Hello all,
I had the thought that it might be fun to animate a ball or icon of some sort bouncing on words of lyrics along the bottom of the screen as a song is playing. Assuming I had a list of the lyrics and the start time of each word, how would you do it? Or would you animate it differently?
Sorry - big open-ended question. I just thought I’d get the expert opinions here before possibly giving it a try.
Smart idea
It’s definitely a nice idea. It would be the best way for showing the words that have been said if it is for kids. Otherwise if it’s for people who are more than 15-16, I would prefer some other character than a ball, that matches to the video theme, maybe a cartoonified mario-like character of the actor in the video.
Yeah, for sure. If the song is, say, Avenged Sevenfold’s A Little Piece of Heaven, then it should be the death bat.
Hi @sandman,
Animating a bouncing ball is a good idea but it might be a lot of work (fine if you have the time, though) - but in the meantime you might like to see this - I made in in just a few minutes. Here’s the result:
… and here’s how I did it:
Briefly:
Lyrics (white) on V2,
Copy to V3, change to yellow,
Add a crop:rectangle filter to V3 clip.
Keyframe the crop rectangle to uncover each word as necessary.
NB my demo was made in a hurry so it’s not perfect… but hopefully this might give you an idea…
That’s so simple and elegant! And rather than a yellow V3, it could be anything, which opens things up for some customization. With a nice monospace font, it should be easy enough to know where each word should start too to be able to automate the process if you have a list of the lyrics and the times they are sung. Thanks for making example videos, that’s really nice!
Hi @sandman, thank you. Yes, v3 doesn’t have to be yellow.
That’s an idea, although I wouldn’t imagine it would be much easier with a monospace font than a normal one Try it and see!
With a bit more time it isn’t too hard to get the timings right.
Also I forgot to mention that if you make the keyframes of the crop filter into HOLD ones, the crop will move in sudden movements, which means you can uncover each word instantly, which may look better.
No problem! Glad to help out. Do let us know how you get on. maybe you could post your result!
Wow, thanks for sharing this method! It doesn’t look complicated, but is elegant and stylish.
Hello,
@Jonray’s method reminds me of a birthday video I made a few years ago.
I used the filter: Text Rich track V4 with Hold keyframes to animate each line of text.
Then I copied this clip and pasted onto track V5, with a different color and added a Mask: Simple Shape filter with keyframes to cover each line and a Noise: Keyframes filter to glitter the text.
In your project, a blood-red color might be interesting, simulating overexcited blood cells!
Bonjour,
la méthode de @Jonray me rappelle une vidéo d’anniversaire que j’avais fait il y a quelques années.
J’avais utilisé le filtre : Texte Rich piste V4 avec des keyframes Hold pour animer chaque ligne de texte.
Ensuite, j’avais copié ce clip et collé sur la piste V5 avec une couleur différente et ajouté un filtre Mask: Forme Simple avec keyframes pour animer chaque ligne et un filtre Noise: Keyframes pour scintiller le texte.
Dans votre projet, une couleur rouge sang pourrait être intéressante, simulant des globules surexcités !
Thank you, @dimadjdocent - if it impressed you, then I am very happy indeed! Yes, it isn’t complicated but it looks fine.
Nice!
Good idea! 
Also very Christmassy…
@jonray Rappelez-vous l’animation de texte que vous aviez faite avec @Elusien qui s’appelait flip spin …
On pouvait animer du texte mot par mot ou lettre par lettre.
Puisqu’on peut changer leur position et leur opacité, cela doit bien être possible de changer leur couleur.
@jonray Remember the text animation you made with @Elusien which was called flip spin…
We could animate text word by word or letter by letter.
Since we can change their position and their opacity, it must be possible to change their color.
J’ai regardé un peu les fichiers html et js d’@Elusien mais c’est trop compliqué pour moi. 
J’ai donc repris la technique de @jonray au post #5 et ajouté sur la V4 un png de boule animé avec un SPR comme suggéré par l’OP
I looked a little at @Elusien’s html and js files but it’s too complicated for me.
So I took the technique from @jonray in post #5 and added to V4 an animated ball PNG with an SPR as suggested by the OP
Very nice @Namna 
But shouldn’t the green dot bounce from one syllable to the next?
Très joli @Namna
Mais le point vert ne devrait-il pas bondir d’une syllable à l’autre ?
By the way people, unless you’re a professional, don’t try this at home, especially on an entire song. It would take hours and you’d loose your sanity.
Au fait messieurs-dames, à moins d’être un professionnel, n’essayez pas de faire cela chez vous, surtout pour une chanson entière. Cela prendrait des heures et vous perdriez la raison.
That was hilarious! Nailed it!
I agree that painstakingly animating a ball over every syllable by hand would be attrociously expensive time-wise, but what I love so much about shotcut is the ability to hack the human-readable MLT XML file and add clips and animations programmatically… Just need to find a place to download .kar files or MIDI files with lyrics programmed in…
Before switching to shotcut, I had actually asked VideoPad developers to add a feature to allow importing CSV files for changing effects with time, but now it’s easy enough to do myself. NCH software should clearly up its game to keep up with shotcut!
Ultimate Guitar actually has ultimate-guitar-official tablature with what seems to be MIDI and also has the lyrics written out with the melody with the syllables all separated out.
I’m hoping that they will give me some MIDI files or even just a CSV of words and times… I’d messaged the author of the official tab, so we’ll see what he has to say!
Pauvre petits rennes 
! Tout va bien? Je suis un peu inquiet… 
Poor little reindeer ! I’m a bit worried… Are you all right?
@musicalbox - your insane little reindeer demo had me in stitches and I was chuckling for minutes! Thank you! Yes, I had a feeling that animating each little bouncing ball and syncing it to the music would be hard work and time-consuming…
Actually, it wouldn’t be that bad if there was an easy way to know the timecode of each syllable.
@sandman mentioned this:
I don’t know what .kar files are, but that sounds like a way to make things easier.
A way to copy/paste keyframes wouldn’t hurt either 
Apparently a .kar file is nearly identical in structure and formatting to a .midi file, but also contains lyrics with timing, but I heard that MIDI files can also do this? Really hoping that someone at ultimate-guitar.com comes through for me with something.
Otherwise, I just found this open lyrics that is incorporated into free a free music player called foobar2000. Not sure if I can get syllable precise timestamps with that, but may be better than nothing…
Foobar? nice name 
