In Basic Title, I am able to copy and paste text from Microsoft word, but I not able to get the Mathtype symbols copied from Microsoft Word; Those symbols in Math were created using Mathtype software for Windows.

I don't know, since I've never evaluated FCP, but since MathType has a free 30-day trial, you've got nothing to lose by giving it a shot. A word of advice though -- the graphic format on the Mac is different than that on Windows, so first open the document in Word for Mac, then run the Convert Equations command (in the MathType menu in Word 2011 -- NOT Word 2016). Just use the default values in the Convert Equations dialog. This will convert the equations from the Windows format (WMF) into Mac format (PICT/PDF). Without doing that, you'll almost certainly be unsuccessful.

There are thousands of math and scientific symbols available in the standard and unicode typefaces already on your Mac. You should be able to finish this project without buying or installing anything. However, if you are not a mathematician, you may not be able to locate the precise symbols required by your client. If you know what the character is called, you can search for it in the Character Palette.

You can go back to the Windows machine and export still images of the equations as pngs or jpegs and either use them directly in the timeline or use them as mattes.

There are also dozens of esoteric math symbol fonts available for theMac.

It depends on how these symbols are generated.

If they are created as text in a specialized font and that font is installed in your mac, then fine; FCP X can work with it.

But it is more likely that these are in a proprietary format and may be copied and pasted into a non-Mathtype-aware application just as a graphic.

If that is the case then you might as well export it as a png image with alpha channel and use the image as a connected clip.

If, as stated above, this MrMathType thingy produces pict or PDF images of the mathematical symbols (and WMF in Windows) you are not necessarily going to see those in the FCPX text window. (I'm not at my FCPX machine at the moment. I believe it's possible to display some picture formats, like emoji, maybe, in the text editor but I cannot tell you which formats. Try the FCPX Help system.) I infer from the post that the coversion utility output is images not text. You should be able to find the .pict files and import them into FCPX as still images. That presents its own set of complications. That conversion window is predictably unhelpful to the casual MrMath user. If the help system for MrMath does not provide enough information about which buttons to push or which conversion sytem to use, you start with a binary test: change only one setting at a time till you get something you think might work.

It's nice to have the Mr of MrMathType here but he is quite clear that he does not know much about FCPX. Does the publisher have a user forum? I'd head over there.

You should look up in the MathType manual for what these conversions do.

In any case, I think that in general there is no hope to bring any complex math equation to FCP X ***as text***.

It is easy, however, to do it if you bring it as a png graphics with alpha channel.

Maybe MathType has that capability, maybe not.

As a free and very powerful alternative, I suggest LaTeXit. It lets you type any formula and make a pdf or png graphics from it.

The basic syntax is that of LaTeX, the standard mathematical typesetting system, but you don't have to know anything deep about it, and you don't have to type a full LaTeX document, just the formula you want. And there are palettes for many common mathematical symbols.

For example, type

\int_1^{+\infty} \frac{1}{x^2} \, dx

or use the objects in the supplied palettes

and you get

Luis Sequeira1 suggested that "You should look up in the MathType manual for what these conversions do." That's a good suggestion. There's no reason to choose "Accord LMS" in the "Text using MathType translator" section, if you want to include equations in FCP. As I've mentioned, MathType's default format on the Mac is PICT/PDF (a hybrid format containing both), but is also capable of saving as PDF or GIF. MathType is not capable of PNG. Is FCP able to accept a GIF from MathType? MathType cannot copy as GIF, so you'll have to first save it as GIF, then import into FCP.

You may do this with Preview. The results are likely to be not as good as if you were able to export directly to png with alpha channel (transparency).

To minimize the possible imperfections, enlarge the image as much as possible in the screen. You can then resize it down in FCP X.

To eliminate the white background, open the file in Preview, click the little toolbox button (1) and select the magic wand tool (2).

Then click and drag on a white area to select, then click the backspace key to delete. You may have to repeat this for the white parts inside of some characters like d, etc.

Or you could do it with LaTeXit and get a png with transparency without the extra work :-)

success1975 wrote:

Hi Luis Sequeira1,

I tried, and it worked! I like the way how you have explained clearly, step by step. Thanks for your reply. As how you have mentioned about the white part inside characters like p,d,e,o, a,b,g - removing takes more time.

I am glad I could help :-)

You have also specified about "export directly to png with alpha channel (transparency)" to get good result - Is that I have to use photoshop for that? I don't have Photoshop installed in Mac. Is there any other way of doing the same.

Thank you.

I was not thinking about Photoshop.

Your image consists of symbols and text. Internally they are described as certain lines, curves, etc. - not as black or white pixels.

That is why when you open a pdf in Preview containing text you can zoom in 2000% and see perfectly drawn curves, not big square pixels.

There is a substantial difference between "vector" graphics (lines and curves described mathematically are stored in the file) and "bitmap" graphics (the color and opacity of each pixel is stored in the file).

All graphics eventually have to be converted to pixels to be shown onscreen or printed. This is called rendering.

When you work with preview the way I described, you take an already bitmapped version of the image, and let Preview calculate with the colors of the pixels to determine what to make transparent.

If the image were vectorial the software could work with the mathematical description of the lines composing the image and render directly to produce the end result with transparency. That is what LaTeXit does.

Don't worry too much about this. The difference may in many cases not be very noticeable, and n particular, if you do the magic wand on a large version of the image.

success1975 wrote:

Hi Luis Sequeira,

Thank you for that you made me to understand what is rendering.

I took a screen shot (command, Shift, 4 which comes in png format) of a MathType symbols with text content of a Word document. As how you said, in preview, when I zoom in, even by two steps, pixels are seen. So I zoomed the content of the word document to maximum size and then took the screen shot, it was better.

Now my questions is,

Is there any way that the screen shot capture quality can be increased, so that when I zoom, still the quality remains better than what I observe now?

Thank you

A screenshot is always a bitmap, so this way you can only get as many pixels as you can grab from the screen.

You may perhaps get a better result if you "print" the formula to PDF.

One simple way is to make the formula very big in MathType, to start with, and then print it to PDF. The PDF can be converted to PNG and made transparent in Preview.

There may be another alternative, depending on how the MathType formulas are printed. I don't have MathType, so I can't test, but you can. Make a formula the usual way in MathType and print it to PDF. Then open it in Preview and scale it crazy up. If it looks perfect, it is vectorial. In that case, just take the PDF file, save it as PNG and enter a big number for "resolution" (say, 1200; you may have to experiment). Then make it transparent, as usual.