A picture’s worth a thousand words--but sometimes, your home movie
or photo slideshows can benefit from just a bit more. That’s where
titles, captions and credits come in. Windows Live Movie Maker 2011
allows you to add these textual elements in a snap. You can even give
them a professional look and feel by tweaking the font and style and
adding cinematic effects. In this tutorial, we’ll teach you the
differences between titles, captions and credits and when to use each of
these.
Here are the definitions for each in a nutshell:
- Titles are standalone clips meant to precede your movie.
- Credits are standalone clips meant to follow your movie.
- Captions are text areas that are superimposed on top of clips or photos.
Windows
Live Movie Maker 2011 provides buttons for each of these but, in
practice, Titles and Credits clips behave exactly the same, once you
move them around on the timeline. You’ll see what I mean once we dive
into the details.
Adding Titles Clips in Windows Movie Maker 2011
All the text clip buttons are tucked away in the Home ribbon to the right of the Snapshot button. The first one is the add Title button. Click it and Windows Live Movie Maker will insert a new Titleclip at the very beginning of your movie.
As soon as you add a Title clip, you’ll be taken to the Format tab.
The first thing you’ll want to do here is change the default text from “My Movie" to something more meaningful to you. If the text isn’t already selected, click it in the Preview window.
In the Format tab,
you can format the text as you see fit. If you’ve ever used Word, this
should be familiar to you. You can see your changes in the preview
window below.
As you’ll notice from the screenshot, I’ve also changed the background color. To do this, click thePaint bucket and choose a color. This can only be done with Title and Credit clips.
You can also change the Transparency by moving the slider. This will be more useful for Captions, which we’ll talk about next.
But before we move on, let’s take a look at changing the duration of the Title clip. This can be a little bit confusing, because there are two durations to deal with: the Video duration and the Text duration.
The Video duration refers to the time that the entire clip is displayed. To change this, you have to first click the Edit tab beneath Video tools. Here, you can specify how long the entire Title clip will be.
The Text duration and start time changes how long the text will appear on the title clip. Normally, the Text duration is equal to or less than the Title/Video clip. If the duration is shorter than theVideo duration, then the text will fade away before the Title clip disappears and transitions to the next clip in your timeline.
You can also bump the start time forward, so that the text appears shortly after the Title clip is displayed.
An easier way to alter the start time is to simply drag and drop the text element on the timeline.
Note that the text item is independent of the Title clip - you can move it to another clip, or have it overlap and spill over to another clip.
Adding Captions in Windows Live Movie Maker
Captions are
text elements without a dedicated clip or colored background. Instead,
they are applied to existing photos or video clips. The add Caption is on the Home ribbon, just below theTitle button.
Clicking the Caption button will insert a text element wherever the playhead is.
You can edit, format and position your caption just like you did with the text element that was associated with the Title clip.
You can’t, however, set a background color for Captions. That’s because the background of the caption will always be the photo or video clip beneath it.
Adding Credits in Windows Live Movie Maker
The last button in our set is the add Credits button.
Once your Credits clip is on the timeline, it functions exactly the same as a Title clip. The Creditsbutton, however, differs from the Title clip button in that it adds the Credits clip
at the very end of your movie and automatically adds preceding text for
“Credits," “Director," “Starring," or “Location" based on which option
you choose after you click the arrow next to the button.
For example, when you choose Credits, it creates a text element with the word “CREDITS" and a space for you to enter names.
Or, if you choose Director, it inserts “DIRECTED BY" and leaves an area for you to enter your own name.
This text behaves no differently than it would if you would have simply typed it yourself.
Working with Text Effects
Text effects can be applied to Titles, Captions and Credits. Simply select the text element on your timeline and choose an Effect from the gallery in the right-hand section of the Format tab underText Tools.
There are 24 different text effects, from the classic Scroll to the more ornate Cinematic style.
Note
that if you choose a Text effect where the text fades in, flies in or
is otherwise not visible at the very beginning of the animation, you
won’t be able to see it when your playhead is right at the beginning of
the text element. This isn’t a bug--simply advance your playhead to see
the text, just as it will appear in that point of time in your movie.
You can still edit the text at any point in the timeline, however, and the changes will apply to the entire text element.
Tips and Limitations
While adding Captions, Credits and Titles in
Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 is incredibly easy, the feature is
somewhat limited. For one, you cannot have more than one text element at
any given point in the timeline. This means that you can’t have
different two or more text styles in any clip. For example, if you
wanted the word “Credits" to appear in bold, but the rest of the text to
be in italics or normal font weight, this simply isn’t possible. Also,
if you wanted a caption on top of aCredit or Title screen, this is likewise not possible.
On the plus side, you can add as many Title or Credits clips
as you want. You can also move them around to anywhere you want in the
timeline, including in the middle of your movie. In this way, you can
use them to divide sections in your movie.
Also note that you can add transitions from the Animations tab to Title clips, just like you would with normal video clips.
For
more information on adding Animations and Visual effects, check out our
earlier tutorial: How to Add Animations and Visual Effects in Windows
Live Movie Maker 2011.
Conclusion
As
you can see, adding a bit of explanatory text to any point in your
movie is incredibly easy with Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. While you
won’t be able to create advanced call-outs - such as speech bubbles,
drawings or text boxes - nor can you include multiple text elements on
the same clip, you can add text effects and transitions to them to give
them a more professional look and feel. For more tips on jazzing up your
photo slideshows and home movies with Windows Live Movie Maker 2011