Every Filter should have its own starting and ending time within its properties window

After using the Filters (eg the Text: Rich) I realized that in order to specify the starting and the ending time, you should (S)plit the video in segments, whose starting point and duration must coincide with the desired part of the video, at which the text should appear. This is a very bad technique. If for example someone needs to put several Text Filters, within the same period but with different starting and ending points, you have to split the video at so many points and apply the filters to the desired segments, which is confusing and unwieldy.

In my opinion, each Filter should have its own starting and ending time and these two properties should exist within its property window. Imagine if you want to add subtitles for a 15 minute video. You should split the entire video in hundreds parts (many of them overlapping), to achieve the desired synchronization. Instead, with the current proposal, you could just add the Text filter and specify the starting and ending time in its Properties card, without affecting the video track. Of course, maybe this would require a better organization of the filters, that should have a user provided name, in order to recognize them from a large list of filters.
Example:
Text: Rich [John Kennedy in his car]
Motion Tracker [John Kennedy track]
Size, Rotation, Position [Drone over Kennedy]
etc

Cela existe dĂ©jĂ  en partie (mais le dĂ©but et la fin ne sont pas inscrites dans le panneau propriĂ©tĂ©s, il faut aller dans la fenĂȘtre Keyframes)

This already exists in part (but the start and end are not listed in the properties panel, you have to go to the Keyframes window)

Starting point

Ending point

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Properties is the wrong place for Shotcut’s organization. Properties is for attributes of the object (clip, track, transition). Nearly all timing for Filters is done in Keyframes.

3 Likes

It’s good that there is a way to do this. I haven’t been adding text and other sources to my movies yet, but I would have been equally confused by this implementation. It’s one way to do it, but I feel like most video editors classify generated objects differently, rather than as filters. I consider them sources rather than filters. Examples would be shapes (rectangles, circles, stars, whatever), text, gradients, etc. In my mind, such objects belong in the same class and function as videos and images. They would be added into any video track as sources with a hard start and end point on the timeline.

Being able to set their entry and exit via keyframes is good, but my personal opinion is that it would be more intuitive for them to be separate blocks on the timeline in a video layer. It shouldn’t even be necessary to have a video or image to add text to a project in my opinion. Unless I’m missing something (I certainly could be, because I’m still learning), if you wanted a black video with text, You’d first have to add a black video or image just so you could add the text to it as a filter
 which is a bit odd. If text, shapes and other generated content were treated as video objects, they could be added and their start and end points intuitively dragged on the timeline easily.

To a beginner in the software, it might not even be apparent that adding text and other sources is possible, since there isn’t a place to add them to the timeline if no video sources are there to attach them as filters. Unless again, I’m missing something. I can’t click + on the filters tab until something is added to the timeline, so I’m not sure how I’d add text without attaching it to something.

Also, I would think it would be easily possible to add keyframeable filters TO text and other similar sources. Maybe this is possible in some weird way, but I don’t see a way to easily do it without deep diving into advanced documentation with unusual tricks. As an example, one way I might do it is add a 100% transparent PNG with dimensions of 1920x1080 (or whatever my project res is) and add text to that as a filter, so I could add filters to the text and not affect what’s beneath it
 kinda hacky though.

In case anyone wants to use that method, here’s a transparent PNG you can use, since not everyone knows how to make one.

Also, text that smoothly exists or moves over the top of the transition between multiple video clips or images (end of one and start of another) would be more difficult in the current filter method. If text was a separate source on a video layer, adding filters to the text would be super easy.

I’m sure this has all been brought up before, and I don’t expect it to change, but I see there being significant limitations with text being a filter as opposed to a separate video source. It’s just my opinion expressed, and I’m sure some would disagree.

Look in File > Open Other also on the main toolbar. You get text clips, and other generators. The animation option includes shapes and gradients. These are source objects with in and out points. And you can then also


add keyframeable filters TO text and other similar sources.


here’s a transparent PNG you can use

Not necessary, Open Other > Color (defaults to transparent) > Add to Timeline

I do not consider Open Other very weird, and it is in clear view in the File menu and main toolbar. However, I have considered moving the generators into somewhere else leaving only the network and device sources in there. But also I have more important and interesting things to work on.

1 Like

SWEET! Thanks. That’s way better than adding as filters! I had no clue that was there. Kind of an odd place to put them, but who cares. It is possible, and that’s all that matters.

In my opinion, this also basically answers the OP’s question well because there would be no need to do the splitting if you can add text as a source in a track above the other video tracks.

There are a bunch of source types in that Open Other that I’ll have to play with to get more familiar. Noice.

Since there are so many things you can insert, personally I think it would be cool to add an “Insert” menu on the menu bar, with all those options as sub items under the menu. There’s TONs of horizontal room for more menus (like between Edit and View), and this would highlight the existence of a somewhat hidden feature. But I understand you having better things to work on. Just a thought.

Another idea would be to also add the same “Insert” menu to the menu that appears when you right-click anywhere on a video/audio track that has blank space on the timeline. To me, this would be an intuitive and zippy place to add such generated sources.

You can add multiple Text filters to a single clip (instead of using one clip and one track for each).
This is, for me at least, where the Set Start/End points feature is the most useful.

That’s a reasonable argument for the case of having them as filters. Anytime I would use it, I would use it as a source though. Being able to see them as blocks on the timeline makes it way easier to see when they appear and disappear in relation to video and audio clips - especially if text needs to be consistent over the transition between other clips like a montage of images flashing quickly, stop motion, or many other situations, where a title is flowing over all those things changing. Having both options is nice though.

@PhLo
Each has his/her way of working. When I can, I always prefer to use as less tracks (or clips on a single track) as possible. If I needed to see where each text block starts, I’d had markers (All white markers for text for example). It takes a fraction of a second to add them (M key)

Yep, we all have preferences. That would be an odd way for me, because if you move things around, you’d have to also move the markers to match, which would be an extra step
 since they don’t know to snap to the source you’d be associating them with.

True. Nothing is perfect.

1 Like

The markers can move around:

Press Alt+R (option+R on macOS) or click on the Ripple timeline markers with edits button on the Timeline toolbar to have the timeline markers shift according to the direction that the clips are dragged to in the timeline. Also works in conjunction with either or both of the other two ripple functions (Ripple trim and drop and Ripple edits across all tracks). Press Alt+Shift+R (option+Shift+R on macOS) to turn on and off all three ripple icons at the same time.