Video Studio: Inserting into titles

[Don F]

Greetings everyone. I've needed to insert special characters & JPGs in title text a few times and haven't found a method. The typical word processing stuff doesn't work: Combining half marks; Combining diacritical marks; Typing special characters (Unicode Standard) even when assigned to custom keys.

In Hawaiian, I need to use a glottal stop (upside down, mirror image apostrophe) and a standard macron over an "I" (hard to find in any language) to be correct. I don't think I'll find an Hawaiian keyboard. Changing languages doesn't work either because the restriction is; availability of keyboard characters.

Okay... forget the JPGs; does anyone know a trick?
Help please. Thanks.
Don

[BrianCee]

The trick that usually works is the standard copy and paste - copy your non-standard character to your clip board - in VideoStudio get "Click here to add a title" in the preview window - click as instructed and then use Ctrl+V to paste.

Failing that then make an image of the whole title - say jpg - in a programme which supports your special characters and put the whole image in one of the video tracks. in programmes which support the special characters but do not give an image output then I use the Windows "Snipping Tool" to copy the bit I want as a jpg or png and use that in a video track. I quickly knocked up the image below using just that procedure - Microsoft Word and the Windows Character map - snipping tool - into VideoStudio.

click on the image to enlarge it

[Ken Berry]

Brian -- I initially started replying to this post several hours ago. Māori, the native language of New Zealand is Polynesian, like Hawai'ian, so I thought I could help. I regularly use macrons in Microsoft Word, so thought a simple copy and paste would work in VS as it does with other accent marks in other languages, only it didn't, even using standard fonts like Arial or Times New Roman which have the full range of character sets. (The macrons appear in Latin Extended-A... but Copying and Pasting from Word's Insert > Symbol, in effect identical to the Character Map, also didn't work.) Using the Alt+ and number on the numeric keypad also didn't work for macrons. That is when I scrubbed my answer.

But I would agree that the only way I can think of would be your second suggestion: to build a title in an outside program which accepts the macrons, then save it as a jpeg and insert that in VS.

Not sure about the glottal stop symbol, which is not used in Māori. Glottals here are usually indicated by the letter 'ng', and that one is easy! All I know is that the Hawai'ian okina can be reproduced by a Unicode font U+02BB. But you would need to Google for that...

[BrianCee]

I was only trying to help - but now I am a bit confused - in his post above Don says that a glottal stop is a "(upside down, mirror image apostrophe)" but that is not what I see if I Google glottal stop.

Wickipedia tells me it looks like this - a question mark without a stop under it

glottal stop 1.PNG (752 Bytes) Viewed 7061 times

Another Website tells me it is like this - question mark on a stand - no dot.

glottal stop 2.PNG (1.08 KiB) Viewed 7061 times

but in Word I can do both the glottal stop and the vertical line like this - so could make images to use in VideoStudio

glottal stop 3.PNG (1.76 KiB) Viewed 7061 times

[BrianCee]

I'm having a bit of a problem visualising an upside down mirror image apostrophe - how close is one of these ?

updownmirr apost.PNG (1.14 KiB) Viewed 7060 times

updownmirr apost 1.png (1.08 KiB) Viewed 7060 times

again both png images so usable in an image in VideoStudio

[Ken Berry]

Sorry Brian -- I didn't mean to suggest you weren't being helpful. Quite the contrary, and as I said I completely agree with your main suggestion.

FWIW, I think the second image in your post immediately above is the correct form of the Hawai'ian okina glottal symbol i.e.

updownmirr apost 1.png (1.08 KiB) Viewed 7033 times

I had separately found the following similar image in Wikipedia under okina:

Hawaiian_okipona.png (6 KiB) Viewed 7033 times

But yours is prettier and more immediately usable!!

[Don F]

Hello again Ken & Brian. You guys are both helpful... always. Yes, the second posting (updownmirr apost 1.png) is the one. In the Hawaiian dictionary it is not used in the word "Hawaiian" but is used in "Hawai'i" for pronunciation "Hava ee". Many fonts include the okino character so you can insert it for instance in Corel Draw or Word. the macron is a different story. The only way I've found to insert it over an "I" is as a combining diacritical mark # 0305 (type 00AF).

Thanks. I've worked all day on the semi-final version of this video. I have to break from staring at the screen and will try your suggestions tonight... I appreciate the help.

Don

[Don F]

Hello Brian & Ken. Results: The okina inserted just fine by copy & paste but I had to experiment with various characters to find the okina that C & Ps as an okina. There were 3 or 4 in Times New Roman but only one worked.

On the other hand I was going for a macron over capitol I & still haven't found a way. I haven't spent time experimenting with other letters + macron. I've been generating story board cdrs in Corel Draw X6 & exporting as jpgs (highest quality). I'd like better jpg resolution when dropped directly in the timeline, so am hesitant to insert a jpg in my nice, crisp titles/ captions. Thanks again.

Don