Why are titles not sharp in the movie I've exported from iMovie to YouTube?

Hi, Stephen,

Hard to say what is causing the blurry titles on upload to You Tube. It could be the uploading process from iMovie or it could be a corrupt preference that is causing the export feature to not function properly with the title exponent of iMovie.

When you export to your desktop, are the titles still unclear or are they sharp? If they are sharp then it's the uploading process that likely is causing the problem. In that case, try dragging the desktop video into You Tube's upload window instead of uploading directly from iMovie.

If it's a corrupt preference, you can try opening iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and selecting to delete preferences in the box that appears. iMovie will open in a new library. Reopen your old library to get back to your projects.

-- Rich

Try updating to current iMovie 10.1.9.

Also, try using a different font, one that has more basic block letters. Graying down a white font can sometimes

help as well, or using some color other than white, red, or yellow. The font might work against a different background, as well.

Another thing you can do is to create a new project, put your title in it, and see if your title works there.

You can check to see if there is a problem with the font itself. Go to Applications/FontApp and open it. From the displayed list select the font that you are using. Do File/Validate to see if there are any problems with the font. If problems are noted, use another font that you have validated. Also, in the FontApp do an Edit/Look for Enabled Duplicates and see if your font is a duplicate font. If so, remove the duplicate. Now see if your font works properly.

There always are workarounds as well. For instance you could create the title outside of iMovie. Take a screen shot of your blank background, open with the Preview app on your Mac (click on the screen shot and it automatically will open in Preview), click on Tools/Annotate/Text, select the font and color you want from the "A" icon in the toolbar, type your text, save the image, and drag it into iMovie.

-- Rich

So, it appears to be font related.

If you have explored what I mentioned in my previous post then one workaround would be to use a different font.

As I understand it, your water background is a video clip where the water is moving. In that case, you could put a green background above your video clip, then put a title above the green background, then select the green background and use the green screen feature to overlay it with the title onto the video clip. I don't know if that would clear up the fuzziness that you are observing in the title, but it might be worth a try.

-- Rich

If it doesn't work, try taking a screen shot of the title below and overlaying it onto your video with the Green Screen feature.

-- Rich

Thanks, Steve,

I just noticed that your profile shows you are running Tiger as your operating system. What version of iMovie and operating system are you running?

-- Rich

Glad you got to the bottom of it.

Best,

-- Rich