Final Cut Pro X 10.0.6: Title editing improvements

The 10.0.6 update added some text editing features for modifying title text. Here they are in action using the Zoom title (from the ‘Build In/Out’ section of the Titles browser) as an example.

If you select the title in the timeline, or if the playhead is over the title, there are two new ways to select multiple text items:

You can drag in the viewer or Command-click boxes to select more than one text box.

If you then make changes in the Text tab of the Inspector, they are made to more than one box at a time:

You can also move multiple text boxes by dragging (unless the title template designer has disabled text repositioning):

However, even if you have more than one text box selected, some changes in the inspector are only applied to the first text box. In this case the alignment was changed to Left aligned:

Text tabs

Tab stops in text were an undocumented feature of previous versions of Final Cut Pro X, but Apple have acknowledged the feature by adding a viewer button and documenting it in the manual and online help system.

The implementation is a little buggy, so explore it in test projects to get the hang of it.

There are two main kinds of text area in Title templates: Type and Paragraph.

The choice of which kind of text area used in a title template is down to the designer.

Type text is defined in Motion as having a single origin point – if you keep typing text, it will extend off the edge of the screen. When a single text area is selected, it looks like this:

The arrows in the top-left corner of the viewer cycle between the text areas (as do Option-Tab and Shift-Option-Tab), Command-Return commits the text changes and exits text editing mode.

When multiple text areas are selected, the selection boxes are never larger than the text:

Paragraph text is defined as a text box with margins. If you type in a paragraph text area, the text will be limited to the text box area. The Zoom title template uses paragraph type.

If you have a single paragraph text area selected, a ruler button appears in top-right corner of the viewer. If you click it, you’ll see a ruler appear at the top of the text:

If you click the ruler, you can add tab stops to the paragraph selected. If you insert tab characters in the text, you can align text in different rows:

If you control-click a tab stop, you can change the kind of tab stop it is, or delete it. If you control-click  in the ruler where there isn’t a tab, a similar menu appears giving the option of what kind of tab stop you create:

To delete tabs, use this control-click menu. The manual and help system states that you can drag tab stops off the ruler, but this often causes Final Cut Pro X to crash.

As tabs and the Distort tool are features implemented using code from the Motion application, tabs still work if you use the Distort tool to modify the title.

If you would like a simple title template with two text paragraph areas, download this ZIP file and copy the folder to a subfolder of the Motion Templates / Titles:

The Title controls are very simple:

For more on Final Cut Pro X – including over 50 free effects, titles and transitions – visit my Final Cut Pro X home page.