How can I add animated text to a video programmatically (from a script) for use as quality video introductions? I have an educational video product. We currently have over 2000, available in different sizes, so roughly 6000 and counting. 

The video introductions (title, description, instructors) were made by hand in video editors but this proves time-consuming and error-prone.

I want to be able to create interesting text animations suitable for video introductions programmatically. All of the data (text) I need is in a local database. 

I looked into this problem 2 years ago and solved it by using ffmpeg, and the ASS subtitle system filter. This got the job done, but the animations were limited to simple movement and fades and the process is quite clunky.

Recently looking at iMovie's "title" animations I felt inspired by the quality, and wanted our introductions to be much better. I'm not sure it's worth the effort to re-do them all by hand in something like a manual video editor.  

So what techniques are out there that I might consider?
Get TypeMonkey for AfterEffects. Other than templates, it's the easiest way to generate text animations from scratch. 

http://aescripts.com/typemonkey/