Tag Archives: After Effects

Graphics in 36 languages

Been doing localizations for Hennez&Mauritz in 36 languages. A three minute video for their inter company communications. The job consisted of replacing animated titles and text for the different languages.

Prep

At first, I got the question to do it in After Effects but after having a look into it I was thinking that Motion 5 would be perfect for the task.

I knew that the scripts/translations for the different languages would be dropping in one by one or more. And the responce time for me to output the new localized version had to be minimal in time.

So I had to find out a workflow with minimal moments and labour time involved. An “a.s.a.p-workflow”.

After Effects is powerful but many times it shows that Motion will do the job easier and with less effort, with the same result. Since my FCPX would be doing the final output of every language. I simply fired it up and started to prepare everything.

During my prep i realized that I did not even had to use Motion, I could do everything I needed in FCPX! With a even simpler workflow than Motion!! I received a copy of the original in DNxHD and made a project for the text replacement parts.

FCPX_txtrepl_screen

My strategy was to first output only the parts that needed text/title replacement. This to minimize rendertime in the output. Then I loaded these clips/parts in a master project where the whole program would be output.

The final step was to load the new localized masters in the Telestream and encode the files to H264 files for the web. I use Telestream instead of Compressor. I’m more used to it and I think that I get more granular power depending on what needed to be done with the encode.

The way that FCPX let you design the way, you want to actually work is just fantastic! And by choosing to do this job in FCPX, it saved me a lot of time. Cheers!