Tutorial
81
Did you notice how the title was visible for the entire length of the clip?
It’s a nice title, but let’s shorten it up a bit. You can adjust the duration of
the title in two ways. You can make a rough adjustment by dragging one
of the sides (indicated by three vertical lines) of the title clip left or right
on the StoryBoard with your mouse. Or, you can make very precise
adjustments by invoking the Details screen for the selected title.
Let’s open the Details screen for our title. Click on the title bar on the
StoryBoard, then press the Details key. You can make coarse adjustments
to the title’s duration by dragging the smaller inverted triangle below the
clip’s title. The value shown in the Duration Field (labeled Dur) shows the
number of hours, minutes, seconds and frames the title will occupy. You
can click on the and buttons on screen (or press the and
keys on the keyboard) to make frame-accurate duration adjustments. Go
ahead and adjust the duration for the title to ten seconds.
Fading a Title
(ScreenPlay only)
You can also fade your titles “in” and “out”. The Title Envelope controls
the opacity/transparency of the title. The initial condition of the envelope
shows a straight horizontal line across the top of the region, indicating
that the title will be shown with constant, maximum opaqueness. Use
your mouse to drag the left side of the horizontal line down to the lower
left corner of the envelope region so that you have a straight sloping line.
Select the fade-in point by dragging the larger inverted triangle under the
clip’s title. Move it so that the displayed value in the Current field is one
second (00:00:01:00). Did you notice the thin vertical line moving in the
Title Envelope region on the left side of the Details screen? While holding
down the Control key, click on the slider on the far left-hand side of the
Title Envelope screen. Did you notice a green box appear at the exact
point where the Envelope Line crosses the vertical line? This enables you
to put inflection points in your envelope at precise points in time. As you
move the slider up and down, notice the green box (Inflection Point)
moves up and down along the vertical line. Now move it all the way to
the top, allowing the title to fade in to maximum opaqueness. New
Inflection points can be easily created by pointing and clicking anywhere
along the envelope line. Create another point a short distance in from the
right-most point, then drag the right-most point down to the bottom.
Congratulations, you have just created a simple fade in, fade out
envelope, which should look similar to the picture below.
