MOGRT Text: Can individual words / parts have separate text styling?

[analytical_mentors5C1E]

Hi, 

I am tired of having to put a layer of After Effects composition on my Premiere Pro timeline (via dynamic link) for adding basic text animations to my edit.

I have made a mogart that allows you to have simple text animation right inside Premiere Pro. 

But the thing that is breaking it for me is that the whole line of text can have only a single text style applied to it.  In contrast, when working with text inside After Effects, we have the ability to select certain segements of the text and give them a different styling (attached video link for reference).

Video:

Ae vs Mogrt Text Styling 

This feature is extremely important since design and hierarchy with different styles is very essential to communicate your message.  Is this a feature being worked on by the MOGRT team?  Or is there a workaround that can be used when exporting from Ae Essential Graphics? 

The only workaround I can think of is having your line of text broken down into no. of words.  But that breaks the mogrt's original purpose of text animation completely.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

[Stan Jones]

@analytical_mentors5C1E,

As much as I have focused on text and captions, I have neglected Mogrts. Many users have wanted a way to animate captions (from the captioning/speech-to-text workflow after "updating captions to graphics"). I cannot see how to automatically change text in the mogrt. Is that possible? That's been my variation on your question.

You can apply different properties, and in fact linked styles, to part of a single text layer in the Essential Graphics Panel. But as soon as it is exported as a Mogrt, it just shows the property as mixed. It doesn't appear to have any way of addressing each part of the layer. I don't see how it could: that is the point of different layers.

@Tranquil_Cosmos157F Can you comment? One day I'll have to read your book!

Stan

[Tranquil_Cosmos157F]

Hi Stan, I have never found a way to apply any animations or individual styles etc. to a MOGRT that's an updated Subtitle. This, for me, makes this feature just about worthless. I don't see how it can speed up my workflow in any way.

[Tranquil_Cosmos157F]

You can use Expressions to style individual characters, but it gets messy when you want to style individual words.
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/expressions-text-properties.html 

[analytical_mentors5C1E]

Hi Stan,

Thank you for your reply.

Personally I find the updating captions to graphics a very clumsy way to work with text to make animations.  Firstly, it is a destructive process.  So I lose the ability to edit my text at a later stage.  Secondly, the things you can do right inside Premiere Pro for animation are extremely limited.  Yes, you could animate the opacity and have a box on top to have a sort of reveal effect.  But these are pretty out-dated text animations at this point.  The current day brands expect much more in terms of animation than that.

Which is why I have been working on this mogrt that takes all the basic (5 to be precise) text animations in After Effects right inside Premiere Pro.  It would be really helpful for my workflow if only I could fix this styling issue 😞

[analytical_mentors5C1E]

Hi Jarle,

Thank you for your reply.  Agreed on your point of using expressions to link text styles.  But there are 2 limitations I see:

First, when you would add the style linking expression to the source text of a parent layer, the child layer takes effect only when the whole text font is changed.  Or if I change the style of one part of the parent layer, the whole of the child layer changes (Attaching video for reference: https://youtu.be/bBWwtKkhuec )

Second, since this expression needs to go on the source text of a layer, it makes it impossible to do anything else on the source text.  Since from how much I have understood Ae JavaScript engine does not support AND operation on the source text.  You only have the very last function working on it.

Sorry, if I made this sound over-complicated.  Just looking for some expert guidance on the topic.  Thanks.

[Tranquil_Cosmos157F]

I'm not an expert when it comes to text styling, but yes, there are lots of limitations at the moment. It's been just a few months since we got the possibiloity to use expressions to control styling on individual characters. Let's hope we get simpler access to styling words in future updates. Make sure you add a feature request, or add your vote to an existing one.

[analytical_mentors5C1E]

Noted.  How can I add a feature request?  Thanks

[Tranquil_Cosmos157F]

To talk directly to the team and add feature requests or bug reports: Help > Provide Feedback

[Stan Jones]

@analytical_mentors5C1E,

> How can I add a feature request?

Like you posted in this PR forum, in the initial post, you have 3 options, to flag it as a Discussion, a Bug, or an Idea (Feature Request). In fact, this is already an Idea. There's a box in the upper left of your initial post, currently with zero in it. I upvoted, so now it has a one.

But your comments might lead staff to think it is a discussion. What, more specifically is the feature you want? This is tricky because the sky's the limit, and staff are in the best position (well, perhaps Jarle!) to help identify a roadmap to such a feature.

I think the general request might be to enhance the animation capabilities of mgrts on text of various types, including by character and by word.

There are a variety of discussions regarding animating PR captions, but I can't find any of the feature requests at the moment.

Stan

[analytical_mentors5C1E]

Thanks a ton for your inputs Stan!

I've been trying to search for an email address of someone who works in the Adobe Development team (Mogrts/Essential Graphics specifically).  Haven't found any success.  I feel I could explain the feature request in more detail that way.  Any suggestions?  Much thanks.

[Tranquil_Cosmos157F]

When you post via Help > Provide Feedback you're talking directly to the Adobe people. If it's MOGRT related, it will be read by the team responsible for MOGRTs. There's nothing you can write in an email that you can't write there.

Will they always answer all the posts? No. But if they have questions, they will ask. Even when they don't respond, your ideas may end up in the app. 

[analytical_mentors5C1E]

Alright, thank you.

[_nicdean]

@analytical_mentors5C1E 2 solutions for you.

1. As discussed, per-character text style expressions are released in AE Beta
2. To animate captions in Premiere Pro with .mogrts, you can use the Captioneer extension with your own .mogrts