Line of text attached to a person or object

[SearchQuality]

Hi All. In a video clip there is a person moving. I want to paste a line of text and place it close to the head of the person. Up to this point there is no problem and nothing special. Now I want to attach that line of text to the head of the person so that as the person moves or as the camera moves this text moves together with the person's head. The same thing may be necessary when filming an object with the camera moving all the time. All suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

[hech54]

If you have tons of money Adobe After Effects can do it.

[SearchQuality]

Hech54 thanks for the suggestion. This Adobe After Effects costs $1000. The most expensive video editing package I have ever seen on the market. It may be capable of doing what I intend to do but it will probably ruin me financially. Anyway I hope other answers will come with doable solutions.

[hech54]

You could do something similar (but much more primitive looking) with several instances of a VirtualDub filter (a logo filter) applied to a range of frames, over and over again.

[SearchQuality]

I use VirtualDub for editing tasks such as cut-and-paste and direct copying. In this case do I have to select a filter with a logo as the text string and apply this logo to the selected frames. Could you be more precise? Is there any tutorial or example that I can use?

[poisondeathray]

You're not going to get the results you're looking for with virtualdub

If you want it to look good, you have to motion track objects and apply that motion data to the the text (or any other "object" you want to "attach" to the person). You can't do that with virtualdub or any of it's plugins

"normal" editors like vegas and premiere give you the ability to manually move layers (i.e you can move the text layer manually or by keyframes) , and this is a step ahead of virtualdub, but it still won't be perfect or it will take a lot of work and manual manipulation to look decent

After Effects includes 2 motion trackers; an internal one and mocha, and is perfect for this scenario. You might look at other compositing software, but none of them come very cheap. If you get the production premium bundle from Adobe, it's a great value ~$1200-1300 for photoshop, premiere, illustrator, encore, soundbooth and after effects. Compare that to AE alone for ~$800-1000

[SearchQuality]

I am using Vegas Movie Studio for editing. I have implemented this idea by using text as a layer on solid background colour and then switching off the solid colour with chroma key. But it is long and boring effort if you really want to do it correctly. Now I am looking for other possibilities. If I manage to get it done this will probably contribute a lot to the work of many other amateur video producers.

[hech54]

The only tutorial I know of is the YouTube tutorial on how to apply filters to a range of frames in VDub. It has nothing to do with motion tracking or even adding a logo or text. It sounds as if you already know how to apply filters to a range of frames though.

[poisondeathray]

I am using Vegas Movie Studio for editing. I have implemented this idea by using text as a layer on solid background colour and then switching off the solid colour with chroma key. But it is long and boring effort if you really want to do it correctly. Now I am looking for other possibilities. If I manage to get it done this will probably contribute a lot to the work of many other amateur video producers.

That's exactly what I mean. You can do it manually frame by frame, even in vegas movie studio. But even then, it's difficult to make it perfectly match. And it's going to be very tedious and not very fun if you have long sequences to do... AE will make your life a lot easier. Or if you have friends that have use AE you could ask them. Lots of amateur producers get friends to help out, I know I've helped out with a few of mine

A tip: Just use the text layer on a alpha channel, so you don't have to key the solid background. The fewer filters you use, the faster your workflow and less load on CPU. There should be some templates in the media generator tab (there is in vegas, and I think there should be in movie studio)

[fitch.j]

If this is a one-off and not something you are going to be doing often then you could get the 30-Day Trial of After Effects. However the learning curve is very steep. Many people here would probably be happy to help you out with it but as someone who hasnt used it before i wouldnt expect to get much more than basic familiarity and that track done in the 30 days.