Adding text in iMovie is not customizable?

After you create your title in Keynote do a File/Export and you can export it as a movie or an image to your desktop. Then you can drag it into an iMovie project. You can place the imported title or background in the upper timeline as a Cutaway. The underlying video will continue to play. Or you can insert the title as a Picture in Picture. Or, as you say, you can split the video and put the title in between.

-- Rich

Hi, Matt,

iMovie titles are customizable to a limited extent. You can choose Font, font size, bold, italic, color, outline, and rectification to left, middle or right. You can move a title to the top of the screen by putting your cursor after the last word and, while pressing down the Option key, hit return several times. To move it down, do the same thing in front of the first word and hit return while holding down the Option key. You can add multiple lines to the title by holding down the Option key and hitting return at the end of the last word. and adding your text.

To add a blur background for the title you would need to use another app, like the free Keynote app you can get at the app store. Keynote might already be in your applications folder. Actually, the title would go on a semi-opaque bar stripe. Or you could create your own blur clip and use that.

For titles, there are almost endless possibilities and animations that you can create with the Keynote app. Then you export them to your desktop and drag them into your iMovie project.

Also, you can use the Preview app on your Mac to make titles on a transparency screen that you can drag into iMovie and use the Picture in Picture feature to adjust their size and place them anywhere you want on the screen. Just open a duplicate of any photo in the Preview app and do an Edit/Select All, Edit/Delete, and you will have a transparency screen to which you can add text and save to your desktop.

-- Rich