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Making Opening and Closing Credits

Posted November 19th, 2010 by Chris

Have you ever wanted to create a nice opening or closing credits screen for your slide show? Some recently introduced features in Photo to Movie give you a lot of flexibility to make a dynamic professional opening or closing credits screen.

We provide two short tutorials to show you how to use titles for opening and closing credits in your slide show.

First Tutorial

This short tutorial will show you how to do some basic title effects that help make a great looking opening credits screen for your slide show.

newsletter_201011_titles1.png

Start off by adding a blank photo to your timeline (Photo > Add Blank Image…).

Click on the blank image in the timeline to select it. Change the color of the blank image to brown. Set the duration to 6.0.

Next add the main title (Title > Add Title). This will add a title to match the duration of the blank image.

Enter the text for the title: “Griswald Family Vacation” with each word separated by a return.

Select all of the text in the inspector and click Colors… Set the color to orange.

Click Font… and choose a bold font. Set the size of the font to 36pt or larger.

Click Shadow… and enable the shadow.

Click Background… and set the color to yellow-orange (255, 198, 25 for red, green blue). Choose ‘Extend’ for horizontal edges.

Finally, center the text of the title (Title > Align Center).

Position the title towards the top of the movie and in the center. If you have Grid Snapping enabled, the title will snap to the middle of the movie.

Now click on the ‘Effect’ tab at the top of the title inspector.

Make sure Effect In and Effect Out are both checked and set to 1.0 seconds.

Select ‘Effect In’ in the top menu item and set the effect to ‘Move’ in the next menu. Set the direction to ‘Left to Right’.

Select ‘Effect Out’ in the top menu item and set the effect to ‘Move’ in the next menu. Set the direction to ‘Left to Right’.

Now position the scrubber at the beginning of the timeline and make sure the title is selected in the timeline.

Copy and paste to create a new title. Click on the ‘Text’ tab and type new text ‘October 2010’.

Select the background to be (yellow) with horizontal edge extended

Position the title centered near the bottom of the movie.

Set the In- and Out- Effect to be ‘Right to Left’ instead of ‘Left to Right’.

Hit Play. You should see the top text and bottom text enter from the left and right respectively. There should be a pause and then they should exit in the same direction. This makes nice opening credits for your slide show.

Second Tutorial

In this more advanced tutorial, you’ll learn how to use two blank images to create a nice background effect. You’ll also learn how staggering effects on multiple titles can create great dynamic motion.

newsletter_201011_titles2.png

Start off by adding two blank images to your timeline. Set the duration of each to 4.0.

Set the color for the first blank image to dark blue. Set the color for the second to dark green.

Select the transition between the two blank images and set the duration to 2.0. Set the transition effect to ‘Gradient Wipe’ or ‘Wipe’.

Now add three titles with the following text and timing:

1) “Robert’s” with a start time of 0.0 and an end time of 6.0.

2) “Piano” with a start time of 0.5 and an end time of 5.5.

3) “Recital” with a start time of 1.0 and an end time of 5.0.

Select all three titles in the timeline and set the font to something large and bold such as 36pt. Change the color of the titles to something near white (Red 255, Green 255, Blue 228). Enable the shadow.

Position the titles one on top of one another so that they are nicely spaced and read “Robert’s Piano Recital” from top to bottom.

With all three titles selected again, switch to the Effect tab in the title inspector. Set the Effect In to ‘Zoom’. Set the Effect Out to ‘Move’ ‘Top to Bottom’.

Now hit Play. You’ll see the titles zoom in one at a time, then the background will switch from blue to green, and then the titles will drop off the screen towards the bottom. This makes a more dynamic opening credits screen.

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