Creating a Basic Title

Once Title Deko opens on your screen, the text cursor is ready. To create a title, just type and the text appears on your screen (Figure 10.5). If you make a mistake, navigate using the left and right arrows to delete or retype the word.

Figure 10.5. Basic text entry using the default font and point size.

When you get to the end of a line, the text wraps around to the next line; if you press Enter, you create a carriage return. If you drop below thewindow, you'll need to scroll up using the standard Windows scroll bar.

Tips

You can also use a wheel mouse to scroll through the text window.
Undo/Redo via the Ctrl+Z shortcut is supported, as are the search and replace functions found in most text editors. You can access most of these edit features from the Edit menu (Figure 10.6).
Figure 10.6. The Edit drop-down menu.

Changing the Typing Direction

If you need to type from right to left or top to bottom, click the Layer menu and select the style you want from the four choices at the bottom of this menu (Figure 10.7).

Figure 10.7. Altering the direction in which text is entered.

This feature is only available on a newly created title before you type anything. Once you start typing, you're committed to using the selected style, and the direction change options are grayed out.

The Alpha Channel

When you create a simple title with what appears to be a black background, you are in fact creating a title with an alpha channel.

An alpha channel is a part of an image that allows anything behindor in Liquid Edition's case, underneathto show through. This effectively means that you can use titles with alpha channels on top of video clips without totally obscuring the clip (Figure 10.8).

Figure 10.8. A title showing the clip below using its alpha channel.

However, if you add a picture or colored background to the title inside of the Title Deko interface, the alpha channel isn't visible (Figure 10.9).

Figure 10.9. The same title with a colored background loses its alpha channel.