Graphics templates and titles from a CSV in Video by Zaweba

Some videos need one title. Others need forty: every runner in a race, every product in a catalogue, every pupil at a prize-giving. Typing those one at a time is slow and invites mistakes. Video by Zaweba's Graphics > Templates browser answers both needs, with ready-made designs to start from and a way to fill one design from a spreadsheet.

The templates browser

Graphics > Templates opens a browser with previews. There are six built-in graphics, and alongside them any templates you've saved yourself, which are kept as .ozgfx files. The previews mean you can see what you're picking before it goes anywhere near your timeline.

From the browser you can insert a template straight onto the timeline, or put it in the media bin to use later. Putting it in the bin is handy when you know you'll use the same graphic several times in a project, because you can drag it out whenever you need it.

Saving your own

When you've built a graphic you like, say a layered lower third with a coloured bar and a pinned box, save it as a template. It then sits in the browser next to the built-in ones. Because it's a file, you can keep a set of templates for a client, a channel or a school and reuse them in every project, so your look doesn't depend on rebuilding it each time.

One graphic per CSV row

This is the part that saves real time. Make a CSV file with a heading row and one row per graphic you need, for example columns called Name and Role. Then ask the browser to make one graphic per row.

The template knows where to put each value in two ways. You can type a heading in curly brackets inside a text layer, such as {Name}, and that row's cell replaces it. Or you can name a text layer exactly like a column heading, and the layer takes that cell's value. Either way, you end up with one finished graphic for every row.

Spreadsheets make this easy. Export a list of names from wherever you keep them as a CSV, check the headings match your template, and the titles come out spelt exactly as the list has them.

Jobs it handles well

Interview series with many contributors, award ceremonies, sports events with team lists, product videos with a name and a short description for each item, and class videos naming every pupil. Any time you'd otherwise copy and edit the same title over and over, a CSV is quicker and more accurate.

Avoiding the usual snags

Check the headings. A column called "name" won't match a placeholder {Name} if the case or spelling differs, so make them identical.

Test the longest entry. A template that looks fine with "Sam Lee" may overflow with a double-barrelled surname and a long job title. Pinning a box round the text layer helps, but check the extremes before you generate forty graphics.

And proof the sheet, not the titles. Fix a typo in the CSV and regenerate, rather than correcting graphics one by one. In Video by Zaweba the spreadsheet becomes the one place where the words live, which is exactly what you want when there are many of them.