iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Editing and Positioning Text

Although most people focus primarily on iDVD’s drop zones, video buttons, and so on, text also plays a critical role. It’s a dependable, instantly recognizable part of a DVD menu system.

The text that you can fiddle with falls into three categories:

• Menu titles help viewers figure out where they are in the DVD menu system by providing clues to the current context: “Our Vacation,” “Pictures (Week 1),” and “Scene Selection Menu,” for example. Title text usually appears at the top of the screen, although you can put it anywhere you like.

• Button text can appear all by itself, or as labels above, below, beside, or on top of graphic buttons.

• Text boxes can appear anywhere on your screen. You can fill them with whatever explanatory text you think is appropriate: instructions, introductions, a description of the project, and so on.

  Tip

  In iDVD, as in life, don’t be too talky. Brevity is the soul of DVD captions.

  To add a text block, choose Project → Add Text (⌘-K). Double-click the placeholder text and type away. Use the Buttons and Menu panes to specify the font, color, alignment, and size of the text.

It’s a lot easier to edit text in iDVD 6 than in early versions, but a lot less consistent. For example, you must now switch back and forth between the Menu and Buttons panes, instead of finding all text editing on a single screen. On the up side, iDVD 6 offers many new and powerful options, including better control over typefaces, colors, font sizes, and ...