What's the best way to do it? I've seen some complicated instructions online about making masks but I'm not even sure this is what I'm needing. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Once again use QT 7 Pro here. It has the ability scale and offset both text tracks and images. However, if having a a text background is a deal breaker, you should probably create your text labels as images on a transparent background in an application like Photoshop (e.g., PNG, PSD, GIF, TIFF, etc.) I usually create a PSD or PNG file in Photoshop using the font, size, color, effects/filters desired. (E,g, depending on the movie background, I vary the color of the text, add an outline, or add a drop shadow to make the text labels more visible over the movie.) Then you can try the following:
a) Open both the main movie and all of your label images in separate QT players.
b) Select a label image payer and use Command-A to select the image frame(s) followed by Command-C to place the image frame(s) into temporary memory.
c) Close the image player and select the main movie player (if needed).
d) Set "in" and "out" points for the display of the label if needed.
e) Use the Edit menu "Add to Selection & Scale" option to add the label as a new track to your main movie file.
f) With the Properties window open, select the newly added image track and enter "Straight Alpha" or "Straight Alpha Blend" Transparency, Offset, and/or Scale values for display of the label image under the "Visual Settings" tab.
g) Repeat steps "b" thru "f" as needed.
If a user selected color text background is satisfactory, then you could create text tracks and set the various text attribute as desired.
