My first impressions of Titler+
- Wow great at last, over 20 years after Unicode became a standard, we at last have a modern Title Tool, rewritten, with a modern(ish) interface. So I can add titles in all scripts, with diacritics, in Cyrillic, in arabic…. No more fiddling around with photoshop, exporting, importing. Hurray!
- Toolbox nicely laid out. Not too many bells and whistles which are unnecessary most of the time. For fancy 3D titles I’ll use another tool - here we have a modernised replacement for the old Title tool, usable for lower thirds, simple static text and end-credits (the primary uses of the Title tool) with the possibility for soft discreet shadows which are very important.
- It is directly accessible from within the timeline, no second window, no plugins, it is integrated.
Great work…
But then I started to use it….
OK, now I expect a few issues after all this is a first release (but not an alpha version), a few unforeseen use cases etc…. What I found to be honest disappoints me greatly. Certainly my expectations were high, expecting not only a slick, easy to use welcome update of the >20 year old Title tool for the final year of the decade, but with the niggles with the old title tool sorted out (that came up very frequently and well known amongst seasoned editors and AEs), namely:
1. Possibility to add left, center and right justifying tab-stops allowing two column rolling titles (for end-credits).
2. The possibility to copy and paste images into rolling titles (used to work reliably a long time ago…)
3. The possibility to export all titles on a track as text with timecode (as is possible with subcap) for reports required by production (would be fantastic)
4. Full Unicode ie. accented / non-latin character / right-to-left support.
5. Or maybe even something amazing like importing an RTF file making a rolling title with tabs, images, fonts… or constraining vertical movement in rolling credits to a fixed number of pixels to avoid flicker… I digress… :-)
The impression I have is that it was not thought out from a user perspective, the result is nowhere near as intuitive as it should be for software today.
In a sentence, Titler+ - it is a bit like a sliding door with a pull-handle and a sign saying Push…. ;(
So here we go :
a) You click in the monitor, a caret appears, you can type. Double click a dotted border appears, so far so good. All is nice and works as expected. A good start. It has an ugly black drop shadow that I’d prefer off by default, but I can turn it off. Fine. Looks good so far.
b) Click on the T in the Titler+ « toolbox », you get a square - You type and the square doesn’t change size, the text overflows - no wrapping…. No means (that I found) to have a text area that will wrap, not that it’s that important but the UI leads to expect that behaviour. Resize the square and the text changes size, but the square is still smaller than the text??? Can’t change the size of the square without deforming the text. It turns out the T creates a text layer (zone) not simply allowing text to be added, this is unclear….. hmmm it’s starting to feel a bit quirky……
c) Playing around with it I understand that there seems to be two types of ‘object’ - a ‘layer’ = zone that is created in the safe area that you can resize, resizing all the ‘child’ objects .. and text created by clicking, making ‘child’ objects of a layer….. Phew…. Seems far too complicated and unclear - problem with nomenclature and UI. Maybe reduce opacity on all other layers other than the selected one to indicate the current layer, but still UI badly thought out.
The whole layer / text object concept is very unclear in use - should be straightforward and evident. I create a text object and that should be it, they have an order that I can change. Rather than have confusing layers (this is an implementation detail that should be hidden from me), allow me rather to group objects together, with safe-area guides as before. I should be able to group and ungroup text or graphic elements and reorder them at will. Or keep all objects independent as in the old Title tool. The parameters in « layer » - position, scale, rotation, skew should simply apply to the current object or group, with the possibility for global positioning/scaling. Simple and easy to understand, and closer to the way much other software operates. No need to have layers, particularly as the UI has no window showing the hierarchy of objects and what layers exist (justified in eg. Photoshop but not here). Something reminds me of TitleDeko with less UI... hmmm...
d) Can’t get rolling titles to work for the life of me…. That is to say…. No vertical scroll bar. Rolling titles are used 99% of the time for end-credits, which are typically 10-20 times the height of the frame. I can see the rest by moving the position in the clip and selecting ‘effect mode’ in the effect editor, but then I can’t edit. And « Effect mode » in the effect palette this doesn’t mean anything at all!! I am in effect mode..!! This is misnamed. « Preview » maybe? And there is no none, just Crawl, roll etc... Not clear.
