X-Title and FCP 10.4.7

With the 10.4.7 update FCP may fail to update parameter settings for some Motion Titles when exporting (sharing) movies.


One notices the error only after the export of the movie is done.

This is especially annoying since you might not notice anything of this while working in FCP, even if you render everything.

It is probably only happening with titles which have a flexible text (bounding) box - like TextUp. Additionally this "effect" seems to be forced when you use XML.
One workaround could be to create a Motion Template for each "Title Safe Zone" - but even that won't work in any case.
Be aware that changing the "Title Safe Zone" in title-by-title way can fix the error temporarily, but it can be back once you have closed and re-opened FCP.
Below workflows (?) to fix this behaviour.
One is to fix updated or existing FCP 'Projects' the other to make X-Title work more smooth.

With the 10.4.8 update the ugly render/update errors of 10.4.7 for Motion Templates seem to be fixed - SOMEHOW.


I can speak for my templates only here: Libraries don't need to be updated, at least FCP doesn't ask for. But they should ;-).
It seems that the shift and the ugly 'upper left square' in the final output are still there. But other than in 10.4.6 a 'Render All' seems to fix that. You have to do it one time (per project) and everything seems to work as normal. Render files can be deleted and everything is still okay.

Anyway - cause of the 10.4.7 problems I added a new template: TextUp ITT. It has less features than the other TextUp templates but mimics the ITT caption behaviour plus an editable background. You can download here: TextUp_2019

Additionally you'll find a list of parameters which you can use for 'bulk changes' for titles here.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

There is a workaround, the workflow get's worse and a new version of FCP is needed*.
Updating FCP Projects

If you know your system is valid for this bug you can skip the steps from A) thru D).

A) When you import the XML (from XTI or XTE) using the TextUp Motion template everything looks okay. You can render and everything will look fine in playback.
test

B) But the look can be fooling. To check select a centered title with quite a lot of text - like the one above - and copy it.
test

C) Create a new project with the same settings and paste the title.
Depending on text you might see a difference immediately or not.
test

D) To make sure double click the title in the timeline - this will select all text and make the text region (bounding box) visible.
test

E) Go back to the original timeline. Select one of the titles. In the 'Timeline Index' select all affected titles. Activate the timeline.
test

F) In the 'Inspector' select the 'Text Inspector' tab and select the 'All Caps Size' in the 'Basic' section and change it slightly.
In this example from 80.0 to 80.01.
test

Alex Gollner had this nice idea to use the 'All Caps Size' since it forces FCP to re-draw the text and normally has no influence on the visual appearance of open captions.

test

But be careful! You can't set the modified value back to normal even if everything looks okay - remember: the look can be fooling. It will re-introduce the bug.
You have to quit FCP, relaunch and reset the value - if needed.



X-Title workflow

A) Create a project and add a TextUp Caption Title.
Go to the 'Title Inspector' and make sure everything is set to default - especially the 'Title Safe' must be set to 'EBU Digital 68% 90%'
Double click the title. Using the text box handles adjust the margins until they match your needs. In this example I used a 80% width and a 90% height of screen.
test

B) Export as XML with descriptive name.

test

C) In either X-Title Importer or X-Extractor select 'Custom' for the 'Title type' when converting to titles.

test

This will force a given template setting to be overwritten in FCP.
You can create one or more custom templates.
The settings will kept when you quit X-Title.



Parameters Available for Batch Change:
Often, users ask how settings can be changed for multiple titles (or why this does not work).
So here's a kind of answer:
You can't change anything in the 'Title Inspector' part of the 'Inspector' for multiple titles.
Another global misunderstanding is to use the 'Text Inspector' tab inside the 'Inspector' to change position. The settings for 'Position', 'Scale' and 'Rotation' in the 'Basic' section were introduced for 3d titles - but they forgot to document.
Changing these values even can screw up some titles.

You can though change several - not all - settings in the 'Text Inspector' tab for multiple titles.

See list below.
Basic
  • Font
  • (Font Style)
  • Font Color
  • Font Color Alpha
  • Font Size
  • Vertical Align
  • Kerning
  • LineSpacing
  • Baseline
  • Stroke Color
  • Stroke Color Alpha
  • Stroke Width
  • Shadow Color
  • Shadow Color Alpha
  • Shadow Offset
  • Shadow Angle
  • Shadow Blur Radius
  • All Caps
  • All Caps Size
Face
  • Fill (no Gradient Angle)
  • Color
  • Opacity
  • Blur
Outline
  • Fill (no Gradient Angle)
  • Color
  • Opacity
  • Blur
  • Width
Glow
  • Fill (no Gradient Angle)
  • Color
  • Opacity
  • Blur
  • Radius
Drop Shadow
  • Fill (no Gradient Angle)
  • Color
  • Opacity
  • Blur
  • Distance
  • Angle
What people should know when working with captions, titles and XML - the dark side of the moon.

ABC,
Easy as 123
Ah, simple as:
do re mi
ABC,
123 ...

more to come...