Adding Titles

You’ve created a great movie. Now it needs an equally great title. iMovie comes with many title styles, all of which you can customize by changing the size, font, or color of the title’s text. You can even set your title to fly in from off-screen.

With iMovie, you can add titles to any part of your movie. You can also add captions, and even create scrolling credits for the end of your movie. You have the option to set titles over video, still pictures, or a solid background.

Tips

Use titles creatively

Titles are useful for more than just the beginning and ending of your movie. You can use a title to show the passage of time. Consider titles such as "Meanwhile, back at home" or "Two weeks later." You can even use titles to list the names of the people in your movie, which you’ll find helpful when you watch your movie years later.

Adjust the speed of a title

With iMovie, you can adjust how fast titles appear and how long they stay onscreen by using the Speed and Pause sliders in the Titles pane. Remember to leave your titles onscreen long enough for your audience to read them.

Changing the placement of text on screen

You can also get creative with where you place text on screen by inserting spaces and line breaks in the Music Video style. For example, in an interview, you might want to highlight key points as a list on the top right side of the screen.

Use multiple titles in a single clip

You’re not limited to a single title in a video clip, but can use multiple titles on the same clip. For example, you could combine a centered title with a subtitle.

Place videos and still images inside your title text

The Clip to Characters title feature lets you create titles with special effects where you can see through your titles to display animated gradients, motion images, video clips and more. Try varying the kind of footage you place behind your title. For example, use black and white footage, clips with lots of effects, or even still images that move out of the frame to discover some really interesting title effects.

Steps

Add titles to your iMovie project

Open the clip viewer and click the Return button. This will set the location for our title to be at the beginning of the movie.
Click the Editing button, and then click the Titles button.
Select Centered Title from the list of available title styles. Notice the preview window shows the title using sample text.
Enter your own title in the lines provided. Notice you can add additional lines by using the Add (+) button.
Adjust the size of the text to fit better on screen. Adjust the speed or duration sliders to your preference. Select Over black and click the Add button to create the new title. Notice your new clip is added to the beginning of your movie. A small red line below the transition marker updates as the title is being created, or rendered.
Select your new title clip and choose a different title style. Click the disclosure triangle for Bouncing to reveal multiple choices. Select Bounce Across as the new style for your title.
Use the Wave, Speed, and Pause sliders to customize the title style. You can also select the direction text will enter the screen using the arrow buttons to the left of the text fields.
Deselect "Over black" and click Update. This will change your previous title to now play over your first video clip.
Select the Scrolling - Rolling Centered Credits title to create a closing credits clip for your movie.