Many VTEdit™, SpeedEDIT™ and TriCaster™
users aren't aware that their editor contains a full featured CG
program - but it does, called CG Post.
To use it you must first drop a
“.CG” file onto the timeline (or into the storyboard). All three
programs ship with three empty .CG files for you to use. You'll find
these in the Effects folder. SpeedEDIT and TriCaster group them into
a Titles folder, VTEdit just leaves them mixed in with the filters.
Look for Crawl Page.cg, Scroll Page.cg and Title Page.cg. SpeedEDIT,
TriCaster and later versions of VT also include 175 or so predone
templates for your use.
Let's start with the Title Page.cg,
drag it to the time line and scrub the Edit Line to the middle of the
Title Page so we can see it once we add some text. If necessary click
on the Title Page in the Time Line to selected it, it will turn
yellow when selected. Now in the other window click the Control Tree
tab (the Controls tab in TriCaster), you should see seven tabs along
the bottom of the Spline panel. Click the Title Compose (VTEdit ) or
Title (SpeedEDIT) tab. This brings you to the Title Compose panel.
VT users should recognize this as it's the same basic layout as
the CG Designer.
Most of the functions in the Title
Compose panel are pretty obvious. You have a Text tool, the button
with a 'T', a select tool, the button with an arrow and controls for
the font, bolding, shadows etc. So click in the middle of the black
area and type a few words. Now change to the selection tool, and grab
a corner of the box around the text and re-size it. If the Lock
Aspect Ratio box is not checked you are able to stretch the text out
of proportion. You can change the font for the selected text using
the font pull-down. Change the color by clicking the color swatch to
the right of the font name (it's probably white right now). The shift
key lets you rotate the selected text, press Shift + F1 for a list of
other CG Post keyboard shortcuts. Experiment with the other controls
on this panel until you get a feel for how they work.
The Draw panel has some basic drawing
tools that are again very straight forward. Check out the Pie Chart
tool. The Color panel is where you can set the fill type for your
text or shapes. Options include solid, four types of gradients and a
texture fill so you can load in an image and map that onto the face
of your text. Gradients and textures can be rotated to any angle.
The Styles panel is the place for storing and loading presets. The
Options panel has various controls for how you view your work in
progress. Grid, safe area and custom guide lines are available.
OK let's go back to the Title Compose
panel. Then drag out the length of the CG on the time line to about
ten seconds. Position the Edit line at the start. In the title panel
type in some text and drag it to the left just outside of the frame.
Press the Keyframe button near the top of the panel. Now move the
edit line to about the five second mark. Drag the text into the
center of the screen. Now scrub the edit line and you can see the
text slide in from the side and stop. You can use the little arrow
buttons to jump between your two keyframes. Move to the keyframe at
five seconds then click on the Ease In checkbox (SpeedEDIT only) and
now your text will slow to a gentle stop rather than stopping abruptly
as before. Keep in mind that you can keyframe position, size
and rotation of any element on the page individually.
The number one question I get about
CGPost is how do I save my pages so I can re-use them in other
projects? Simple. Just switch from the Control Tree to a filebin and
drag the CG page to the file bin. This will remove the CG from the
project, if you want to save it and leave it in the project
hold down the control key while you drag it. This will copy the file
to the filebin, you can then later drag it back into another project.
The Scroll Page.cg and Crawl Page.cg
work just like the Title Page.cg but have scroll bars you you can
keep typing text when you reach the edge of the screen. Another tip:
combine motion keyframes with positioning panel moves to create
sophisticated effects like perspective scrolls right out of StarWars
or diagonal crawls. Have fun.
To use any of these CGPost elements in
a live switch just render them out as SpeedHQ files, just make sure
you click the 'Alpha' check box on the render panel so that the
transparency is retained. You can then load and play them with a DDR
feeding into the DSK.
