Hi,

I'm trying to make a few title templates with different attributes.
However, the most important attibute being the text won't center.

I create a template with as text %s and I center this text. See the image below.

Then I use the title template in my project but the substituted text starts FROM the center instead of BEING centered. See image below.

When I use a multiline substitution it doesn't work either (used same template in the screen capture, but I did create a slightly different template with slightly different formatting)


Note that these templates use a background image but it doesn't work either with a blank template.

Anything I do wrong or ....?

As a matter of fact: I'm working on an entire set of title templates created in Gimp and then moved into a title template.
Another one is the one below (it should have fading left and right endings on the banner, but for now I stopped), but I'd very much like to know whether this text behavior is a bug or not. Currently it is plain ugly (next to being captured from a low-res proxy clip).

Besides the centering problem, which I suppose to be a bug: How does the rendered result look in contrast to the preview monitor? Do the edges look smoother when playing the movie in the preview monitor - that is what I see in my projects with titles.

Sorry that I caused some confusion. The rendered result is excellent apart from being not centered. When I mentioned that it is plain ugly, I meant that it isn't centered which makes me conclude that it is plain ugly.
I examined the included title templates and my title templates in vi(m). All have exact coordinates, which means that you always have to recenter your title.
I no longer see it as a bug: I'm starting to see it as a highly needed feature otherwise title templates will not be mature enough. You can't modify a title of a title template afterwards, only add the text that is to be substituted.
So when the title can't be (re)centered (afterwards) why should one use a title template?

The two things missing from text templates that I use the most are centered text and adjustable line heights. You can manually center text in a template by adjusting the white space in the "clip properties" box when you edit. It's tedious and defeats the purpose of having templates but it works. As for line heights, I haven't found a viable workaround. (unless the default line height is what one is looking for.) It's not even in the regular title clips. I currently edit my text so that it doesn't require more than one line. This severely limits what one can say but it is what it is.
My understanding is that adding centered text or adjustable line heights to the template is a big job and will require a full overhaul of the title text code.

waynevid

Thanks for the tip/workaround about adjusting the white space. I had not thought of that yet.

What I've now come up with in the mean time as a workaround is to simply add a centered text like "Text here and recenter" and save that in the template. In that case you can't do a simple substitute for the %s but you can edit the template once used as title and "update" the text and change it to your liking and still maintain the banner background, background image or whatever you have in your template.

I think better titles are a high prio job for kdenlive. Centering beeing just one example. It would be great to have a large palette of title templates like in Adobe Premiere. And more effects like 3D, several outlines layers, texture fills, glares, smoke behind text and so on.

Maybe we can borrow some code from OpenShot to even get animated 3D titles in kdenlive?

Anyway, it's a very large job to get all this in kdenlive... Anybody volunteer? ;)

To have a large set of predefined title templates is the exact reason why I started to work on it and share it with the communinity. I'm not a programmer so if I can contribute in another way (that helps myself as well of course), is something I? willing to spend time on. I'm relatively experienced in Gimp and all basic functionalities for title templates are in place like using (semi) transparent banners, backgrounds and all kind of other stuf. However, the really essential part, being the text layout, is lacking the functionality.

w.r.t. to OpenShot: yes, it does have very nice title stuff available. The CC template in the first post is partly based on an svg file from Openshot.

I may be able to help with some programming of the titles in the future, but currently I don't have much time for it. In my video editing prio #1 is to be able to join 100+ MTS clips without the "frames missing at the end" spoiling the video.

Does anybody else who needs better titles have some spare time?