Adding Titles
No video is complete without titles. Titles set the stage and mood for your movie. Adding titles with iMovie is simple and easy.

Click the Titles tab in the Shelf and create your title using the settings. Then simply click and drag the thumbnail image to the Clip Viewer.

As with other effects, it is important to not go overboard with the titles. Too much motion in your titles will cause them to be unreadable when they are converted for online use. Also remember that your Web video will be significantly smaller than full screen. So make your titles simple and use a large font. That way, the will maintain readability even when the image size is reduced.

To create an opening title, click the Titles tab at the bottom of the Shelf window. This will replace the view of your unused video clips with a set up screen for a title. The concept is pretty simple. Create a title using the available settings. Then click and drag the title you have created from the Shelf to your Clip Viewer.

Most of the iMovie titles do offer lots of motion. Until you get the feel for how your titles will look in online video, choose a title effect like Centered Title. Below the title effect picker is a title size slider. Put the title to its largest size. To the left of the title size slider is a choice of fonts. Choose a simple font that is big and bold when displayed. Finally, in the text boxes below the title size slider, you can enter the text of your title.

The "Center Title" choice in iMovie provides a Speed: and Pause: adjustment. Use this to make your title fade in and out. As you adjust the sliders, the thumbnail image at the top of the Shelf will show you how long your title will be on the screen. It will also give you a mini preview of just how the title will look. The thumbnail image is pretty small and that makes a good guide for how readable your title will be when the video is finally streamed.

Exporting the Movie
Wasn’t editing fun? Now that your editing work in iMovie is done, it is time to convert your masterpiece to a format that can be viewed over the Web. This will involve exporting the movie and it is the next installment in our series on iMovie streaming.