HomePage 5 of 5: Real World Example Walkthrough Part 2
Section 3B: Real World Example Walkthrough Part 2: Creating Titles
We'll now create title screens for episode 1. As mentioned previously, we'll create a title screen consisting of white text on black background with a small section of the TNG music theme as the background, and then it all fades into the start of the episode.
To get a clip of the TNG theme, we'll have to extract a clip of the video (from episode 1) containing the theme.
First, drag the file "TNG - Finale Ep 1" to the Input window. Use the input controls to mark in and out the segment of music that needs to be extracted (add a couple of second before and after), and then with the segment marked in green in the Input window, drag the video onto the timeline, but into the "Music track" section (the third track). If the timeline is not clear of all items, you can click on the "New Project" icon (or press Ctrl+N) to clear the timeline.
If you prefer to save this music track to an audio file, just use the "Export" button to save it to a WAV or AC3 file - it's more organised this way, especially if you plan on re-using the music file later on, but unnecessary for the purpose of this guide.
Now we'll create a title. To do this, from the "Taskbar", click on the "Title Editor" button.
This opens up the title editor. Click on the "BKColor" button and change the background colour to black. Click and hold the text colour button and change the colour to white. Change the font options to whatever fits your need, and click on the title preview window to the right to start typing. When you have finished creating your title, you can save this, or simply use the drag button to drag the title to the title track on the timeline (the second track).
Note that the title and audio track don't have the same length - you can adjust either so they match, and I have made the title longer in my example - to increase the length, just drag at one end on the timeline.
Now, drag the file "TNG - Finale Ep 1" from the source window onto the movie timeline and the move it (drag the object on the timeline and move) so that it intersects the title track near the end of the title (see screenshot below). You can now play the project using the Output window, notice the rather abrupt end to the title track, and the beginning of the episode proper. We'll fix this by using the fade in/out option.
Right click on the object on the title track, and select "Fade". This opens the "Clip Fades" window, which allows you to adjust the fade in and fade out settings for this object. What we want is to have the title fade in from black, and then fade out just as the episode begins. The "Get Default" button can be useful, as it sets fade in/out at 1 second each (the fade will begin and end for 1 second at the beginning, and at the end) - you can adjust to suit your needs.
We need to do the same to the music track, let's not forget. You might want to set a longer fade out for the music track as it will sound better. You might even want to add fade in to the episode video as well.
Now if you didn't have transparencies enabled for the title track, then you might notice the transition between the title and the video still isn't very nice looking - the video sort of pauses while the title fades away. But if you enable transparencies, you'll get a much nicer effect as the title text for a brief moment is superimposed on the episode video. To enable transparencies, right click on the title track on the timeline again, and select "Transparency". Click "Use Transparent Color" - the option "Automatic select mass color in the image" will select the biggest block of colour (in our case, it's the black background) as the color that will be transparent, otherwise you can choose a different color instead. Click OK and test the output - it looks much nicer, doesn't it?
And that's all there is to adding a title, that will fade into the video and be semi-transparent at various points, with a background music track. Sounds complicated, but easy to do in Womble MPEG Video Wizard. Export the now edited video out to a new MPG file (note that some parts will now require re-encoding, if you click on the "Details" button in the export save file window - the re-encoded part is the actual title).
If the input files you had were not VCD/DVD compliant MPEG-1/MPEG-2 files and you want to make them so, that's not too hard either. When you press the "Export" button and the window asking you where to save the file comes up (this is where the "Details" button was), you can change the "Save as Type" setting from "Automatic (*.mpg)" to one of the pre-defined templates (for example, "DVD PAL" - you can press the "Template" button to look at the encoding settings of each template, and even make your own templatess). In my example, if I wanted to re-encode my entire video, I would select "DVD PAL" as that's the format and video system I want my final DVD to be. Note that once I selected this new "save as type" setting, and went back to the "Details" screen, my entire video now requires encoding (see screenshot). If I wanted to reverse this (that is, to go back to the status above where I don't need to re-encode anything other than the title screen, I would change "Save as Type" back to "Automatic (.*mpg)".
This completes this basic video editing guide. As you can see, your imagination is really the limit when it comes to video editing, and hopefully this guide has given you a good starting point to create your own video projects. Good luck!
Got more questions? Post them in our Womble Software Forum and get them answered by other expert users. The specific discussion thread for this article can be found here.