e) The relationship between the effect palette and the titles is unclear. Eg. Select a few characters, layer/scale has no effect as it only applies to layers (zones) (no visual cue as to which parameters apply), Layer/Add Text adds a new independant Text Layer, not text within a layer…. Should be named Layer/ Add text layer… I understand the principle, but there is a problem of organisation and naming, making it very unintuitive (related to c)
f) The mixture of parameters that apply to the currently selected layer and operations ‘select layers’, ‘add text’ in the same place is misleading and seems poor design. Effect palette should be essentially for parameters and related operations, especially as there is a dedicated toolbox window with this effect for everything else - much more convenient (great that they this is the first AVX2 effect with a dedicated interface - everything does not have to be shoehorned into the effect palette). Also no means to add a tracker as was possible previously.
g) Accented characters can not be inputted from the keyboard. É, ç à from the keyboard are ignored. This wasn’t tested it would seem with non-US keyboards (I’m on MacOS 10.12…6, with a French keyboard). But you can copy and paste anything you like including non-latin and right to left scripts, which is great news.
h) Selection of text. Every text editor, be it in Word, Photoshop, Title tool… changes the background of selected text…. Here, you get a confusing rectangle, making you think that you have created an new object…. The difference between a click creating a new object and selecting an existing object is not always correctly handled -> there should be an arrow tool for selecting and a text tool for creating/editing and a way to make the caret disappear. Feels quirky.
i) No means to select and align multiple text objects (left, right, center), a) with respect to each other and b) within the frame. Multiple object selection impossible via Cmd+click or Shift+click.
j) Select previous/next layer icons look like alignment icons….
k) Resizing of rectangles should be unconstrained by default, and aspect constrained with shift. The opposite is the case.
l) No polygons (often useful for basic lower thirds), or lines (there is a convention in France to place a large full frame cross 240f before FFOA - line tool useful).
m) Tools/Avid title+ refers merely to the tool palette, allowing you to find if it is hidden behind other windows. This is not clear. Does nothing in Src/Rec mode.
n) To create a title you need to drag+drop from the effect editor, add title in the timeline doesn’t always work (either no response or ERROR: unable to add an Avid Titler+ effect) - impossible to create a title as the only thing in the sequence as you can’t create the space in the timeline to drop the effect.
o) Alt+Cmd after Cmd+L to move around doesn’t bring up the hand cursor (but still works - this is a minor issue)
p) The two icons in the top-right of the effect palette (drag points, select areas) are identical, wasn’t able to figure out what they do. Related to (f) - if is changes interaction with the objects in the monitor it should be in the toolbox.
q) With my developer hat on, under the hood, looking at the AAF, for interoperability... doesn't look amazing... some of the data (text/font names) is hidden as "Private data" in a proprietary binary format (seemingly confirming some TitleDeko heritage...), the rest is as AAF Constant Values, with many repeated property names. Maybe just use XML as a text value, that other downstream software can parse and use. Avid (and other companies) uses XML elsewhere in AAF (and MXF for that matter) where things don't easily fit in to the AAF datamodel. Interoperability is what sets Avid apart and where other systems fall way short. AAF is documented - everything is there, once other manufacturers properly implement import (not always the case) - a clear interface that is easily parsed reduces bug probablity elsewhere.
You sort of get used to how it operates, but it is very very quirky. The Avid design team should put someone who has never used the Title+ tool but with experience of editing software as a user and observe how they get on without a manual - a lot would be learned…. It practically breaks most UI rules in the book…. Poor affordance, hidden hierarchy, no feedback from some user operations, unconventional behaviour. Yet it was certainly beta-tested… (eg. with respect to the accented character issue reproduced on two machines - no French beta testers???)
Maybe I’m a bit harsh, but I do think that the first impression that you have on these sorts of things is the right one. It is possible that some of the things I was unable to do, are in fact possible - but this is the point, it should be intuitive - the manual should not be necessary, not for something as straightforward as this. I teach in a film school and using this, I’m thinking, this is going to be a fun one to explain to first-time users…. :-(
It is a pity that with this opportunity to rethink things from scratch we didn’t get better than this. Should be clean, well thought out and elegant.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m testing out the other features of 2018.12 and so far very impressed, not least the possibility to make a multigroup from a sequence AT LAST with cameras that start and stop whenever!!! Super work Avid!! but this titler….. :-(
Curious to see what everyone else makes of it!
Janusz
This is excellent feedback. I sent Marianna Montague at Avid a link to your post, Janusz.
"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who only consider the price are this man's lawful prey." - John Ruskin (1819-1900)
Carl Amoscato | Freelance Film & Video Editor | London, UK
I can't compete with Janucz's level of detail, but I too am disappointed at how counter-intuitive the long awaited Titler+ tool is.
