text to video complete sentence with differently formatted words (bold/ italic)

DillTheKraut

Hello dear communitors,

does anyone have a hint or solution for this:

I would like to project text from existing word documents wich contain a lot of single sentences. There are several great 'read text from file' solutions from jhoepffners plugin to java script based solutions. But as I recognised now, there are parts in the text, where some words have different styles like italic characters. All the file to text solutions I found, just support pure .txt files without formatted text. As non of the text to Video actors inputs recognise any formatting of the words or characters, it wouldn't make sense to read .rtf or xml files anyway. The only 'in izzy' solution I could imagine, is a complicated combination of severals of the text editing actors controlled by a java script, that recognises different formatting of words (or at least symbols commenting those words) and recombine the sentences with the 'text formatter' actor.

Does anyone maybe have an Idea how to achieve this in a simpler way, that I missed?

Or, as in the end I want to write the output of the stage (a single sentence by frame) in single picture files, does anyone know an alternative method or software, that could help to extract the sentences from the text files into pictures?

Thank you for any support in this!

Dill

DillTheKraut

As I work on this, I recognised that even if you just want to send a single sentence to a projector inside of izzy, that contains single words or characters with different styles, you always have to combine these from several text generator actors. Even the Text/ur actor doesn't support separate character formatting.

DusX

I think your best option, is to create (assuming static display) PNG files.

I would use Affinity Designer for this, since I know I can paste from WordPad and it retains the formatting (at least Bold, italic etc..)

I am sure you could also use some Adobe product (photoshop or Illustrator) but my quick test just now didn't include formatting with a cut and paste as Affinity Designer did.

If you are looking for advance text animation, you might need After Effects or similar.

Rendering text is pretty CPU intense anyway, it can get in the way of other processes.
Pre-rendered is always recommended unless there is a real time/interactive aspect.

DillTheKraut

@dusx thanks for the suggestion, I maybe looking into affinity some other day. For now I work with Adobe InDesign as the license model is best fitting and it seams to be easier, as it handles text PowerPoint like.

For the future I did a feature request for better text handling inside Isadora.

Best
Dill

mark_m

@dillthekraut

One way to do this might be to make and format your text in After Effects (since it seems that you have the Creative Cloud). You can then stream the AE output to Isadora via NDI from After Effects and the NDI receiver actor , and use the capture stage actor to create the image files showing your formatted text.

After Effects to NDI: information here

Juriaan

Hi there @mark_m,

Isadora doesn't support NDI receiving yet. (It has been planned for Isadora 3). What he can do is NDI > NDI to Spout > Isadora

mark_m

@juriaan

Isadora does support NDI receiving. It's not necessary to go via the intermediate stage of Spout. There's a FreeFrameGL plugin that works within Isadora to natively receive NDI streams.

More information here:

DillTheKraut

Thanks guys!

@Juriaan @mark_m, I already used the NDI free frame plugins for a different project.

But in this case it is less crucial to get the text video stream into Isadora, but the text itself already existing in a word document and containing round about 700 separate sentences, into a Videostream/ separate pictures of certain resolution most easily. I originally thought to use the text actors inside izzy and capturing the stage with switching the text automatically (This was already working great). But the described issue was coming up, making it to much complicated.

mark_m

@dillthekraut

OK.... I just tried this, and it might work for you:
What about taking your word document with all the formatted text, converting it to a PDF, opening that in Photoshop and saving it as a PSD, and then scrolling through that in Isadora? You could create a mask with a slit in it, and move the PSD file behind it, so we just see one sentence at a time?

DillTheKraut

@mark_m this is an amazing idea! :-D