iMovie 10 song titling

Hi, lorimer,

I don't think that you can do exactly what you want with the title in iMovie. I got close, I think, but maybe not the look that you want.

Here's what I did, and you can see if all or some of it works for you:

1. Create new project and import your media.
2. Add a blank "Soft-Bar Black" title (with the template text deleted) and stretch it over the length of the movie. This will insert a semi opaque black bar across the bottom of the movie. (Unfortunately, couldn't do lower center like you wanted.)
3. Share out the movie.
4. Import the movie into a new project. This will leave you with one long clip with a semi opaque black bar across the bottom.
5. Insert the "Lower" title at the places where you want words. Type in your words for the first line, and when you do a return you will begin a second line. Use the text tool bar at the top of your screen to make the text center-rectified so that the first word of the second line is lined up underneath the first word of the first line. You may need to adjust the font size of the text to make everything fit. This should leave you with lyrics text in the semi opaque black bar throughout the movie.

Here are some screen shots that might help you to visualize the process. It's a little hard to see the opaqueness of the black bar, but it is there.

I hope that the above is of some help.

-- Rich

The steps below show you how to create a transparency screen with the

Preview app on which to create text that can be imported into iMovie and used

in the Picture in Picture to insert text into a video. It looks a little

complicated but once you go through the step by step instructions hopefully it

will work for you.

1. Open a photo in Preview.  Put a duplicate of any random

photo on your desktop and click on it to open it in the Preview app on your

Mac. Just double click on the photo and it will open in Preview by default.

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.  You should now have a

gray transparency screen.

 3. Create Text from the Preview Annotations item.  Open

your transparency screen in the Preview app and then, 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.   You can select

your font, font size, and color from the tool bar at the top of the

screen.  The “A” is the text tool. Then

do a File/Save to your desktop..  

4. Drag into an iMovie project.  Drag the saved

transparency screen with the text in it into an iMovie project and overlay it in

the upper timeline above the clip in which you want to place the text.    

5. Create a Picture in Picture.  Select the overlayed text

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 iMovie screen.  Choose Picture in Picture from the selection

box.   The text will appear in the preview screen overlaid on

the clip beneath it. 

6  Adjust size and position of  the Text.  Adjust the size and position of

the overlayed Text by dragging the corners

of the edges of  the box that contains

the text.  Drag the corner to make it

bigger or smaller.  With your cursor move the text 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

-- Rich

I used the Gil Sans Bold font, size 80, and it did just fit into the black stripe.

However, what you can do is create a transparency screen, put some text in it, and then overlay it onto your video with the Picture in Picture feature. That way you can adjust the position and size of the text by dragging the adjustment handles at the corners of the inserted text image.

-- Rich

It's the requirement of an opaque stripe background that is causing most of the problem. If you could eliminate that it would be much easier.

Although it sounds complicated to explain, all you would be doing is erasing a photo and saving the screen, and then adding a text box. Once you create a transparency screen you can use it over and over with a new text box each time. Then just drag it in and overlay it. Really speeds up the work flow. But of course that would be your call.

iMovie is a free consumer app so doesn't have every bell and whistle that a professional app would have. However, I have found that almost everything that I need can be done with iMovie, in concert with other Apple apps like Photos, Preview, Keynote, iTunes, Quicktime Player. Even in your situation we could accomplish the goal, although it took a little more work.

-- Rich

Nicely done. I don't have the Pages app on my Mac, so not familiar with it.

Put your cursor on the green screen clip in the upper timeline. That will cause fade handles to appear in the upper corners of the clip. Slide the handles to create a fade in and fade out. When you hold down the Option key you can operate the handles independently of one another. Otherwise the handles will create a simultaneous fade-in, fade-out.

-- Rich

Just to see if it would work, I tried your method with the Keynote app and was indeed able to accomplish the same thing. The only differences were that I took a screen shot of the entire Keynote page instead of just the lower half, and thus I did not need to do any cropping. It seemed like the same amount of work as the other methods we discussed. Good ingenuity on your part. Where there's a will, there's a way!

-- Rich

Good luck with it.

-- Rich

Best to ya! :)

-- Rich