The Title Generators

     

Three sets of Title tools are supplied with Final Cut Pro 4. The first are the ones that have been with Final Cut Pro since it began : the Text tools. Final Cut Pro 4 also includes two tools supplied by the great folks at Boris FX. They are part of a plugin program. A plugin program is typically a third-party software company's program that "plugs in" to Final Cut Pro and runs from within it. The discussion here starts with the Text generators you run from within FCP. Later in this chapter, you'll investigate the Boris FX Title generators, collectively called the Calligraphy tools.

FCP 4 keeps in a project file all the various text-generating tools that earlier versions of FCP contained. I don't think you'll want to animate every title you ever generate, so the Text and Calligraphy tools are the main Text tools you'll use much of the time. The Text tools are bitmapped fonts, as are the titles created in Boris's Title Crawl. The Title 3D generator, however, creates vector-based titles. You'll find that they look better in many cases.