"Now Playing" Overlay pressed into video

[maczook]

Hey all!

I have a ton of songs in a project, and I'm looking for an easy way to add a "Now Playing" overlay to the video.

I want people to be able to watch the finished video, and see what song is playing at any time. I do NOT however, want to have to create a new text item for each one, as there are hundreds. Is there an easy way to do this? I can get a csv or txt file of all the song names in order if neccessary.

Thanks all!

Best Wishes,

-Mac

[Mathias Moehl]

It is hard to give any advice without knowing any details.

How does your project look exactly?
Do you create 100 identical videos each just using a different song or do you create a single  huge video with lots of songs?

How do you insert the songs in the project?

[ShiveringCactus]

I think I can see what you're after.  Try this:

• Create a CSV, each song title has its own rown
• Bring this into After Effects
• Add a text layer and add a slider control to this.
• On the source text add the following expression:

song = Math.floor(effect("Song Number")("Slider"));
thisComp.layer("songs.csv").footage("songs.csv").dataValue([0,song]);

Your slider will let you set keyframes to change the text of the song, the Math.floor prevents any decimal places screwing up the code.

 

[Martin_Ritter]

If you have a comp with a text layer on top, and all the audio layers beneath, you can put this expression to the text layer:

for (i = 1; i < thisComp.numLayers; i++)
{
	songname = "None";
	if (thisComp.layer(index + i).audioActive)
	{
		songname = thisComp.layer(index + i).source.name.split(".")[0];
		break;
	} else
	{
		continue;
	}
}

text = "Now playing: " + songname;

No need for additional files, just make sure the song names in projekt panel (or OS) are correct.

*Martin