Section B.4. Title Trouble | iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual

B.4. Title Trouble

For some reason, titles and credits seem to have their own phalanx of problems and issues. For example:

B.4.1. Title Backgrounds Have Jaggies

The quality of the image behind a title in iMovie HD isn't as good as it once was, especially if you burn the movie to DVD. The title looks great, but the background behind acquires jaggies, the stair-step lines along hard edges (Figure B-2).

Figure B-2. For some reason, as of version 5.0.1, iMovie HD introduces stairstepped, jagged lines in the video behind a title, as shown here before (top) and after. DV and DV Widescreen projects seem most vulnerable. The quantity of jaggies depends on the type of image and movement in the image. At its worst, the problem is distracting. At its best, it may not occur.

Some things to try to minimize the jaggies:

Place your title over video that contains natural objects instead of man-made objects. Faces, landscapes , and flowers tend to be better than roof lines, deck railings, and fences. Avoid objects containing straight lines and hard edges.
Place the title over video that doesn't move. A clip that zooms in on a buildingor a Ken Burns clip that zooms in on a picture of the buildingmay look worse than a clip with no motion.
When using a Ken Burns photo, import a large-dimension image, not small.
Before importing the photo, soften the image a bit. Try iPhoto's Edit Adjust Sharpness function, or Photoshops Gaussian blur.
Before adding the title, export the clip to a DVCPRO - NTSC QuickTime movie, then re-import that to iMovie HD. (If your video is in PAL format, use DVCPRO - PAL instead.)
Create a title "Over black" instead of a video clip.

B.4.2. The Type Is Too Small

To make sure your title fits onscreen, iMovie limits the text size of the title to what fits within the movie frame. That's a nice feature that keeps all of your text on the screen, without the risk of chopping it off at the sides. Trouble is, even when you drag the type- size slider all the way to the right, the text may still be too small to read, especially when exported as a smallish QuickTime movie.

When making multiline titles, iMovie determines the maximum text size based on the longest line. If you're getting tiny text, then consider shortening the longest line or dividing it in two. You'll see the type size jump up accordingly .

Tip: You also gain another 10 percent size boost by turning on QT Margins. Do that only for movies you intend to save as QuickTime movies, however, not for projects you'll show on TV.

B.4.3. Chopped-off Type on Playback from Tape

The actual dimensions of a TV picture aren't what you'd expect. To avoid the risk that some oddball TV model might display a sliver of black empty space at a corner or edge of the glass, all NTSC television signals are overscanned deliberately transmitted at a size larger than the TV screen. Sure, that means that the outer five percent of the picture at each edge doesn't even show up on your TV, because it's beyond the glass borders. But TV directors are aware of this phenomenon , and carefully avoid shooting anything that might get chopped off by the overscanning.

Unfortunately, iMovie has one foot in the world of video, and the other in the QuickTime world, where no overscanning is necessary. QuickTime movies always show everything in the picture, perfectly and precisely. Nothing is ever lost beyond the borders of a QuickTime window. That's why some footage that looks spectacular and perfect in iMovie (or in an exported QuickTime movie) gets chopped off around the edges when viewed on a TV.

(This phenomenon explains the "QT Margins" checkbox, described on page 185.)

B.4.4. Title Flows over Edge of Movie

There's a small bug in iMovie HD that sometimes allows a title to flow off the left and right edges of the movie. The solution is to drag iMovie's text-size slider to make the text smaller, and then try again.

B.4.5. Scrolling Block Title Scrolls Too Fast

Sometimes, scrolling blockstyle titles scroll by way too fastmuch too fast to read (which is a definite downside). And iMovie HD doesn't seem to let you set the duration to a longer scroll.

To solve this problem, first note that iMovie HD lets you create scrolling block titles that are much longer than before: They can contain well over 4,000 characters .

The trouble is, as you add text to a long title, iMovie doesn't update the maximum title duration displayed next to the Speed slider. The slider limits you to the maximum duration for a short title, say, 20 seconds. So when you apply the settings, it scrolls way too fast.

Here's the trick: After typing your long text in the title, click again on the Scrolling Block style name in the title list. Voil ! Now the Speed slider offers a much longer duration. Set the Speed slider to the duration you want, then redo the title.