iLife '04: The Missing Manual

The iMovie Titles Catalog

This discussion describes each of the title effects available in iMovie. Along the way, you’ll find out several useful pieces of information about each title:

• How the Speed slider affects the effect.

• Which directions you can make the text move, if any.

• When you might find each effect useful.

3D Spin

Speed slider: Controls duration

Direction control: None

This twisty title effect, new in iMovie 4, sends your title text spinning crazily in all three dimensions, as though it were typeset on a piece of transparent confetti that’s tumbling down from the sky. It’s not especially easy to read, since for most of the time onscreen, you’re reading it in mirror-image, upside-down, or squished. (It never does come to a stop.) Its transparency also fluctuates, permitting more or less of the background video (or background black) to show through the letters.

Bounce Across

Speed slider: Controls flying-on speed

Direction control: Left, right

Don’t use this effect for anything serious or hard-hitting. It’s a light-hearted, almost comical animation in which your title and subtitle come rolling in on invisible roller-coaster tracks, bouncing up and down as they come to rest in the center of the screen. You get an additional control—a Wave slider that controls how high the bounces are, and therefore how dramatic the effect.

POWER USERS’ CLINICBehind-the-Scenes Undo Magic

iMovie can restore an original clip when you delete a title that you’ve superimposed on it, even weeks later.