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Trying to put umlauts "ä, ö, ü" into text in FCP

Hi all, I am not sure how to do this. I am running an english Mac OS-X and FCP, and for my work, I am required to put in some german letters, specifically, ö, ü and ä. I am not sure how to do this with the text function in FCP.

If anyone has encountered this situation before and has solved it successfully, I'd be happy to learn how it was done.

Thanks for the help.

Cheers.

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.5), Macbook Pro

Posted on Sep 30, 2008 6:10 PM

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12 replies

Oct 1, 2008 4:56 AM in response to K Yeo

You could also go the easy way:
Buy a German keyboard. The umlaut letters have their own dedicated keys.

As mentioned above, use the International prefs pane to switch the 'board to the right settings.

Places to get German keyboards: online, http://store.apple.com/de or real life, - Gravis Store, re:store, m&m Trading, Saturn or any one of the many independent AASPs -see the classified ads section of MacWelt or MacLife magazines, bound to be something nearby.

Sep 30, 2008 6:13 PM in response to K Yeo

go to system prefs, international pane at the top row. In the input menu at bottom check the Show Input Menu in Menu Bar. This will put a flag in the upper right of menu bar. When you want to add one of those characters, click the flag, select the set, select the character, and press insert at the bottom. This should do the trick.

Sep 30, 2008 6:20 PM in response to K Yeo

Welcome to the forum!

Go to your system preferences and click on the "international" and choose the "input menu tab" At the bottom check the box for "show input menu in menu bar" You should see a flag in the menu bar in the top right (for me it's an American Flag)

Now with FCP active click on the flag and choose "Show character palette" Find the characters you want and click the "insert" button in the lower right corner.

That should do it. Happy Editing!!

Oct 1, 2008 7:06 AM in response to RedTruck

I have a very wise friend who taught ceramics for years to community groups. Often a student would come up to her and ask, "How do I do this?". Her rhetorical response would be, "How do you think you might do it?" This was sometimes met with a blank stare and a "Duh, if I knew, why would I ask the question... ?" response. Her comeback (and this is the genius part) would be, "Well, if you DID know, what would it be?"

Surprisingly, more often than not the student would give a response that indicated that, not only did they understand the problem, they also knew the answer or the way to get the answer.

The original "How" question was really an act of uncertainty - perhaps coming from the belief there is always a "right" way to do something (people hate to be wrong) -and coupled with a lack of faith in their own abilities and their own solution.

Of course, it is possible the generating impulse was willful ignorance and/or laziness ...

x

Nov 2, 2008 10:27 AM in response to RedTruck

Could someone please answer the question? I've thought about buying a German keyboard but there are times when I like to use my macbook as a laptop, literally.

Is there a key sequence that works? I don't want to bring up a menu every time I insert a character with an umlaut. The "alt" sequences someone posted don't seem to work, although I'm not sure how to access the "alt" button on a macbook - is that "shift option"?

Nov 2, 2008 10:56 AM in response to Thomas144

The Alt key is marked Option on a US keyboard and sits between the ctrl and command keys.

To access Umlaut characters, go to System Preferences > International > Input Menu and set it up as shown here:
User uploaded file

From the flag symbol on your menu bar choose Keyboard Viewer. Pressing the modifier keys on your real keyboard will change the display in Keyboard viewer so that you can see where the Umlaute are.

You can either note which key combination you have to press and use those directly to input text or simply click the appropriate character in Keyboard Viewer, while your text entry field in FCP is active.

Trying to put umlauts "ä, ö, ü" into text in FCP

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