This is my first try for a proposal to Shotcut. The widget I suggest should be called the “marquee” widget that can easily be positioned on the screen (Text:Marquee). This widget should make it possible to add easily (a) scrolling text(s). The user of it could either add one scrolling text or stacked marquees so that the text and its translation scrolls like a newsticker.
The aim is to make this functionality an easy-to-use feature, where no HTML experience is required. It should be possible to select the font and its size (that defaults to the Shotcut default or, if non-existent, to the OS default), set it bold, italic, underlined etc., and add a rolling speed. The text will automatically scroll from right to left for Latin text and left to right for Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew etc. If the rate is not entered or set to zero, it will start when the video or source to which it is linked starts on the timeline and will be finished when this clip or image is over. If there are several marquee texts stacked one over another, the text will start and end to flow all at the same time. So, the font size may or may not be altered by this widget, making the font size a recommendation. The text length(s) should not be restricted like it is the case now for Text:Simple. It should be fed from some text file or something similar.
It can be done very easy with the existing txet filter(s).
Set up the text box (size etc.), put in the text (and format it as needed). Then give the starting keyframe position of it and the ending keyframe position. That’s all.
Thank you for your reply! If you mean with text the Text:Simple widget, it restricts the text length to about 256 characters. I want an unlimited text length (or a limit much, much higher than 256). Also, the widget should be easy-to-use, giving always the same appearance and behaviour. If you repeat it in several videos by creating this functionality, it will differ somehow.
No, I did not write about the simple text (as I wrote in the brackets: format as needed).
With keyframe positions You can move anything in any direction.
In almost all of the filters, you can create and save Presets
Also, there is the option of Saving a clip. Select the clip that contains the Marquee you created, click the Copy button, paste in a Note app (Like Windows Notepad) and save as a .txt file. .
When you want to reuse this Marquee, simply open the file, select and copy all the content and paste in the timeline.
Oh! Excellent! So, you mean that one can save widg… sorry, filter called Text:Marquee, add it to a “Default” project and start each project by this default project. So, the only “specialitfies” of my suggestion remains the restriction of text characters, and the possibility to easily put a translation below the text.
If you never did create a video with a text and translation, you may not understand the problem. Think of an English text. “I am going.” translates to “我要去” in traditional Chinese. “I am running.” translates to “Koşuyorum.” in Turkish. “I let somebody run.” is “Koşturuyorum.”. “I let somebody let somebody run.” is “Koşturtuyorum.”. Both languages use Latin characters. The “contraction” of sentences may be worse, if you translate to Arabic. “We gave you.” is “أعطيناك”. In the last example, the translation has to scroll from left to right and finish at the same moment like the original text. I am not sure whether this is easily done with existing Shotcut filters. And even if it is, not every user will be able to solve the problems that may arise here easily.
I don’t have any immediate solution but I also work in these ancient languages. I play with Hebrew, Phoenician and some of the Eastern European languages.
The 256 character limit might not be significant if you can fit an entire sentence into that.
Are these words always right-to-left or left-to-right?
A while back I wrote a python script that acted as a mini widget that would create HTML pages or anything else including the XML. I could share it on Github if you were interested. It uses PySimpleGUI to make a UI with variable parameters.
Wherein I provided an example using Rich Text that does not have the 256 character limit. So, I do not know why people keep mentioning that.
The technique is rather simple and can be put into a preset. You can make the background width fairly large to handle a variety of texts because the remaining space is blank. Then, after applying the preset, it is easy to adjust the simple keyframe for speed and the timing for the end of text if needed.
I will not be adding this feature myself, and I am very unlikely to accept it as a contribution if it can be a preset. A translation and its timing is esoteric. Honestly at the mention of translation, I have to wonder: should this text really be burned into the video, or make subtitles/captions instead?
At least for the purposes of Youtube videos, I don’t want it burned because I want to utilize Youtube’s subtitles and translation functionalities. I can make 1 video and Youtube and switch the language. If you burn one language in, you would have to make many permutations of the same video
For those who do not want that anything about themselves to be visible or audible in their video, texts are a good solution. And I do not want to make the same video twice or thrice for different languages, so a multi-lingual widget would be helpful. Most people do not have a good command of several languages. For them, these kinds of widgets may appear to be exotic.
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. Never exceeded it.