel mac running CS3) but I can't see why it wouldn't work on other versions.
We do a lot of documentary type projects here and they always end up involving some kind of lower thirds.
The problem with that is almost invariably either the design ends up changing a little (or a lot) after you've already gone through the painstaking job of entering all the text into a million after effects comps. Or someone's name turns out to be mispelled or something.
To circumvent that I made this script:
http://www.stevennicholson.com/videoscr ... erator.jsx
Basically it takes a template comp and duplicates it and replaces text based on the contents of a text file.
It supports two lines (eg: line1 = person's name, line2 = person's title or function). The two lines are separated in the text file by a semicolon (feel free to change this in the script if you need to).
Thus it's very quick to generate hundreds of supers from a template comp. It also eliminates the chance of *me* making a typo in AE, and throws the responsibility back on the producers.
It also means if I need to change the design I can just change the template and run the script again.
The simplest way I could think of setting it up was to have the script work by changing the content of the top two text layers. So it only works if the top two layers are text layers.
More often than not you want to have the text somewhere else in your comp (other than the top two layers), but I already had a work around for this in place. I make the top two layers in my comp text layers, but set as GUIDE layers. I then use an expression anywhere else to link to those two layers. The script then works fine. This also has the advantage that you can have your two text layers easily visible, all the time so you can see what their set to, even if they're designed to fade on and you're parked at frame 0.
I've included a demo project wired up that way:
http://www.stevennicholson.com/videoscr ... moText.aep
and a text file formatted the right way
http://www.stevennicholson.com/videoscr ... moText.txt
Hope people find this useful.
Steve.
I'm new to scripting, but I wanted to share something I just slapped together, based on bits of info I found on this forum, creativecow and motionscript.com. It all works on my machine (intel mac running CS3) but I can't see why it wouldn't work on other versions.
We do a lot of documentary type projects here and they always end up involving some kind of lower thirds.
The problem with that is almost invariably either the design ends up changing a little (or a lot) after you've already gone through the painstaking job of entering all the text into a million after effects comps. Or someone's name turns out to be mispelled or something.
To circumvent that I made this script:
http://www.stevennicholson.com/videoscr ... erator.jsx
Basically it takes a template comp and duplicates it and replaces text based on the contents of a text file.
It supports two lines (eg: line1 = person's name, line2 = person's title or function). The two lines are separated in the text file by a semicolon (feel free to change this in the script if you need to).
Thus it's very quick to generate hundreds of supers from a template comp. It also eliminates the chance of *me* making a typo in AE, and throws the responsibility back on the producers.
It also means if I need to change the design I can just change the template and run the script again.
The simplest way I could think of setting it up was to have the script work by changing the content of the top two text layers. So it only works if the top two layers are text layers.
More often than not you want to have the text somewhere else in your comp (other than the top two layers), but I already had a work around for this in place. I make the top two layers in my comp text layers, but set as GUIDE layers. I then use an expression anywhere else to link to those two layers. The script then works fine. This also has the advantage that you can have your two text layers easily visible, all the time so you can see what their set to, even if they're designed to fade on and you're parked at frame 0.
I've included a demo project wired up that way:
http://www.stevennicholson.com/videoscr ... moText.aep
and a text file formatted the right way
http://www.stevennicholson.com/videoscr ... moText.txt
Hope people find this useful.
Steve.