Trying to add text (annotations) with simple black background

Lobley

Newbie Joined: Mar 10, 2012 19:49 Messages: 3 Offline

Solved by

May 05, 2017 08:11

I'm trying to add annotations to a video. I want simple white text with a simple black square around it, with consistent width between the box edge and the text.

I've tried the title room but I can't for the life of me find a way to add a box around the text.

So I gave up on that and decided to use photoshop to create the annotations, then import them into PowerDirector. I created a few annotations and then went to PowerDirector to try to copy them in. If I copy them in from the media library they stretch to the full width of the video. No good.

So I go to title editor and use 'add image'. I add one and it seems to work.

Then I go to add another title with an image. This time the image (annotation) is bigger than the first one I added - because it's scaling to 20% of the video width.

There appears to be no way to select 'original scale'. And therefore no way (without having to manually calculate the original scale for every single annotation) to acheive consistency in the annotation sizes.

Is there a way that I'm missing to...

Add text with boxes.

Have each added text be consistently sized?

Have the boxes fit around the text consistently

Basically I'm trying to acheive very common/simple/straightforward annotations and PowerDirector seems very poorly designed for this purpose

GGRussell

Senior Contributor Joined: Jan 08, 2012 11:38 Messages: 709 Offline

May 05, 2017 08:26

Quote Basically I'm trying to acheive very common/simple/straightforward annotations and PowerDirector seems very poorly designed for this purpose

Could use the subtitle feature, but no control of where the test goes.

Looks like the subtitle features doesn't allow black box like most TV sets have.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at May 05. 2017 08:31

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Lobley

Newbie Joined: Mar 10, 2012 19:49 Messages: 3 Offline

May 05, 2017 08:57

I've found a way to do it but it's not ideal and it's time consuming,

In photoshop I created a set of actions that adjusts a box around some text, then sets the canvas size to something that will be the same no matter what the text is, then export to png.

Then all my annotation pngs will be the same size, so when I import them into powerdirector they are stretched to the same size and consistency is maintained.

Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

May 05, 2017 11:26

There is an easier way to create a Title with white letters and a black background.

Put your main video/image on track 1.

Put a Black Color board on track 2, modify, uncheck maintain aspect ratio, size to the size of your title, position on the screen.

Add the Default title to track 3, modify, change the font and text color (white) And postion on the screen. Write your text.

.

Filename	Title with black background.mp4	Download
Description	Example of Title with White text and black background
Filesize	3520 Kbytes
Downloaded:	198 time(s)

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Lobley

Newbie Joined: Mar 10, 2012 19:49 Messages: 3 Offline

May 05, 2017 12:18

Quote There is an easier way to create a Title with white letters and a black background.

Put your main video/image on track 1.

Put a Black Color board on track 2, modify, uncheck maintain aspect ratio, size to the size of your title, position on the screen.

Add the Default title to track 3, modify, change the font and text color (white) And postion on the screen. Write your text.

.

Thankyou Carl312. I will play around with this. However what I'm trying to do is add multiple annotations (perhaps around 20) to one video, each annotation potentially in a different place. I need the measurements to be consistent (font size, size of box in relation to text, and so on) so it will prove to be quite time consuming to create a box (color board) around each one and make sure it's consistently sized compared to the text.

I think my photoshop method will have to do for now. I can at least move those around once placed on the video, and all the dimensions remain consistent because the overal size of each annotation PNG is the same.

Edit: When I get time I'll create a small video demonstrating what I'm trying to acheive.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at May 05. 2017 12:21