right to left type

[dima.p]

hello

is it possible to write and edit middle east type in after effects?

thanks

[Roei Tzoref]

RTL language support is long overdue in Ae. other software (Photoshop, Illustrator, even Premiere as of 2015.3) have implemented middle eastern features but not Ae.

I am writing Hebrew and all you have to do to write properly and use presets is to set the Horizontal scale to -100 and add a text animator for scale that does the same.

you can choose both parameters and create a preset and do this even faster but I don't bother. this still does not solve some issues such as "convert to editable text" to a text layer made from Photoshop which won't work properly.

[dima.p]

thank you for the fast reply Roei

yes I'm aware of some "tricks" to make it work

but I'm asking if there some possibility to make it work like in Photoshop as you mentioned

maybe there's a possibility to write a script that does it?

[Roei Tzoref]

not aware of any scripts. specify exactly what are your workflow needs and I can offer some of my workarounds.

[dima.p]

Roei, I would like to work with Hebrew type just like in Illustrator, without workarounds.

but please give some examples of workarounds, like you did in the first reply, so I will be aware of them.

I do subtitles in two rows, that change independently according to the timing of speech.

some titles, that I would like to be live text, so I can change easy.

sometimes small blocks of text.

I also would like to get the text from external txt or str files

what do you suggest?

thanks

[Roei Tzoref]

I am not familiar with subtitles workflow but since it is Editing, I recommend you use Premiere for this and not Ae. I believe the subtitles workflow is relatively easy to follow. the Titler in Premiere supports hebrew since 2015.3. there is a captions feature too but I don't see it supports Hebrew.

as for working with Hebrew in Ae, if you set the text file as described earlier you can type normal same as you do in Ai or Ps or Id.

if you need to copy paste text from a software to Ae, then make sure you are copying unformulated text to an already set Text layer (the scale workaround). for example copy from Ps to Notepad and copy from Notepad to Ae.

[dima.p]

Got it.

thank you.

[Szalam]

Today's update to After Effects (version 14.2) includes native support for RTL text like Hebrew and Arabic. For more details see this link.

For information on the rest of the new features, see this page.

[zircom]

Doesn't work. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong but I have the latest version of AE, I've changed the preferences and restarted, and I'm clicking the text direction but nothing is happening. All it does is justify the text left/right. Is this just me, is it working for everyone else, or is the feature bugged?

[Roei Tzoref]

Change the type engine to south africa and middle eastern in the preferences, create a new text layer, type from right to left.

[zircom]

Thanks Roei. The problem seems to be that I was trying to copy arabic text into an existing text layer (translating a video from english) to retain the animation. I found that copying it into a new text layer and then copy/pasting from that into the original text layer worked. Adds an extra step but it's a much better solution than the previous manual way of doing it.

[Roei Tzoref]

Yes Ae remembers the setting for each text layer which is a good thing Because you can combine both type engines in one composition. Unfortunately range selectors are not fully supported for RTL type engine. if there's no range selector animation you are fine, if it's one line - you would need to adjust the keyframes to reverse. If it's more than one line - no workaround and have to resort to old way.

[Szalam · Accepted solution]

In the meantime, please also file a feature request, so the AE team knows of your needs. Having it supported natively without workarounds would probably be a lot better, yes?

[dima.p]

sure, I will do that.

thanks.

[deroo.marie]

Simple but very effective trick thank you!!!