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Making better intro titles
in Movie Maker 2.0 |
| There are many ways to make an introductory movie title within Movie Maker 2
… and in fact, the program has a series of title animations just for this function. Some of these
animations are quite good … fades, fly-ins, outline effects, they all look professional.
The only problem with the introductory titles in Movie Maker is that you have little choice
in backgrounds. All the title animations let you choose a background color, but that’s it.
Fortunately, there are several things you can do to spice up your introductory title clip:
- Use a picture as a background
You can import a picture or background image into your project, lay it down at the beginning
of your movie, and create an introductory title on top of this picture. This can give a nice
effect, and really spices things up. You might also want to place a fade transition between
this title background clip and the next video clip in your movie.
You can find appropriate background images online … just run a Google search on desktop backgrounds
or PowerPoint backgrounds.
- Use a looping video as a background
Along the same lines, you don’t have to use picture as your background. You
can actually download looping video backgrounds off the internet and use these as a backdrop
to your title animation. You can download some of these video backgrounds from
MainConcept
… after unzipping them, simply import the video into your collections and drop it onto the
timeline. If the video doesn’t last long enough, you can copy it and place multiple copies
end-to-end. Finally, place your animation on TOP of this looping video.
- Create a title picture
Another option is to not use any title animations at all … but to create a title picture
to place at the beginning of your movie. You can create a title picture within any photo
editing program like Photoshop (Photoshop elements is cheaper) or PaintShop Pro. If you don’t
want to buy new software, you can try editing a background image inside of MS Paint, but
you’ll find it difficult to add text using this Windows program.
I use this method the most for my videos … usually I’ll take a snapshot from my movie and
find a fancy textured background online. Then I’ll combine these within Photoshop and add
a text title. Finally, I’ll import this picture back into Movie Maker to use as a title.
As you can see, there are many methods for improving your introductory titles. I usually don’t
go to this trouble for end credit titles though, as the end credits built into Movie Maker are
quite acceptable.
Next: Exporting and Saving Movies
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You can find more
useful home-video "tips and tricks" like this one at Mighty Coach
- they even have an online-video course that teaches you to edit
video on your home computer!
www.mightycoach.com |
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