Circular (spiral) text effect experiment (2nd attempt) using SHOTCUT and AUTO HOTKEY.
This is a quick demo video showing the result of my 2nd attempt at achieving text on a circular path (in this case a spiral path) using Shotcut, a free, open source video editor. It was quite a complex technique - it began with a HTML/CSS/Javascript code "Drawing-on-text" by Tim Holman from Codepen. This was kindly adapted for me by my good friend Elusien from the Shotcut Forum. Then I asked on the AutoHotKey forum for a code that drew a circle on screen, and just 2 hours after my post, "boiler" replied with a fantastic AHK script. I adapted it slightly for use in Chrome.
I then wondered if the code could be adapted for a "spiral" effect, and again in minutes "boiler" sent me an adapted code for this.
Armed with these two files - the AHK script and the HTML file, I set the AHK script running, opened the HTML file in Chrome, then typed the AHK hot key - in this case "Crtl-q" - and watched in amazement as AutoHotKey drew a perfect spiral on-screen, and because of the HTML coding, circular text appeared on its path!! It was an exciting moment!! I screen-captured whole thing using OBS, which resulted in a mp4 video of the circular text with white text on a black background. I imported this Mp4 into Shotcut, applied a "crop:rectangle" filter to crop out the edges showing the Chrome menus, applied a "chroma-key" filter to make the black background disappear, and overlaid it above an appropriate video from YouTube of Dutch windmills. I added a Colour Grading filter to make the text pink (so it provided contrast with the background), tweaked the speed of the mp4 text clip here and there (visa "properties") to coincide with the lyrics, and added the appropriate audio track "Windmills of My Mind" sung by Alison Moyet to complete the short demo.
Grateful thanks to Tim Holman (Codepen), Elusien (Shotcut forum) and boiler (AutoHotKey forum).