Discuss: Upgrade Legacy Titles to Essential Graphics

[AnnikaKoenig]

In order to ease the transition from an established Legacy Titler workflow to an Essential Graphics workflow, we have added two new commands that allow you to upgrade your Legacy Titles into Source Graphics in the latest Beta build of Premiere Pro. You can access these commands through keyboard shortcuts or through the top Graphics menu:

• Upgrade Legacy Title

• Upgrade All Legacy Titles

What are Source Graphics?

 

Source Graphics are a kind of Essential Graphic that behave similar to Legacy Titles in the sense that

• they have a project item,
• you can track usage through the metadata column for Video Usage and
• edits made to the project item or an associated track item will ripple edits through all track items.

Note that Source Graphics do not support rolls or Responsive Design Time. By the way, any Essential Graphic can be turned into a Source Graphic through the "Upgrade to Source Graphic" command in the Graphics menu (make sure the focus is on the timeline).

Upgrade Instructions

In order to upgrade a single Legacy Title into a Source Graphic:

• select the Legacy Title in the Project Panel and execute the Upgrade Legacy Title command.
• This will add a Source graphic with the suffix "-Upgraded" to the Project panel and replace all instances of the Legacy Title on tracks with the Source Graphic.
• This action is undoable.

In order to upgrade All Legacy Titles into Source Graphics:

• Make sure the focus is on the Project Panel, and execute the "Upgrade All Legacy Titles" command.

If you want to compare the upgraded Source Graphic to your Legacy Title, you can duplicate your Legacy Title on the track and only upgrade one of the copies in the project panel. This way you can do a side by side comparison and get a feeling for how your Legacy Titles upgrade.

 

 

What to expect

We have done our best to get the conversion as good as possible, however it is advised that you quality-check the upgraded graphics, since not all characteristics of a Legacy Title will translate. The main things that will not come over are shapes, rolls, crawls, tracking and rotation. With other characteristics you might see small differences, such as the spreads of gradients, strokes or the thickness of fonts.

Here a list of what to expect:

What we are translating:

* = might look noticeably different under certain conditions

** = most likely will need to be redone because it looks very different

Character settings: 

• The Glyphs of the text

• Fill color and visibility

• Font

• Font Size

• Font Style

• Shadow substring (e.g. different shadows on different characters will take the shadow of the first character and apply it to the whole text)**

• Radial/Linear Text Gradient substring (same as with shadow substring)**

• Outer strokes

• Underline

• Kerning

• Baseline shift

• Small Caps

• Cap Sizes (note, we always translate to the default 75%)**

• Just Width Scale**

• Just Height Scale**

• Vertical box text**

• The positioning of multiple lines when there are different font sizes used**

• Text box wrapping*

Layer settings:

• Position/Alignment

• MENA/Indic

• Hindi Digits

• Leading

• Shadow*

• Linear and Radial Gradients*

• Vertical text*

• Sheen*

Track items filters: 

• Shapes (rectangle and ellipse work well, other shapes will need to be redone)
• Motion and Motion keyframes
• Opacity and Opacity keyframes
• Effects and Effects keyframes

What we are NOT translating. These characteristics will be missing completely from the source graphic after the upgrade:

• Rolls

• Crawls

• Slant

• Fill types other than solid, linear and radial

• Inner Strokes

• Texture

• Background

• Distort 

• Rotation

• Shapes

• Right to Left text

• Track Label Colors

• Tracking

• Tab Width/Stops

[James Brady]

Thanks, Mike. This is good stuff. I'll review each item so we can sweep some away and hone in on the really important ones:

Shapes--This is still my most important item. I'm happy to hear you acknowledge that manually constructing something as simple as a rounded corner rectangle is painful and will be corrected. Would correcting that first give way to a path for LT to EG upgrades? If not, then yes--simple path translation would absolutely be preferable to loss of all shapes during upgrade. 

Crawls/Rolls--This is a big deal as well. Might there be a way to "upgrade to EG" instead of to SG? Then all the same translatable upgrades could apply (even if the speed/timing of the roll or crawl had to be re-edited).

Rotation and slant sound like lost causes--and are not high enough priority to fight for, so I'm willing to cut ties on those two items. 

As for strokes... I actually do use layer styles in Photoshop so I'm very used to having control over inner/outer strokes and often employ both on an LT. But if that distinction is not to be added to EG, I can get behind that if the way the stroke currently resolves is corrected (or at least explained). Here's the issue I'm having:

In EGP, I create a solid shape. I add a stroke. When I add a 2nd stroke, I expect another outline outside of the first outline. Instead, the 2nd stroke is visible outside AND inside of the first stroke--as if it is being applied to the first stroke and that the shape is transparent.

