Tutorial

Mac Video Titler 2 lets you create lower-third graphics with alpha channel and variable-density drop shadows at record speed. The trick to using all the features and options lies in creating the background files. Once they’ve been set up and combined, the process of creating the actual lower-third graphic text elements becomes a piece of cake. The resulting PICT graphics can be dropped onto the graphics channel of any NLE editing system that can read Mac PICTs with alpha channels (meaning most NLE systems). Here’s the process:

(Click any image for a full-size view of the example frame.)

Here’s an example of the final result we’re trying to achieve.

The overlay background graphic consists of two fields, both with a gradient background. The top field contains the name of the subject, and the lower field contains their title. Both backgrounds consist of a gradient graphic element with a gradient, in this case lighter at the top and darker at the bottom. The trick here is to create the backgrounds first, which is a two-step process. Since MVT2’s alpha channels are additive, this is pretty easy to accomplish. And once the “background” plates have been created, they can be reused without a single additional keystroke and/or mouse click.

Step 1 - Create the background

We start by creating the upper background strip to appear behind the person’s name. This will use a color gradient, running from a lighter blue at the top to a darker blue at the bottom. MVT3 makes this easy. You simply specify a starting (top) color and an ending (bottom) color for the gradient.

Since the background graphical elements need to “bleed” off screen, we set the safe title in Preferences to 0, which lets us create graphics full screen.

The strip is created using MVT2’s built-in video graphics font—in this case by using the “+” key set to 60 points to create a row of solid color blocks. Gross adjustment of the vertical position of the element is done by clicking at the start of the line (it’s just like text), the hitting the Return key to move it down. Vertical fine tuning can be accomplished either by changing the size of empty lines above the graphic element, or with an Opt-up/down arrow key, depending on how much adjustment is needed to properly position the element.

Set the color of the text to the Gradient starting color, select a gradient ending color, and once you’ve saved the source file, Cmd-K creates a background plate with the gradient colors, alpha channel and drop shadow. Element 1 is complete.

Next we create the background for the title plate. We start by opening the Name PICT file as a background (Cmd-G). Then start a New foreground title plate. To make it easy to align the two elements, we align the foreground over the background window vertially to match, making it easy to align the previous background and the new foreground elements.

Again using the Return key for gross positioning and either empty line sizing or the Option-arrow keys for fine tuning, we position the Title line background for vertical position. Note the Gradient settings for this layer.

When you select the Create Output menu item (Cmd-K), the new foreground will be rendered over the previous background with all alpha channel information from both preserved. Save your file as an MVT2 text file, and then hit Cmd-K to create an alpha-channel PICT backdrop to use as a backdrop template for future lower-third title graphics.

(And by the way, you can also use any other graphics application, such as Photoshop, to create background PICT files if you prefer.)

Step 2 - Create the foreground

The background elements are now complete, including alpha channel masks. It’s now time to render and close all files, open the newly-composited background (with alpha channel) graphic as a new background, and start adding individual names and titles. This is where MVT2 really starts to rock.

First, since we’re now dealing with title text, we start by going to the Preferences dialog and setting our preferred safe title area.

We next load the backdrop composite file as a background, and open a new foreground for a text overlay. To aid alignment, we adjust the overlay layer vertically over the background PICT file using the windows’ top edge as a guide

For the name line, we select white as the foreground color and a dark grey as the shadow color, turn off the gradient function (or leave it on and select gradient start and end colors for the text if you prefer), and set a drop shadow depth of 3 pixels. We set the font size to 48 to fill against the upper background graphic elements.

Press enter to drop down a line, switch the color to blue, reduce the font size to 30 points, and we type in the job title of our lucky subject.

At this point, we’re set to go. The background elements are established as a PICT file with alpha channel that we have loaded, the foreground text title elements that will change from one graphic to the next are in editable form, and all elements are aligned. We can now start cranking out lower-third, alpha-channel titles with identical backgrounds at record speed.

Hit Cmd-K, and type in a unique name for this title. If the PICT option hasn’t already been selected, select it now (it will now stick as long as the length of the title doesn't extend beyond one frame).

When the changes have been made, it’s simply a matter of hitting Cmd-K again and assigning a new name for the new graphic.

Repeat for the next name/title pair, and so on...

If you want to maintain editablity of each graphic element for later work, Save As... as MVT2 files, and then again as PICT files, using Cmd-K. In general, however, we usually only save the first foreground file as an MVT2 file to serve as a template. Creating new foreground text for each PICT file is so fast that it’s easy to open the template and replace the text if changes are needed.

And that’s it! Using the techniques outline above, anyone who can touch type should be able to crank out at least 6 finished, multi-layered and polished lower-third titles per minute, once the background as been created.