How to make a horizontal crawl like in FCP7?

Greetings

Long time reader, first timer poster.

As stated in the subject line I need to make a horizontal crawl in FCPX. I am using the Ticker which at first glance works fine, but when rendered/exported it flickers alot. I have tried to adjust the opacity and change the text color so the crawl text is not completely white, but it makes no difference.

Any ideas or comments on how to get a good result?

Any help greatly appreciated, thank you.

FCP X does not have a real Crawl title template. The Ticker is fine for fast crawling text over a background, but not good for smooth horizontal crawls.

The only really decent Crawl effect for FCP X I know is the "RT Text Crawl" from Ripple Training, part of Ripple Tools II. It's not free (39 dollars) but you get some other really neat effects in the package, and there is a trial version: www.rippletraining.com/categories/plugin...final-cut-pro-x.html

-Ronny

You can use Custom text. Set the In Position to be just off screen on one side and the Out Position to be just off screen on the other. Just make sure to change your In and Out Unit Size to All instead of Character. Then set your text clip to be the length of one screen crawl and copy/paste as many times as you need.

EDIT: And it pauses in the middle. Sorry, not sure how to get rid of that besides nesting it and cutting that part out.
Maybe someone else knows...
I would probably just take the custom text and keyframe the Video position for simplicity. It should work just fine if you change the keyframes to Linear afterwards.

Thank you both for the fast replies. I will give the trial version of RT Text crawl a look.

It just seems strange to me that the crawl effect has been left out of FCPX.

I work at a TV-station where we employ mentally and psychically challenged young people who produce and edit short segments. At the end of each segment we credit the persons responsible for the show - using a crawl. We have just upgraded to FCPX which in many regards have made it easier for them to edit, but not being able to attach a crawl is a problem. It means alot to these people to see their name on screen and it gives them a great sense of succes which is important in order to boost their (often) low selfesteem.

I could create a crawl in Motion, but it would have to be edited and retimed every time, which is not very effective. Taken my colleagues "limitations" into account I would like to keep things as simple as possible.

Anyway, thank you for your input.

Very easy to make a template for this in Motion: just add the 'Throw' behaviour to the text layer at a speed which gives you a nice smooth move. Make sure the text is set to be editable in FCPX, and publish the generator from Motion.

The one thing you might have to do is: make the Motion project longer than you expect the titles ever to be, and add a 'project loop end' towards the end of the timeline. That way, trimming the generator in FCPX won't affect the crawl rate.

I've recently done this with the full video frame to produce sliding panes, used here: .

Thanks again. I'm not very skilled in Motion, but I will give your suggestions a try.

jjsanderson: The crawling text looks fine in your video - interesting experiment by the way

jjsanderson wrote: I've recently done this with the full video frame to produce sliding panes.

Those sliding frames are very impressive. Would you mind sharing how you performed your magic? Did you use throw as a title adjustment layer? If so how did you position it? Very impressive indeed.

Thanks @tpayton. I might just write up that film as a user story, come to think. It's a very simple technique, but doing everything right in the timeline was a joy compared to sliding the camera across a giant composition in Motion or After Effects.

"It's a very simple technique, but doing everything right in the timeline was a joy "

I'd like to second tpaytons request. Can the speed of the effect be adjusted?

Oh, OK, I'll write it up properly. It's really very simple. Will try to do some screen recording tomorrow.

For this purpose, I didn't publish the speed parameter so the slide speed is fixed. Though if memory serves it would be very easy to include that control.

So I've been thinking about this and searched the help section for Motion.
I found that there is a behavior that will do exactly what you want.

Select your text layer in Motion, go to Library-Behaviors-Text Animation-Scroll Text
Apply that and change the default vertical scroll to horizontal, then just save this as a text template and use as needed in FCPX.

EDIT: I decided to just make it and attach. Just put this in your Movies-Motion Templates-Titles folder.
Have fun!

Thank you everyone for your input on the matter - and for contributing to a great and resourceful forum.

@JasonP: Thanks alot - exactly what I needed. Much appreciated.