Brilliant way to create titles from text files

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
January 6, 2014
3 replies
16654 views

It was just pointed out to me by a fellow named Greg Hester that there is a way to create titles from a Microsoft Word file using Adobe InDesign. You can create as many titles as you need, and even change text positions around from title to title. Then you export as a PNG.

If you need to go back and change a color or a font type or size or whatever, you can do that to all of them at once and then just export again. They will automatically update in Premiere Pro.

I have never even opened InDesign before, and I was able to follow the instructions in this tutorial without a strain.

The tutorial doesn't show that you can import a frame capture from the video to help position the text, but you can.

This is very cool. If you subscribe to the Creative Cloud, then you have access to InDesign.

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Michael MTT

Known Participant

thanks Steve for the link! This subtitle issue is regularly going through my mind. I used inDesign aswell to create subtitles (about 400) for my final university documentary, because of the ability to change style so easyly. However the direct import from the word document is another great idea to improve this workflow.

I wonder if it will work from a subtitle conform textfile with timecode, and somehow use these timecodes to place the titles in the timeline. I'll think about it, maybe a macro is a good idea. (Best would be to have this template/style functionality in the title tool itself though)

Steven L. GotzAuthor

Inspiring

Best would be to have this template/style functionality in the title tool itself though

Agreed.

Remember, all this InDesign thing does is create images that can be used as titles. My Macro created actual titles.

What really needs to happen is to have a plugin that creates titles from simple text files like the ones created from Notepad, so no Microsoft program is required. The file could have the text, the font style, and many other parameters, and then it could have the time to place the title on the sequence.

But in the meantime, this InDesign thing seems to be the best we can do for now. If, however, you want to use a fancy font style and it will all be in English, you can use my macro.

artofzootography.com

Michael MTT

Known Participant

yea, cool I'll try your macro for sure!

I did some test for further automatisation of the indesign workflow.

- Importing a subtitle.txt works, and by some search-and-replace-tricks, you get rid of the timecode and stuff and end up with same result as the import from word like in the video.

- Using an editor to convert the same subtitle.txt to a FCP XML with a list of markers for every timecode nearly works. Right now I'm stuck to convert timecode into number of frame format (e.g. 00:00:04:15 > 115 on 25fps base).

- Importing the xml and the titles from indesign finaly makes it easy to place all the titles at the right time in the sequence via "automate to sequence".