One key comment I agree with is the confusion of the whole layer/text concept. I've tried for about an hour to create a simple two line name caption, with separate lines sliding onto screen using key-frames, but can't see through the logic behind creating objects and layers etc. I am rarely stumped by animation software and have used Avid and After Effects for many years. I am trying to hold back my frustration, as no doubt a lot of work has gone into this. But why can't it just be easy like any other piece of modern software? I don't understand how this has been allowed to happen...
Perhaps a couple of online video tutorials might help us make sense of it.
Simon
Hello Janucz, Simon and Dstone who sent me an email directly.....
The product team is reviewing this post and going through each (very helpful BTW) item carefully to ensure that A: we understand what is being described; B: if it’s a known bug or upcoming feature update, noting that; C: if it’s not a known bug, getting it logged; and D: if it’s a design issue, reviewing the design to see if there are improvements we can make or if it’s an issue of better training/explanations, etc.
Stand by... and thank you for the post.
Marianna
marianna.montague@avid.com
First off – thank you for the very detailed, very helpful feedback. While we were aware of many of the items brought up, it’s incredibly beneficial to our design and development teams to get another perspective. Your details and descriptions painted a clear picture of the actual experience of using the Titler, which is invaluable to us.
Second, I’d like to take this opportunity to give you a little background on the Titler in Media Composer and provide some insight into our intentions with the new tool. As you’re well aware, we’ve had the same titling tool in Media Composer for ages, and with the advent of High Res media (2K, 4K, etc.) we discovered that it wasn’t possible to update the existing Title Tool to support larger than HD frame sizes. We had to create an entirely new titler essentially from scratch. With limited time to create a new tool, we started bundling NewBlue Titler Pro – a titling app that supported high res as well as loads of other features beyond what the existing Title Tool could do.
We had always intended to replace the existing Title Tool with a High-res, in-context Titler that was an improvement over the legacy Title Tool but wasn’t a complete reinvention of titles and graphics within Media Composer. The market is full of 3D graphic programs that are being successfully used today. Users asked for a way to quickly create high quality titles, in context, with finer integrated controls through our FX UI parameters. We released a solid foundation of this in 2018.12, but we know there is more work to be done. We will continue to include the existing titling tools (Title Tool, Marquee, and Titler Pro) so you can keep using them if you choose, and we’ve kept the pressure on fixing issues, making improvements, and tightening up features.
You should expect to see updates to the new Titler over the next few months (the first being at the end of January) – I hope that you try them out and continue to give us feedback. We want to get it right and posts like this help us do that.
And with that, I’d like to address some of the specific items that were brought up in the original post:
c) Playing around with it I understand that there seems to be two types of ‘object’ - a ‘layer’ = zone that is created in the safe area that you can resize, resizing all the ‘child’ objects .. and text created by clicking, making ‘child’ objects of a layer….. Phew…. Seems far too complicated and unclear - problem with nomenclature and UI. Maybe reduce opacity on all other layers other than the selected one to indicate the current layer, but still UI badly thought out.The whole layer / text object concept is very unclear in use - should be straightforward and evident. I create a text object and that should be it, they have an order that I can change. Rather than have confusing layers (this is an implementation detail that should be hidden from me), allow me rather to group objects together, with safe-area guides as before. I should be able to group and ungroup text or graphic elements and reorder them at will. Or keep all objects independent as in the old Title tool. The parameters in « layer » - position, scale, rotation, skew should simply apply to the current object or group, with the possibility for global positioning/scaling. Simple and easy to understand, and closer to the way much other software operates. No need to have layers, particularly as the UI has no window showing the hierarchy of objects and what layers exist (justified in eg. Photoshop but not here). Something reminds me of TitleDeko with less UI... hmmm...
One item that missed the release is the expansion of the text box as you type text. This makes it easier to then select the entire text field. The current big white box will be gone with the next update. The T button in the mini toolbar will create a new text box that is expands as you type. You can then decide to have all text as one text box or several ones. Multiple text boxes will become handy as animation gets implemented. Multi-selection support for shapes and text boxes is also coming with this change. Grouping will come after.
We are working on vertical scroll bar support as well as a text 'box' in the effect editor where you can edit the text directly (rather than in the record monitor.)
I can confirm that we are seeing this issue on the MAC (PC is ok.) Likely a last minute bug fix introduced this issue. We are aiming to resolve this in the next release.
Instead of changing the background, we chose to provide handles so that you can interactively resize and move just that portion of text. The idea was that, in the future, it could become a new object to which you could attach a different animation curve. However, we will re-examine adding a background shade.
Multi-selection is coming in the January release. More alignment tools will come in subsequent updates.
