Titling with Studio - adding movement and graphics

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In last month's feature, we took a first look at Studio's titling software. If you don't already know how to create titles and customize their look to suit your program, you can take a look at the tutorial here.

This month, we're going to dig a little deeper to find out how to add movement and graphics.

Superimposing titles

Once you've created a title and placed it on the video track of Studio's timeline, your caption behaves just like an ordinary clip. It will appear in the timeline just like any other shot, and can be stretched or shortened to suit your needs. The title will appear against a black background because although it's actually transparent, there's nothing behind it.

If you drag it from the video track to the Titles track below (simply select it and drag it down), all your other clips will shuffle up to close the gap left by the title in the video track, and when you play back your production, the title will be superimposed over whatever video clip is playing in the video track.

Titles in the title track can be dragged back and forth along the timeline so you can place your title over any clip you like.

Your own graphics

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You can import graphics and photos in a range of formats for use in Studio titles. For example, if you want to add a company logo, first, create it in a paint package like Photoshop. Produce your image with a transparent background and save it in a format Studio can understand (Tiff files work well as do png files. You can import jpg files, but they don't have transparency).

Now import your graphic by selecting the picture icon at the right of the titler window and clicking the folder icon which appears at the top right of the picture panel. Apart from Logos, imported graphics are good for backdrops and frames for your text screens.

Adding animation

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Studio also has two built in animations which you can apply to any title. Create a title screen, and open the titler by double clicking on it in the timeline. Now look at the top left of the title screen. Here, you can select from still titles (the default option) or rolling or crawling text. Rolling text scrolls from the bottom of the screen upwards. Crawling text moves in from one side and slides across the screen horizontally.

The important thing to remember is that if you're creating a moving title, it doesn't have to fit on the title screen. A set of rolling credits for example, can be as long as you like. Simply type your text in, pressing return every time you want a new line, and don't worry if the text overflows off the bottom of the screen.

When you've finished, close the titler and hit play to see your moving title. If it's too fast or too slow, simply stretch or squash the title on the timeline. Studio automatically fits the movement to the length of the clip - so the longer you make the title last, the slower the credits will move.

Animating with Transitions

There's another way to add animation to titles, and that's to use transitions. Because titles work in the same way as any other clip once they're on the timeline, you can add all the same transitions to them. If you want to have your title zoom in from the top of the screen, just add a "slide down" transition. If you want it to roll up and slide off screen, use a STB-Wild-Curl transition from the HFX folder.

Tip: you can also add keyframed effects to titles to create even more sophisticated animations.