Making Curved & Moving Text in Premiere

[wrazoru]

Hi everyone,

I have a globe in the center of the screen that zooms in from zero scale to about the entire screen with some empty space all around. This empty space around, i'd like to have text that both zooms in at the same ratio & time w/ the globe and is also curved around the arc of the globe and rotating around it at the same time. The rotation in this case means that when the words are above the globe, it's upright, but when below, it's upside down.

Ques:
- How to i curve the text around the globe?
- How do i get it to rotate around the globe?

Also,

- The globe is currently on a square black background. How can i mask out all except the globe?
- I am making a video sequence that 'travels' straight from one planet to the globe. What is the smallest (in MB) & easiest way to make stars zoom by the screen (like the "starfield" screen saver built into all Windows screen savers)? I've thought about using a jpg w/ many stars, but then the stars just get bigger instead of zoom by like the screen saver....

[daamon]

Hi wrazoru,

I would create the circular / curved text in something like Photoshop (on a transparent background) - maybe even using a full-sized screen shot of the globe as a guide and then delete it from the Photoshop image.

Export the image as a PNG (might be PSD) file and use that in Premiere - simply set keyframes so that it rotates and expands as required.

Masking out the square blackground would be done by applying an appropriate matte from the "Video Effects" palette and telling it to mask the balck colour.

As for the "starfield" effect - this, from what I know of Premiere pro, isn't easily done. It's probably something more suited to After Effects.


As a tip, the forums and guides at www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotutorial may well be of interest to you.

Good luck.

[wrazoru]

Thanx for the quick reply Daamon...I'll give it a try...I guess when an image is already on a transparent background on PS, it will be so once imported to Premiere too....I didn't realize that...Gracias....

[daamon]

Thanx for the quick reply Daamon...

No problem.

I guess when an image is already on a transparent background on PS, it will be so once imported to Premiere too....

Yep - Pretty handy.

[mikiem]

Might want to check some of the Wax plugins available -- can use Wax itself as a plugin to prem. If I remember correctly there was also a program called Universe that operated stand-alone or as P/Shop plugin. Text rotation I think I'd try in vector prog like CorelDraw! or Illustrator, but that's just me. Worse comes to worse, in a 3D prog. starfield mapped to inside of cylinder camera travels down or thru.

[wrazoru]

Mikiem,

For the starfield, you're meaning a 3rd party 3D program right? Coz I've not seen any 3D functions in Premiere....

[mikiem]

Wax is a freeware nle that also operates as a plugin. It does some 3D/particle emulation so maybe you could find something useful there. Otherwise, yeah, I was talking about a separate 3D program that would generate a background video you'd composite, lay your globe video on top of.

It'd be a pretty simple affair, so wouldn't have to go out and get (or learn) something hi-end -- probably could get away with a trial download or freeware, or there are a lot of older versions of 3D software available at surplus/OEM software storefronts.

Just thought of something... Maybe you could get a higher resolution image to use for your starmap -- something much larger then your video frame. Explaining it poorly here, but resize the entire picture to frame size, & that's picture one. Then take the original and crop it a bit, then resize to video frame size for picture 2 and so on. You're not really zooming in on the picture as much as revealing stars too small to be shown previously. Using something like Winmorph between these key frames might get you the effect you're after.