Essential Graphics template: Editing source text changes font

[Bendik Ramm]

Hey guys

I have created a lower third template in After Effects and exported it to Premiere through the Essential Graphics panel as a Motion Graphics Template.

For the template I have two lines of text, and a shape layer rectangle behind it that auto-resizes based on the width of the text. The shape layer uses the sourceRectAtTime expression to auto-resize, and because of this my two lines of text are on the same text layer so that the rectangle resizes to the longest of the two lines. The two lines of text uses different fonts and font sizes and are separated by a line-break.

It's imported to Premiere without problems and looks like it did in AE until I try editing the source text. Upon doing so, both lines of text are changed to the formatting of the first line (ie. the font and size changes so that both lines are the same). I really need the two lines to have different size and font for hierarchical reasons. And if I try to split the two lines of text into two separate text layers then I can no longer get the sourceRectAtTime to extract the width of whichever of the two text layers that is the widest (ie. has the most characters). I notice that the default templates that come with Premiere pull this off without issues so I'm thinking there must be a way to make this work (this video in the highlighted answer here uses a template that's doing what I'm trying to achieve: Cannot change text in Essential Graphics Titler).

Is there perhaps a way to use an if/else code to determine which of the text layers is the widest and resize based on this?

Thank you very much for your time!

[R Neil Haugen]

This is really an AfterEffects question ... so moving it to Ae forum.

Neil

[R Neil Haugen]

One of the sharper brushes in here will give the better answer, but the first thing that pops into my head is wondering if pick-whipping the smaller font size change to the bigger one would be a better result ... there's a different way of linking that change than what you're doing, and there's probably a couple "useful" ways to do it.

Neil

[Bendik Ramm · Accepted solution]

Thank you very much R Neil Haugen​! I really appreciate you taking your time to answer me. I got a solution from Dan Ebberts at Creative Cow using Math.max to automatically resize to the widest of the two text layers.

See correct solution here:

Essential Graphics lower third template – Editing source text changes font size : Adobe After Effect...

[R Neil Haugen]

Good solution.

I've listened and watched through a slew of things among Ae hot-shots on how they'd do X. Nearly every time, if there's four guys/gals discussing how to do X, they'll have 12 different ways of doing it. Ask this of Victoria Nece, program head at some event ... she'll sit down and immediately and fast as all get out start through twenty things before you can even slow her down.

Clearly, an app that gives one ... possibilities ...

Neil