DV Titler

A titler companion for non linear video editors, like Kino.

New! (2003/04/16) Updated the kino's plugin version of this titler (which it seems will be the only one).

See the glossary of titling terminology used in these documents.

Please have a look at the first user interface prototype.

Comments and feedback are welcome, to me or at Kino's forums.

Motivation

Now that editing digital video with the computer has become an easy and funny task, with tools like Kino, I thought I only need a titler, like the old Videonics' Titlemaker (TM) which I sold several years ago.

So I started writing a proof of concept program mixing the design philosophy of Kino and some of the best things I remember from Titlemaker.

The goal is to make a titler flexible and easy to use, that can do what you can do with TM 3000 or FireWriter, and more. It is not the goal to do weird 3D titling effects. You can use any 3D renderer if that is what you want.

Design desitions

- File format: a dialect of SMIL (it supports text and transitions).

- Video format to export: DV at least.

- Page elements.
  Text attributes:
  o Font (size and style).  
  o Foreground color, including the alpha channel to control transparency     
    level over background.
  o Or it can use an externally built image (raster or vectorial, SVG).
  
  Background atributes:
  o Opaque: color, pattern or images.
  o Transparent: external video source to superimpose.
  o Borders, like those used in the old good silent movies.  :)
  
  Transition atributes:
  o Speed of transition.
  o Transition type: Cut, Fade, Slide, Wipe.
  
  Timing atributes:
  o Duration (frames).
  o Timecode, useful when superimposing over an external video source.

Development

This could be but it is not intended to be just standalone. It is my intention to integrate it with Kino, whose developers are already working on components needed for a titler.

Any help will be very welcome. :)

Alejandro Aguilar Sierra
asierra@servidor.unam.mx

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