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Text on the footage

The Film step has a text row under the clips. Anything you put there is drawn on top of the footage, unlike the opening and end cards, which are full-screen and sit between the shots.

The rule

Text costs nothing. It’s drawn on your computer, so you can add, change and remove as much as you like.

How it works

  1. Move the playhead to the moment you want words on screen.
  2. Press Add text. A block appears on the text row and the panel opens on the right.
  3. Type your words, and a small line under it if you want one.
  4. Drag the block along the row to move it in time, or drag either end to change how long it stays.
  5. Use the panel to set where it sits (Across, Up and down), how big it is, how wide it is, the colour, the font, and how it appears.

Good to know

  • Size and How wide are two different things. Size is how big the letters are; How wide is how wide the block of text is, which is where the lines break. Narrow it to about a third and a long title stacks onto two or three lines at the same size — the film-poster look. It wraps the small line under it too.
  • Behind the words is the setting that matters most. White text on a bright shot vanishes — pick Dark band or Solid box for busy footage.
  • New text lands just below the middle of the frame, because the middle is usually where the food is.
  • You can have several pieces of text, and they can overlap each other.
  • There are twenty fonts, grouped by feel — plain, classic, display, handwritten, typewriter. Each one is shown in its own lettering in the list, so you can pick by eye.
  • The first four need no internet and always work. The rest are downloaded the first time you open the panel.
  • If a font can’t be downloaded it says so, and the film won’t render until you pick another — better than quietly giving you the wrong lettering.
  • If you’re also using the full-screen Title and end cards, consider turning them off — otherwise two things are doing the same job.
  • Text is left out of the scroll animation on your website on purpose, since visitors scroll that one backwards and forwards.