[Pierre Louis B.]

I agree with James that "simple path translation would absolutely be preferable to loss of all shapes during upgrade. "!

I've used LT shapes as Track Mattes in many projects.  The loss of these would be terrible when opening old projects.

Question: Once LT is removed completely, will users still be able to upgrade existing LT titles into Source Graphics?

Observation: since EG titles can do things that Source Graphics cannot, in order for this transition to work, it's essential that users be able to "downgrade" Source Graphics into EG titles and/or be able to convert LT titles directly into EG titles rather than just into Source Graphics.

[Mike-Berry]

The upgrade path will remain in Pr for the foreseeable future, but it will become an automatic, required part of opening an old project.

Mike

[mickpeninsulaTV]

While I welcome the EG upgrades as I we find the EG crashes alot and is a system hogger.

We really want LT to remain as an alternative. This is what our clients and mastering houses want:

Simplicity converting to other platforms.

EG is over engineered for these.

100's of professional editors and production companies have been crying out to leave LT and we now find out adobe is driopping it compleyety.

We have been ignored since 2018 on this subject : https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/34577332-please-do-not-elim...

And now we are told to voice our concerns on this page....

[Mike-Berry]

Can you give us projects/example which crash or cause performance problems? We need concrete examples that we can work with.

Thanks,

Mike

[mickpeninsulaTV]

Hi Mike,

I have discussed this in length with one of your team this year why the new
titler is
no good to our workflow.


Mick


Peninsula Television
[personal info deleted by mod]

[AnnikaKoenig]

Hi Mick! If you are referring to me, then yes, that's true, we briefly engaged. But you never told me what the bugs where that you ran into. I am sorry that you had a bad experience during the edit of the series. I have also read you calling out an issue with "speed of use" - it would be very valueable to us to hear from you what that means exactly. If a user shouts "everything is slow!" or "it's all crap!", then it's really hard for an engineer or a Product Manager or a Quality Engineer to get to work ;). If you however tell me "I wanted to xyz, but the app did abc" then we can have a conversation. You do not need to offer solutions, but I need to understand the problem.

[mickpeninsulaTV]

You never replied to me actually.

& I reposted it on the forum also.

Here it as again:

Our very small production company cut 100+ 60min documentaries every year,
so time is critical.

Our clients are in the US & UK.

We used the graphics panel for a 26 x 60min series last year for our lower
thirds and had lots of issues.

Primarily speed of use is the issue with the graphics and bugs when other
editors take over projects - but speed is the main issue.

I don't have an issue with the essential graphics panel, but myself and
many other filmmakers are very angry with Adobe for ignoring stability
issues with known working aspects of Premiere and are focused too much on
adding stuff we never asked for.



What I like about the Legacy Titler vs Graphic titles

1. It's really fast -

the new version slows down the edit and is very fiddly, not good for flow
or fast editing, which we do a lot of here (never met an editor that likes
working with new titles (we did a 26 ep series with it and nearly pulled
our hair out, because of the extra amount of time it took to make an
adjustment).

2. If we want fancy titles, we would create it in AE, not in Premiere.

3. Legacy titles - we need Stability, Stability & Stability....

(The new titles have crashed on every machine in the office, and have
caused significant disruption.)

4. Sending text to clients and mastering houses is really quick and
seamless,
the new version does not transfer to others, and most mastering suites use
AVID (Legacy Titles are not a problem).



--

Peninsula Television

[AnnikaKoenig]

If you encounter a crash, please always send the crash report when the crash reporter dialog shows up. It's very valueable when you add a note and your email. This will help us figure out what happened and if not we can contact you to figure out the exact steps to reproduce the crash. 

And for workflow issues ("the new version slows down the edit and is very fiddly"), be a little bit more concrete. Where are you slowed down exactly? What is fiddly?

[Pierre Louis B.]

• What is fiddly?

Resizing.

There's no denying it... Resizing in EG is a disaster (i.e. as fiddly as can be) compared to LT, Photoshop, Illustrator... anything else really.

Here's how to fix it: https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/41079490-fix-the-way-essent...

[Pierre Louis B.]

Hi Annika,

You wrote in a prior post that you and your team want to find ways to make Source Graphics as easy to find and reuse as possible.

Smart Bins are a big part of making that happen!  I just posted an new FR for this feature that stands to help not just some, but virtually all Pr users!  https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/43533861-smart-bins-bins-th...

What do you think about using this kind of approach?

