Cinecred
Create beautiful film credits without the pain
The Problem
If you’ve ever put together end credits for a film, you know they are laborious to assemble and a pain to get right. Altering the layout, font size, or spacing after the fact is incredibly time-consuming. And don’t even think about hitting an exact runtime requirement while circumnavigating the shimmer trap.
But there is a better way: Cinecred, a free and open source program to create credits without the pain. Cinecred reads your credits data from an Excel, LibreOffice, or Google spreadsheet, and then lets you interactively arrange and style the credits in any way you like. There’s a default template that gets you off the ground quickly, but everything can be customized down to the pixel. Use your own fonts or insert logos, pictures, or even videos. And once you’re done, check the scroll in the integrated player, before exporting it in a plethora of video and image sequence formats.
Use Your Favorite Spreadsheet Editor
Cinecred can read the raw credits data from a Credits.xls(x) (Microsoft Excel), Credits.ods (OpenOffice/LibreOffice Calc), or Credits.csv file, or even a Google Sheet. Edit it with your preferred spreadsheet tool, integrating perfectly with the rest of your production workflow. Need to add a credit or fix a typo later on? Just change the spreadsheet!
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | |
| 1 | @Head | @Body | @Tail | @Vertical Gap | @Content Style | @Spine Position | @Page Style |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | |||||||
| 3 | A | Dirc Director | Film | Card | Card | ||
| 4 | |||||||
| 5 | Executive Producers | Callie Cash | Card | ||||
| 6 | Molly Money | ||||||
| 7 | |||||||
| 8 | Crew | Heading | Scroll | ||||
| 9 | |||||||
| 10 | Director of Photography | Peter Panner | Gutter | ||||
| 11 | 1st Assistant Camera | Paul Puller | |||||
| 12 | 2nd Assistant Camera | Charly Clapper | |||||
| 13 | Luke Loader | ||||||
| 14 | 3 | ||||||
| 15 | Extras | Heading | |||||
| 16 | |||||||
| 17 | Restaurant | Emil Eater | Bullets | ||||
| 18 | Megan Muncher | ||||||
| 19 | Dylan Delicious | ||||||
| 20 | 3 | ||||||
| 21 | Songs | Heading | |||||
| 22 | |||||||
| 23 | “Loremium Ipsumium” | Written by Cicero | Song | -200 | |||
| 24 | Dedicated to Brutus | ||||||
| 25 | |||||||
| 26 | “Hoppe hoppe Reiter” | Written by an Unknown Lad | 200 Parallel | ||||
| 27 | in Ancient Germanic Times |
Live Visualization
While editing the credits data and its styling, Cinecred continually updates an interactive visual preview and indicates any problems with the Credits file. Optional layout guides (press the red button in the screenshot) make both learning Cinecred and styling your credits dead easy.
Interactive Styling
All the styling options Cinecred provides might seem overwhelming at first. But the interactive nature of Cinecred—including contextual input, live application of changes, and easy reverts—make it intuitive and fun to play around with different settings and thereby explore and learn Cinecred’s styling system. In addition, a comprehensive User Guide is readily available.
Get Started Immediately
Cinecred initializes new projects with a template that covers many common use cases. Start entering your credits straightaway and learn how to further customize them as you go.
Flexible Design
In addition to standard use cases, Cinecred’s flexible styling system enables a wide range of layouts and designs. Whatever you have in mind, Cinecred can likely assist you in implementing it.
Embed Media
Cinecred supports more than just text. Whether you want to insert a logo image, play a vanity card, or show a blooper video—Cinecred lets you do it.
Your Desired Runtime
Have to add another name, but the score has already been recorded and synced to the earlier version? Just tell Cinecred the desired runtime of the whole credits or specific sections, and it will shrink vertical gaps to exactly match it—without resorting to shimmer-prone fractional scroll speeds. Test it yourself and press the red button in the screenshot!
Play Back at Any Time
Want to watch your credits in motion to verify your latest changes? Just like your favorite editing suite, Cinecred offers instant real-time playback at any time. No need to wait for your credits to render out. Playout to DeckLink cards is also supported.
Manifold Delivery Options
Does your post-production workflow require ProRes, PNG sequences, or even TIFFs which you animate yourself? Do you want to export in BT.2020 PQ, or send around PDFs of the credits for checks? No matter what the need, Cinecred probably has you covered. Expand the red dropdown in the screenshot to see all supported formats.
Cinecred is Free Software
Licensed under the GPLv3, everyone can use Cinecred free of charge forever. The source code is publicly available in a GitHub Repository. Contributions, bug reports, and suggestions are welcome! In case of questions, issues, or ideas, also don’t hesitate to send me an email to [click for e-mail address]. If you miss some feature, let me know!
Sample Credits
Watch these credits to get a feel for the capabilities of Cinecred. The clip is taken from Etiology and has been sped up to 60fps so that it plays back without stutter on computer monitors.