Re: Baby steps with FxPlug
Re: Baby steps with FxPlug
- Subject: Re: Baby steps with FxPlug
- From: Andrew Mees <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 09:57:45 +0800
Hi All
Thanks to Paul's excellent help I've put together a simple subtitle
generator that conforms our network's specs.
It's all pretty spiffy for a newbie, so I was feeling pretty chuffed
with myself for a while back there ... trouble is that my text is left
justified and I need it to be center justified. I'm currently using
the NSAttributredString drawWithRect method but it doesn't appear to
have the facility to handle text justification natively, so I'm
thinking that I should be using a different method. Can anyone
suggest a suitable one, either one that provides the pixel width of
the string as it would appear in the bitmap image, so that I can
calculate the correct origin so that it appears center justified, or
one that handles justification natively?
Thanks in advance for your advice and guidance ... and failing that,
just for giving the opportunity to ask the question (it helps to
clarify it in my own mind !)
Best Regards
Andy
On Dec13 , 2007, at 9:46 PM, Paul Schneider wrote:
Hi, Andy,
ScrollingRichText was written as an example of some of the new
FxPlug API that we added in FCP 6.0, so it uses features that aren't
available in 5.1.4.
In particular, it uses the FxTimingAPI to find out the duration of
your generator in the timeline; it uses this duration to calculate
how much to scroll the current frame. The idea is that the text is
just below the canvas on the first frame, and just above the canvas
on the last frame. Since FCP 5.1.4 doesn't implement the
FxTimingAPI, the plugin is probably always drawing the text outside
of the canvas.
If you change the "percentThroughEffect" value to 0.5, you should
see the text appear.
You will miss out on some other niceties by running the plugin in
5.1.4. For example, the plugin will dynamically show and hide some
parts of its UI depending on whether you have chosen "simple text"
or "RTF file"; this feature only works in FCP 6.0 and later. But
hopefully the above fix will get you drawing some text, and you can
take it from there.
- Paul
On Dec 12, 2007, at 10:34 PM, Andy Mees wrote:
Hi All
I'm a long time lurker around here and rarely actually do any kind
of development so my understanding of the FxPlug SDK is limited
right now hence the clueless questions to follow... so please go
easy!
Our network has specific production guidelines on how to format
subtitles for commissioned programme material and that being the
case I tam trying to build a very basic text generator that will
not allow the user to deviate from those specs. The starting point
for me was to create and compile a basic FxPlug Generator container
in XCode 3 and then begin to tinker with it. So far so good, my
shell plugin compiles, installs and runs just fine. My custom
params show up and some simple modification of the default solid
color code gives me my 40% opacity strap.
OK. So now I need to get the text bit working and therein lies the
rub. I planned to start by taking the "ScrollingRichText" example
project code, compiling it and looking at what it does and how,
then stripping it down and implementing the code needed in my own
project. Unfortunately I'm stumbling at the first hurdle ... What
is happening is that whilst the ScrollingRichText project compiles
and installs as a plugin, it doesn't actually seem to do
anything? I am using FCP5.1.4 as a test bed. Is this plugin code
FCP version specific? What I get when I try to use it is a plain
white canvas, regardless of whether I use the Simple Text option,
or load up an rtf file as the text source. I have not modded the
code in any way at this point, just compiled it and installed the
product.
If anyone is able to take a look at that example code and see why
its not working (or if it does actually work on your machine) or
possibly point me in the direction of some working FxPlug code for
text generation text generation then I would be mighty grateful.
Thanks in advance
Andy Mees
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