iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

The iMovie Titles Catalog

This discussion describes and illustrates 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, and when you might find each effect useful.

Note

Despite the smooth, professional look of iMovie’s text effects, many of them may become tiny and illegible when you export your finished movie as a QuickTime movie (see Chapter 12). They may look terrific in your Monitor window or when played on your TV; however, in a small QuickTime movie frame, especially the kind you might post on a Web page or send by email, the text may shrink away to nothing.

If you have time to experiment with different versions of your movie, exporting each to a QuickTime movie until you find a text effect that’s legible, then great. If not, use the notations in this section as a guide. They assume that you’ve set the text-size slider to its maximum.

3D Spin

Speed slider: Controls duration

Direction control: None

This twisty title effect 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 ...