Cinematic Text Expansion Effect in Camtasia
In this Camtasia tutorial, I demonstrate how to create a cinematic text expanding effect, which is a text effect where the letters in a text or word increase the distance between them as time goes on.
This effect creates one of those cinematic titles that kind of expand and grow at the same time. Although Camtasia allows you to change the vertical and horizontal spacing of words and letters, it’s not possible to animate the horizontal spacing, only the vertical spacing.
This tutorial demonstrates a workaround, which is a bit manual but still works quite well. I show you how to create the expanding text effect and even how to create a reusable asset that you can build and reuse in your projects to have these titles with a number of letters.
First, we look at how to change the horizontal and vertical spacing of words and letters and demonstrate that you can't animate the horizontal spacing parameter.
To create the cinematic text expanding effect, I recommend copying and pasting the letters in the word or text to create duplicates, then either using a single one of them as a distancer and placing it in between them to ensure that the distance between the letters is always equal OR my favorite recommendation is to use a grid to create the cinematic text expanding effect.
You can create your grid from little lines or whatever and place the letters on the grid to start with, and also on the grid to end, but at a distance between them. I show you my Camtasia grid pack, which is available for purchase here:
https://cotovan.com/camtasia-grids
To create the cinematic text expanding effect, you should should place the letters on the grid. The grids, even though they're locked, will still snap objects to them, which is helpful. We align all the letter boxes fit inside one grid space, and then to create the cinematic text expanding effect, we animate the letters and increase the distance between them while keeping them aligned to the grid. The result is a cinematic text expanding effect that is sure to impress viewers. Overall, this Camtasia tutorial is a helpful guide for anyone looking to create a cinematic text expanding effect and adding a pinch of 'Hollywood' to your videos.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:03 What works and what doesn't
01:57 The workaround
02:29 All we need is one letter
03:52 Creating the letters
05:22 Animating the letters
05:47 Use grids to align and space letters
08:39 Create the animation
09:19 Spacing out the letters
10:23 Adjusting animation speed
11:46 Center the letters
12:31 Creating the zooming in motion
14:28 Creating reusable asset
15:35 Add more words
16:31 Add a word with less letters
18:00 Add fading transitions
20:31 Closing remarks
Download this asset already built (Members get it free):
https://cotovan.com/cinematic-text
(Works with Camtasia 2022+)
I have many more Camtasia tutorials here:
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