Adding Titles

Once you've decided how your title will look, you're ready to add it to your movie.

To add a title:

Drag and drop the title's name or icon to the left of the clip onto which it will appear in the Timeline (Figure 12.18). iMovie begins rendering the title in a new clip and names it with the start of the title's text.

Figure 12.18. Once you've specified how your title will appear, drag and drop it onto the Clip Viewer or Timeline Viewer.

Title clip rendering

When a title is rendered, iMovie actually writes the pixels to your footage, rather than generating them on the fly (such as when you preview a title's style). And like transitions and effects, titles render as their own clips. You can continue to work or play your movie while the title is rendering, though the playback won't be as smooth.

If a title clip is longer than the clip it's being applied to, the title clip runs on into the next clip (Figure 12.19).

Figure 12.19. The title is 08:00 in length, so putting it in front of a clip that's 05:00 ("zoomrock") causes the title to render over all of "zoomrock" and grab footage from the next clip.

Tips

• Hold down the Command or Control key to prevent Clip Viewer icons from sliding around before you drop the clip.

• Add multiple titles to the same section of footage by applying titles to a section of footage that already contains a title. For example, I've used Centered Title to gradually display a scene's name, and added a Music Video title in the middle of the Drifting clip that shows day and time (Figure 12.20).

  Figure 12.20. Combine multiple titles by applying a new title effect to an existing one.

  

• iMovie creates a new file on your hard disk called "Subtitle 01" (or similar) that contains the rendered footage the original untitled clip is still intact. Be aware that using many titles can increase the hard disk space used by your project.