Hope you're having a great weekend! 🙂

[Richard TOULON]

Hi,

I understand many users but here are my thoughts about Legacy titles. This is an outdated workflow for many reasons. The EG has a better efficiency with the ability to create and share MOGRT, to use Responsive design. When rounded rectangles and maybe stroke issue will be solved, there won't be any major reason to keep legacy titles. I never use it and if I want some fancy or more complicated lower third, I use Photoshop. Pierre-Louis has indicated that he uses bezier curves to create mask with LT but you can easily do it outside legacy title with bezier mask on a color matte. I think too many users has kept old habits, sticking to their old school way to make lower thirds ( and I'm a old user of Premiere Pro to be clear ). I don't want to offense anyone but this is true. Adobe has implemented the EG a while now and since the day the the titler has been named Legacy Title, people should expected to see it removed and prepare for changes. Another thing, How many times you get back to an old project and want to change stuff ? In my corporate world...almost never. Now, what about an option to convert all legacy titles to PNG so previous project could at least being seen and rendered with no issue if needed. I could swear I have seen this option one day but I might be wrong.

Pierre-Louis has mentionned the Esc button to get back to slection tool and this is a so smart idea. Most of the time, my student basicaly click in the Program monitor and forget to get back to selection tool, creating many empty titles. Using Esc would be great indeed for advanced users and new users.

The only thing that is bugging me is when it comes to resize sequences for Instagram or something else. All elements positions values are breaking apart. Instead of using the overall position of all elements, it use the position of each element. This is something that many editors will face when making different formats for social media.

1920 x 1080 sequence with EG lower third1080 x 1080 resized sequence with EG lower third

So yes a workaround is to nest each title...not ideal. Would be perfect if was taking into account the overall scale of all the elements. Notice that the actual result is the same using the "scale motion effects proportinally ".

If the overall scale was used when resizing, would be perfect.

That's all folks. 🙂

[Pierre Louis B.]

"Now, what about an option to convert all legacy titles to PNG so previous project could at least being seen and rendered with no issue if needed."

If after the LT is axed, titles need to be converted in order to display in/export from the Timeline, then an option to batch convert all LT titles and replace all Timeline instances with identical looking PNG files is brilliant!  Of course PNG files would remove the ability to edit text, but it WOULD allow for perfect, pixel accurate conversions of everything in a static title, including shapes!

Could this be added Annika?

It's already possible to export+auto import a single title as a .png from the Project window, or to batch export several LT titles at once using AME, so this should be a relatively simple addition. 

Here's what I suggest:

1. PNG conversions should be added to the Project window next to the original LT title and renamed something like "Title name-PNG".  This is what happens now with Source Graphics, but I'm not sure if the plan is to have Source Graphics replace LT titles in the Project window rather than continue to appear next to them when LT gets axed.  It would be preferable to keep it the way it is now, with conversions appearing next to the original file. 
2. Converting LT titles to Source Graphics or PNG files should be possible right from the Timeline or Project window, from an LT title's context menu.  A context menu is generally a more practical and discoverable location for a new options than the top menu.
3. If a user converts all of their LT titles to Source Graphics and discovers that they didn't get the expected results on some of them, it would be great to be able to right click on problematic Source Graphics and select a new option called something like "Convert to PNG version of original title".  This would allow users to easily convert back to perfect replicas of their original LT titles whenever having a pixel accurate copy trumps the need to edit text!
4. Likewise, a new option to convert all titles to PNG would be helpful since it would guarantee pixel perfect results everywhere in the Timeline.  Anywhere a user needs to edit a PNG title's text, a new context menu option to "Upgrade to Source Graphic" would make it possible, albeit at the risk of losing pixel perfect accuracy. 

I believe this would provide the best upgrade path possible!

A. "Convert All Legacy Titles to PNGs" - Pixel perfect conversions for those that don't need to edit the contents of any/most their old titles, with the option to upgrade any png conversion in the Timeline to a Source Graphic whenever text editing is needed.

B. "Upgrade All Legacy Titles" - Best option for users who need to edit the text of most of their old titles, with the ability to convert any Source Graphic in the Timeline into a pixel perfect png copy of the original LT title, should they need to see shapes or other missing element(s) from their original LT title.

This would best serve the needs of users needing to open old projects once LT is axed, and provide what I believe would be the lightest workload for Pr's team, since most of the code needed for this already exists within Pr (Batch exporting LT titles to png.  Converting all LT titles and replacing all Timeline instances, which was already introduced with the Upgrade to Source Graphic workflow)

What do you think?

