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Short Circuit User Guide

by Sight-Creations

A Title for FCPX

There is an onscreen control (OSC) for convenient positioning on the screen. There is a Rotation parameter available just for fun.

Due to the way this effect was created, editing text on the screen is not allowed. You must change the text in the Text parameter in the Title inspector. All other controls for text (color, font, size, alignment, line spacing, tracking, etc) have been made available in the inspector for your convenience. The Collection parameter has been supplied so that if you use font collections in Font Book to organize your fonts, you can shorten the font list by selection your “favorite” collection first, then choose a font from that collection.

GLITCH PARAMETERS

Noise Smoothing
Noise has been added to this effect to create part of the texture. Noise Smoothing blurs (more like smears) the noise in a specific direction. The higher the amount, the smoother it will appear. Between 0 smoothing and about the default setting of 16, the smoothing will appear a little like a paint brush stroke. As the value is increased, the noise will be less apparent.

Noise Angle Mvmt
This parameter randomizes the direction of the “smearing”. At 0, the smearing is horizontal.

Glitch Coloring
This gradient can be customized to color the glitch effect. It uses luminance “mapping”. Darker shades of the Glitch pattern used will appear to be the color selected on the left side of the gradient. Lighter shades will map the right side of the gradient. You can use as many color tabs as you like. The colors of the gradient may also be animated. If you opt to animate color, make sure you have all the tabs of color you need for the entire animation. Adding tabs is easy: simply click the mouse in the “color bar” under the gradient bar and a new tab, containing the color clicked on will appear. (You can remove tabs by clicking and dragging them off the bar.) The gradient has a disclosure triangle to open it up for all of its available features. Since this is a luminance mapping, opacity tabs have no effect on the color used.

Glitch Color Over
On by default. Deselecting this option will have the actual text always “on top” of the effect. Its appearance will be affected by the Text color parameter. The glitch effect does not blend.

Horizontal Glitch Amount % / Vertical Glitch Amount %
These parameters determine how spread out the effect becomes. Near 0 will keep the glitches close to the text. The higher the percent, the more of the screen territory will become involved in the effect.

Short Circuit Title parameters

Glitch Amout % > Frequency
This parameter increases the amount of change in the glitching based on the direction percentage set.

Division Lengths
The glitching effect is “notched” in on/off states. The “notches” are generally different lengths of time (depending on the Random Seed parameter). Higher numbers for Division Lengths means that glitching will happen for longer periods of time (still very short — but relatively shorter or longer depending on this setting).

Frequency
This parameter will set, in general, how many glitches occur over the 10 second default length of this title. Setting or animating to 0 for this parameter *should* turn the glitching off. A setting of 1 will create a circumstance where the glitching is nearly constant. A setting of 2 will be approximately half and half, etc. A setting of 8 should provide 8 on/off cycles.

This title is designed to loop its animation. This method allows this title to keep the exact timing you achieve with your chosen effect no matter how long you make the title in the storyline.

All of this will depend on the setting of the Random Seed which changes everything. The timing of this effect is extremely flexible and its random mixing of time notches is part of its appeal making it seem more “natural”.

GLITCH SHAPING PARAMETERS

The glitch effect is determined by a pattern created in Motion and almost infinitely variable even though it is restricted so that will not become over-taxing to Final Cut’s rendering engine. The pattern is comprised of shapes that you can randomly size.

Pattern H Density / Pattern V Density
These parameters determine how many shapes are “crowded” in the horizontal and vertical space of the “texture”. (More below).

Scale X / Scale Y
Use these parameters to redefine the basic shape used in the texture.

Scale Rand.
This parameter will randomly change the redefined basic shape by the amount selected.

Randomize S… (Scaling)
This randomizing parameter will re-randomize the scaling of all the shapes in the pattern

Pattern Shuffle
This parameter will simply rearrange all the shapes within the pattern.

More on Glitch Shaping Parameters
It is possible to remove all shapes. At this point, the Glitching will simply be Noise (and the base text combined). By manipulating these parameters, you can design a multitude of different glitching effects (all in one title!)

TIP
When you find a pattern you really like, select the title in the storyline and save as a Compound Clip (set up an Event to collect saved favorite titles!)

Demo:

INSTALLATION
If you need help installing this title effect, please refer to this document:
https://fcpxtemplates.com/installing-plugins-for-fcpx (there are links to an outline and step-by-step video if you need to see the process.)

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