Best Way To Introduce Blocks of Text as Overlay on Video?

[pone44]

I have a short video I am editing where I want to overlay blocks of text - like lyrics or poetry - into a designated square region of the screen. What is the best way to do this to make it maintainable if I want to remove or change that text later?

I will likely use Corel VideoStudio, so I guess one option would be to use that. I am not clear yet whether it even has this ability.

I could buy something like Karaoke software, and allow that to add in a scrolling text layer, but I am not sure that this would be done as a separate overlay, so long-term it seems like a maintenance hassle if I am adding layers and sounds in the video editing software.

Are there other tools / techniques where I could generate the text in a separate application and then make that an overlay to the primary video in the editor?

What is the best approach?

[manono]

If you have to have the ability to edit or remove the text later, then about all I can suggest is doing it as a subtltle. Subs aren't always in the bottom center. Many subtitle formats can be made to fit in other parts of the screen, if need be.

[pone44]

If you have to have the ability to edit or remove the text later, then about all I can suggest is doing it as a subtltle. Subs aren't always in the bottom center. Many subtitle formats can be made to fit in other parts of the screen, if need be.

This will be paragraphs of text. It's a potentially long read, kind of like a preamble to a movie chapter (think intro to Star Wars). I think subtitles work for a few lines at most.

[Brainiac]

VideoStudio should allow you to make text overlays and save each one separately so they can be reused/edited if you need to do that.

[manono]

I think subtitles work for a few lines at most.

Not true. You can create as many lines as you like, make them any size or color, use any font and place them pretty much wherever you like on the screen

[jagabo]

Using soft subtitles is only viable if you have control of playback. If you can't control what player is being used you can't guarantee the subs will be displayed correctly, or displayed at all. So you have to hard render them. By the way, pretty much every video editor has text overlays where you can easily change the text.

[manono]

Using soft subtitles is only viable if you have control of playback.

Although I was initially thinking soft or even embedded subs, such as you might set up for an MKV, it doesn't have to be that way. He wasn't all that clear about the use to which the video is to be put. If hard-subbed, when changing out the text it would have to be reencoded, just as it would with any video editor. The SSA (or ASS) subs are created, the VSFilter installed so a textsub line can easily be added to a simple AviSynth script:

AVISource("Video.avi")
TextSub("Subtitle.ssa")

If subs embedded in an MKV are acceptable, then no reencoding is necessary. Only the subs have to be switched out. If he wants to do a Star Wars-type scroll as he mentioned above, then AviSynth's Animate filter can do the job, as in the example here:

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/VScrollTitle

You can probably get ASS subs to scroll, but I haven't worked much with them.

[JVRaines]

I have a short video I am editing where I want to overlay blocks of text - like lyrics or poetry - into a designated square region of the screen. What is the best way to do this to make it maintainable if I want to remove or change that text later?

I will likely use Corel VideoStudio, so I guess one option would be to use that. I am not clear yet whether it even has this ability.

I could buy something like Karaoke software, and allow that to add in a scrolling text layer, but I am not sure that this would be done as a separate overlay, so long-term it seems like a maintenance hassle if I am adding layers and sounds in the video editing software.

Are there other tools / techniques where I could generate the text in a separate application and then make that an overlay to the primary video in the editor?

What is the best approach?

A separate subtitle file will be easiest to maintain and will not require re-rendering your main video. Otherwise, you will have to keep your editing project around and change the text in the overlay track.