Free Final Cut Pro plugin: Alex4D Basic – Keyframable title
This Final Cut Pro X title template is similar to the built-in Basic Title title template with the addition of keyframable parameters
Here is initial part of the controls:
In other Final Cut titles, you can’t use keyframes to animate text tracking, slant and other parameters in the Text tab of the title inspector. This title overcomes that limitation. By setting keyframes for Tracking for example, you can animate the spacing between letters.
As well as Size, Line Spacing, Tracking and Baseline, and graphical effects which are found in the Text tab, you can also control Slant, Letter Rotation and how the text is typed on.
If you keyframe Type On End from 0% to 100%, that will control the speed the text appears character by character.
Installation
Download this disk image:
It includes an installation script for Spherico’s Motion Template Tool application, if you don’t have it on your Mac, download it. It is a freeware/donationware tool that simplifies effects installation for Final Cut Pro X users. MTT installs effects for Final Cut Pro X in the correct folders, creating them if need be. You don’t need to have Motion 5 or MTT installed for these effects to work.
Once you have MTT installed on your computer, double-click the ‘Install Alex4D Basic – Keyframable 1.0’ file.
If you don’t want to use the Motion Template Tool, install these effects in Home / Movies / Motion Templates / Titles / Alex4D:
The title will appear in the Alex4D section of the Titles browser.
Double-click to add it to your timeline.
If you find this free plugin useful, you might like my Alex4D Animation Transitions plugin pack:
There are many more free plugins on my Final Cut Pro X page
alex4D old blog 
Hi Alex-Are you just covering FCP X ? thnx
Mainly Final Cut Pro X, sometimes other Apple products and the future of MacOS and iOS.
Not products or news for non-Apple editing software for now.
Bonsoir et MERCI pour votre aide.. Seulement je ne vois pas où télécharger ??
THANKS !
cliquez sur “Download this image disk”
This is a super useful tool.
When I transform, the background (Primary storyline) seems to transform as well. Is this a feature? Or (more likely) Am I doing something completely moronic?
No, that is how this Final Cut Pro X title works – any transformations applied to the whole title in the video tab of the inspector will apply to all the layers below. That means to animate the title you need to keyframe the size and title position parameters in the Title tab of the inspector.
Interesting. Of course you’re right. Oddly however the built in “Basic Title” does not have that behaviour.
Using the parameters is not really a problem, although it does mean that I one has to go to the inspector to do things like rotate.
Ha.
Didn’t even notice that rotation only applied to letters and not the whole word.
As ever, saved by the compound clip
Alex, I went through all the installation steps including MTT but when I drag the title into my timeline all I get is the red title error still. Where did I go wrong?
That’s a symptom of your version of Final Cut Pro X being too old. The update to a new enough version is free if your computer is signed into the AppleID account that bought the Final Cut you are using.
For more on this, and a workaround:
I’m not able to upgrade to any newer version beyond 10.0.5 at this time, so I tried the TextEdit work around. Do I need to remove the title from fcp and then drag it back in after the TextEdit changes have been made? I did the Textedit stuff and it’s still showing as an error in the timeline.
I noticed this on your workaround page: Note that if the Motion template uses a FxPlug installed plug-in that isn’t compatible with the old version of Final Cut Pro you are using, then the template won’t work.
Is this the case with this keyframe title?
No Caleb.
I know of no other way of making Final Cut Pro X from earlier last year work with more recent plugins.
Thank you SO MUCH Alex!!! This is a blessing! Regards from France 😀
I’m using FCPX 10.1.1, and this is working great for key framing blur in the ‘title’ panel of the inspector, but when key framing ‘title position’, it seems to set all key frames to the last one set, i.e. it doesn’t change position. Am I doing something wrong?