Importing text movie from QT to FCP

M

mpalmer12345

Well-known member
I've written some text using Quicktime's nifty little technique of converting text and timecode into a text movie. Now I want to import that text movie into FCP and use it as subtitles, but every format I save the movie in isn't recognized by FCP and it won't import. What do I do?

(Mac G5, FCP HD)
 
Well...

Not exactly sure what you are trying to do INSIDE Qt... havent heard of that before, I think.

BUT - try EXPORT - DV/NTSC (or PAL) or something to match your sequence you will be editing in.

CaptM
 
I'm creating a text track. Try this,

{QTtext} {font:Geneva} {plain} {anti-alias:on} {size:12} {textColor: 65535, 65535, 65535} {backColor: 0, 0, 0} {justify:center} {timeScale:1000} {width:160} {height:48} {timeStamps:absolute} {language:0} {textEncoding:0}
[00:00:00.000]
Text Slide 1
[00:00:02.000]
Text Slide 2
[00:00:04.000]

Copy that into a blank text file, then open in Quicktime (Pro?). Save the text movie any way you like, then try to import into FCP. I haven't found an export format that works.
 
I'm missing a step. How do you open a text doc into QT???

Does the text doc format matter? I'm using RTF...

CaptM
 
Why are you doing this? What's the final destination? If you want REAL subtitles for a DVD, add them in the authoring stage using DVDSP rather than in FCP.... DVDSP accepts a few forms of text files for subtitles...
 
I am adding text to an opera video to be made into a DVD, a translation of the libretto, so it's not technically subtitles in the sense that they are user-optional. They should be present all the time above the movie, and there's an hour's worth of them, so it's a lot of work if I have to do it manually. Can I import a text file with timecode into DVDSP, and have it sync correctly?

CM, save the text as unformatted, then just open in QT. It's a neat process.

Sorry, I just tested my example and it doesn't work! I'll try and fix... Here's the link to what I'm doing:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/texttracks.html
 
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The most STUPID set of instructions I've ever read.

Nothing I did seems to work. Once in QT... SAVE as Text to Text???

Really?

What the...

When I drag it onto another existing movie (thinking that would add a text overlay) it just adds the bit to the front (or where my playhead is.)

Nothing I do can get it into FCP.

AARGH!! Now you've got me seriously pissed off.

CaptM
 
Yes, it's simple to import text subtitles into DVDSP. You need to format them in a .stl file (information here http://www.geocities.com/mcpoodle43/DVDMaestro/stl_format.html; I think it's also detailed in the DVDSP docs).

I use a nifty thing called TitleSheet, which is actually an Excel document that generates an STL file for you. It's free, at http://www.wieriks.nl/dvdtools/ . It requires the timecode to be entered in a sorta annoying way, but I've written some excel functions that'll translate from "normal" colon-separated timecode if you want.

What kind of opera is it? In a baroque/classical opera, an hour's worth of supertitles may be just ten or twenty words... are you titleing opera-style or movie-style? Opera-style is a lot less work, but I like to subtitle operas movie-style... I don't like such long sections of singing without any translation ...

If you need to do multi-language translation, TitleSheet makes it real easy!
 
Yep, look for "Creating an STL Format Subtitle File" in the DVDSP manual (p. 456 of the DVDSP 4 User Manual). The format is pretty simple; and if you have a list of titles with timecode, you could likely use search and replace functions to match it to the format pretty easily...
 
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