Expressions and External Documents

This tutorial explores how to set up an external text document to drive content for items like lower thirds and interstitials. Many many thanks to my friend Maltaannon for the idea to use the #include statement.

In the tutorial, the expression you see works great in CS3, but not in CS4.  I wrote a follow up to this for CS4. Many thanks to Lloyd Alvarez for much help on this.

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10 Responses to Expressions and External Documents

  1. Matt Wallace says:

    Thanks! Very helpful. Let’s step it up a notch. :-)

    I’m looking to important Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, Hindi, etc… and replace an English version of an entire project. Any words of wisdom? Ever tried this before?

    Thanks.

    MW

  2. Matt Wallace says:

    I got distracted while writing my last posting…. and I’m looking to IMPORT, not important! :-) Don’t let people interrupt when you’re typing a post like this. I’m not seeing a DELETE that I can use for my own post. Apologies.

    MW

  3. Erik says:

    Hi!

    This is exactly what im looking for, but is it possible to run with cs5?

    • Harry says:

      I’ve used this in CS5 without any problems.

      • David says:

        I’m getting a syntax error, I’m on Mac, CS5 and I placed the txt file at root level to simplify the path, I’m typing this exactly: #include “/Expressions/chapters.txt” and it returns a syntax error, I also tried using ‘ instead of ” without success, can you tell me what is that I’m doing wrong?

        • David says:

          Nevermind, I found a solution, change #include for $.evalFile and put the path within parenthesis. That solves it. Not my idea, just found it.

  4. Nicolaj says:

    Is there any way to do this with text animated with the effect Path text?
    Can’t figure out where to put the expression for its source text.

  5. T. Lord says:

    Is it possible to do this for text that could appear on a motion tracked path?? My next difficult question is needing to know if it is possible to do this and then xport it so that it could be viewed on a website?

    For example, a webpage with an option to enter a name, the user enters the name and then the video plays with that persons name inputted dynamically in to the video??

    Would this require saving the video first as an FLV and then using Flash to do the latter with?

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