iLife '04: The Missing Manual

Inserting and Rendering a Title

When you’ve taken into consideration all the options described so far in this chapter, you probably have a good feel for how this title is going to look once it’s inserted into your movie. Now it’s time to commit it to digital film.

Dragging the Title into the Movie Track

To place the title you’ve selected into Movie Track, proceed as follows:

1. Decide where you want the title to begin.

   Consider the location of your title carefully. If you’re superimposing it on a solid-colored background or a still image, no problem. But if you’re planning to superimpose it on moving video, choose a scene that’s relatively still, so that the video doesn’t distract the audience from the words on screen. (The exception: If you’re using one of iMovie 4’s new “see-through” lettering styles, you may want to choose active video deliberately to call attention to the “cutouts.”)

   Sometimes, such as when you’ve selected a title style that fades in from nothing, it’s OK to put the title squarely at the beginning of a clip. At other times, you’ll want to position the title a few seconds into the clip.

2. If you’ve selected a starting point for a title that’s in the middle of the clip, position the Playhead there and then choose Edit → Split Video Clip at Playhead.

   It’s a fact of iMovie life: A title can begin only at the beginning of a clip, never the middle. To make the title seem as though it’s starting partway through a clip, therefore, you must turn that spot into the beginning ...