Movable Text: Create Movable titles with the Preview app.
You can use the Preview app on your Mac to create a floating transparency title for iMovie 10.
iMovie 10 offers a lot of amazing features for a free consumer app. Unfortunately, the ability
to position a title text anywhere on the screen (“floating text”) is not one of them. However, you can use the Preview app on your Mac to make a title on a transparency background, that you can
import into iMovie and overlay onto a clip with the Picture in Picture feature. The Picture in Picture feature lets you adjust the size of the text by dragging the corners of the adjustment rectangle and to place the text wherever you want on the screen. If you want to animate the title, you can use the keyframe feature in Picture in Picture to make the title move around the screen. Or you can add the Ken Burns effect to the overlay clip.
The steps below show you how to create a transparency screen with the Preview app to create floating text that can be imported into iMovie.
1. Open a photo in Preview. Put a duplicate of any random photo on your desktop and click on it to open it in Preview.
2. Create a transparency screen. In Preview, do an Edit/Select All, Edit/Delete. If a pop-up box asks if you want to convert to .png, say yes. You will be left with a blank transparency screen. Do a File/Save to your desktop.
3. Create a textbox and select font. In the Preview menu bar, click on View/Show Markup Tool Bar.
Again in the menu bar, click on Tools/Annotate. In the menu box that appears, click on Text. A text box will appear in the transparency screen. To select your font, text size, and color click on the “A” symbol in the tool bar. In the screen shot below the font is Gil Sans Bold, size 94, color white.
4. Enter text and save. Type your text into the text box. (You can create as many text boxes
as you want and place them anywhere you want.) Do a File/Save to your desktop.
5. Drag into an iMovie project. Drag the saved title into an iMovie project and overlay it above the clip in which you want to place your title.
6. Create a Picture in Picture. Select the overlay title clip by clicking on it. Click on the overlay icon (the one that looks like overlapping squares) in the tool bar at the upper right of your screen. Chose Picture in Picture in the selection box. The title will appear in the preview screen overlayed on the clip beneath it.
7. Adjust size and position of PiP text. Adjust the size and position of the overlaid title by dragging the adjustment rectangle that contains the text. Drag the corner to make it bigger or smaller. With your cursor move it to the position on the screen that you want. This link to the online Help menu explains how to use the Picture in Picture effect: https://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.1/#/mova1aaa682b
8. Apply settings. Click on the blue reset button in the upper right of your screen to apply your settings. Done.
You now have an overlaid transparency title that you can move anywhere on the screen.
-- Rich