I understand and appreciate your point. We did it this way because text needed to be constrained by default, and so to be consistent we made the shapes follow the same rule. Our plan is that, in the future, you will actually 'draw' your shape to the desired aspect instead of starting from a square and circle.
This is in the backlog, although I don’t have an ETA at the moment.
Currently you need a selection (empty segment, etc.) before selecting T+ from Tools menu to have something happen. Improvements are planned so you can get into titling without requiring a selection.
n) To create a title you need to drag+drop from the effect editor, add title in the timeline doesn’t always work(either no response or ERROR: unable to add an Avid Titler+ effect) - impossible to create a title as the only thing in the sequence as you can’t create the space in the timeline to drop the effect.
You need to make a selection (clip, empty track or empty segment), and then click on T+ icon. However, we are working on making it easier to add titles, including when working with an empty sequence. Current thinking is that it should automatically create a track, but that could also be a user preference. We will continue to look at it.
About "add title" not working, we will re-test. If there is an empty track, it should still work.
We have this logged as a bug and will provide a fix.
These icons will be removed.
Director of Product Management Media Composer Avid 65 Network Drive Burlington, MA 01803
For PC users does it support ALT+Number ASCII symbols? Such as ALT+0151 to make an m-dash. AvidFX/BorisFX doesn't. As for the rest... one word: INSCRIBER. Buy it, port it to AVX2. :) Thanks for the detailed wrap-up Januz. It sounds about what I figured it would be. Kinda useless for our application.
Dan Powell - Take One Digital Media
Fazz Powell: one word: INSCRIBER. Buy it, port it to AVX2. :)
one word: INSCRIBER. Buy it, port it to AVX2. :)
INSCRIBER! I had Inscriber in my online all-component suite 25 years ago - it was fantastic (on a Targa card, GPI triggers, etc.). Also had our 1st Avid then too - strictly editorial and remained that way until AVR 77, when it started to receive very limited finishing use. Throughout there was the Title Tool, whose biggest upgrade of all time was receiving soft shadows sometime around 2000.
Sadly, the current Title Tool, with all its faults and limitations, is functionally better than the Titler+ just introduced - an embarassment. I, like, many many others, am sorely disappointed at this 1st release, especially with all the fanfare Avid created prior to release. Or, Avid, perhaps not too late - just buy and port Inscriber for inclusion in MC.
Keith
Thanks for the quick and elaborate response, Kate, it is much appreciated!
Hi Kate
Thanks for this detailed response to Janucz's message. Would it be possible for someone to create a brief tutorial on the layer/object concepts?
Everything about getting a title on screen, adjusting etc, adding backgrounds etc seems fairly straightforward. But in terms of selecting separate title objects then animating them independently of each other with a move or a scale for instance - I can't actually work this out and there doesn't appear to be any documentation anywhere. It would be a great help if this could be provided to help test the tool to it's full potential.
OK Kate - you did ask …Many fonts just don’t work, even though they preview in the font menu (just like early versions of NewBlue). See attachment.No apparent means of keyframing a move (such as flying in a title from one side and flying off. The Effect Editor has a number of parameters but no Position. Why? This is a regularly used feature.The widely used keyboard shortcut for pairs kerning is missing. In the old TT, Marquee, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign etc, Alt/Option + a cursor key will adjust pair kerning. Much faster than selecting and adjusting in the T+ window.A side effect of creating the title in the Effect Editor monitor is that if we hit ‘Esc’, we switch to the Source monitor. I’m so used to hitting Esc to switch from text mode to object selection that it’s a pain to have to use the mouse to select. Even NewBlue does this even though you can carefully select an object in NewBlue rather like T+.
With best wishes, Roger Shufflebottom
ACI, Dorset, UK. www.avid-companion.co.uk
Roger
Kate, Randy, and Luc will see this stuff trust me :)
M and M
Hi Marianna
Are we likely to get any more documentation or tutorials?
Great minds......
Just asked that myself.
Keep you posted.
OK - finally discovered that 'Transform' has been re-imagined as 'Translate'. Only took me a couple of weeks. So, I can (sort of) move some text ... is text a layer in itself or is text ON a layer? The slightest clicking of the mouse seems to select something else (or nothing) and when I look, the KF values have changed. And how about Level and Crop? They seem to do nothing. The Help files says 'The Entire composition'. Adding a graphic to a layer (or am I creating a new layer?) I find that it doesn't move with my keyframed text object. The keyframes are still visible in the graph, though but do nothing to the new object. We have 'Next Layer' and Previous Layer' buttons ... surely the keyframes should act on an object or layer (see - I'm confused)?
Roger this sounds very similar to my experience with this functionality.
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