[Mike-Berry]

Hi Pierre -

This is not unfortunately a viable long-term solution because it would require keeping the legacy title render functional inside the app. If we were able to do that, then there would be no need to upgrade at all. 

Mike

[Mike-Berry]

Hi Richard -

Have you tried using pinning to determine the scaling behavior for layers? In your example, if you pin your grey backgrounds to the 4 corners of the text layer they are behind, then they will automatically stay positioned correctly when you change frame aspect. You can also pin the top edge of the subtitle to the bottom edge of the title to maintain that relationship.

Mike

[Richard TOULON]

Thx Mike,

It seem to work only if elements are not grouped... If all elements are in the same folder/group , it works. If not ( like in my example on the previous snapshhots ), it doesn't seem to work. I'm just wondering why going to all those steps instead of using the overall scaling or position. I won't presume that everything is simple to code etc but would be so much simple. No matter what ( simple or complex structure) the overall scale function and position would solve all those extra steps. Thx for taking time to find a solution by the way.

[Mike-Berry]

Hi Richard -

The reflow when the frame aspect changes is a feature and intentional. It is the basis of most of the Premiere Mogrts on Stock, for example. It should work even if you have groups, but I would need to see your project to see why it is not working for you in this case.

Mike

[Richard TOULON]

The project is pretty simple and I just put this for example purpose.

a 1920 x 1080 sequence , with a 1920 x 1080 video.

Everything else is replicable as you can see in my previous post with the third snapshot.

I have to say the feature is a really good idea but I can't see why it doesn't rely on overall scale and position of the MOGRT or the just created EG.

Take any simple Lower third MOGRT preset like basic Lower third and insert it in a 1920x1080 sequence, change the sequence size to 1080 x 1080 and try with and without the " Scale motion effects...."

Does it means that a user will have to pin each and every elements from a template ( or a creation ) each time he wants to change the sequence size ? The overall size and postion could solve it all but maybe I don't have all the elements to judge. 

[Richard TOULON]

Can you also clarify on what elements the " Scale motion effects..." act ? 

[James Brady]

Hi Pierre -

This is not unfortunately a viable long-term solution because it would require keeping the legacy title render functional inside the app. If we were able to do that, then there would be no need to upgrade at all. 

Mike

By @Mike-Berry

Wait... does this mean that "Upgrade to Source Graphic" will also be a limited-time option?

[Pierre Louis B.]

Hi Mike,

I'm confused about what will happen then once the LT is axed.  If a user opens a project with LT titles in it once the LT is gone, will they no longer be able to convert LT titles into Source Graphics?  Will the project open but show the red 'Media offline' screen anywhere LT titles are used?  Will all LT titles automatically convert to Source Graphics upon opening the project?

The solution I propose might not be viable solution forever, but I think it would be an excellent solution to help users transition from LT to EG!  By giving users the choice between Source Graphics that aren't pixel perfect matches and don't import any shapes but can be edited, and PNGs that are pixel perfect copies that can't be edited, I imagine the needs of many more users would be met through the transition!  Perhaps users could even be encouraged to convert all of their LT titles into both formats (PNG and Source Graphics) before LT is axed, so that they have the greatest number of options when opening older projects.

Even once LT is axed, wouldn't Adobe provide users with the option to install the last LT-inclusive Pr version from Adobe Creative Cloud so that they can convert their titles before opening the same project in the newer, non-LT version of Pr?  If Adobe does right by its users and continues to give us access to an LT version of Pr well into the release of non-LT versions, then the workflow I suggest could be a lot more long-term than you seem to suggest.

Thoughts?

[Mike-Berry]

Hi Pierre -

The upgrade code will continue to work even after the legacy title rendering and editing is removed. So you will be able to open old projects and get at least an approximation of your legacy titles for the foreseeable future.

Mike

[Eliana0D4C]

For small things it's good.
For me, putting subtitles on my videos is not good as it gets too heavy.
Also: I want to be able to choose a STANDARD SOURCE in the Legacy titler and not use Essential Grapichs.
Essential Graphics is very heavy and is not functional in my case, I put subtitles on my videos.

[jstrawn]

Product Team UPDATE: As of current Beta builds (Pr22.0xBeta036), Shapes are now supported for Legacy Title Upgrade. Shapes were previously called out in the list of things that were not supported for upgrade. We're happy to say that that has now changed, so please give it a try if you can and let us know what you think.

Attached is an image with a mixture of Legacy shape, text and appearances that you can expect to upgrade to Essential Graphic reasonably well. You can use the same Upgrade Legacy Title command that has been in the Graphics Menu for a while.

[Pierre Louis B.]

That's great news!  Thanks for the update! 🙂