is a
Software Program developed by
Apple Computer to create animated title sequences for
Video projects.
first appeared as part of
Final Cut Pro 4 in
April 2003 . Version
2 of LiveType was then released with version
5 of Final Cut Pro. The program is packaged only with Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Express; it has never been available to purchase separately.
See also
A Release History In Context With The Rest Of Final Cut Studio .
LiveType 2 includes nearly 11
GB of content - including fonts, textures, objects, templates and effects.
A 'LiveFont' is one of the program's key features, sporting fonts with animated characters. Examples of the LiveFonts shipped with LiveType are animated handwriting, smoke writing, fire, and blinking LED characters.
Various animation effects can be applied to type, either LiveFonts or normal system fonts. There are, for example, glows, scrolls, fades and zooms. The timing of the effects can be customized and new effects can be created from scratch using keyframing.
In the canvas, the contour that the text follows can be edited, so that the titles can be on curved or shaped paths. All attributes of each title or character can be changed and keyframed, including the size, shadow, outline, extrusion, glow, opacity and tracking of the text.
Apart from text, there is a wide range of animated objects and textures that can be added to a sequence, and there are a number of templates - such as title themes and
Lower Third s - in both
PAL and
NTSC formats that can be opened. Any image or movie file can also be placed and edited on the canvas.
The roundtrip process goes like this: you set the in and out points for the part of your Final Cut video that you want to export. Then you select Export for LiveType in the menu. This does not compress the entire movie for output - it merely creates a reference file. This reference file can then be placed as the background movie for the LiveType project. There is an option for not rendering the background when exporting. This is useful, because then when you import the LiveType project file into Final Cut, you just get the animated overlay - and not a duplicate of the source video too. It is then possible to edit the overlay again and again by choosing Open in Editor, whereupon LiveType opens with the project. When it is saved and closed, the overlay has automatically updated in Final Cut.
