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How to add text, lower-thirds, and titles using Final Cut Pro 7

Final Cut is the professional video editing program from Apple and the software of choice for most professional Mac users. It is fast and powerful, with a wide array of video transitions, templates, and effects for enhancing your videos. The software's Magnetic Timeline 2 eliminates syncing problems and unwanted gaps in the timeline.

This Mac-only software has advanced chroma keying and can generate 3D titles. It is compatible with a ecosystem of third-party products and is tightly integrated with Apple's Compressor software.

This tutorial sticks to the basics by giving step-by-step instructions for editing operations (add text, lower-thirds, and titles) in FCP 7.

1. Getting Started



The main gateway to using text in FCP 7 is located in the Viewer window. Look for an icon of a filmstrip labeled with an "A" - it's located in the bottom-right hand corner. When you navigate to the text menu, you'll see a list that includes Lower-third, Scrolling Text, and Text.

Each of these options can have different applications depending on your movie. Lower-thirds are typically used to introduce a character or interview subject in a documentary, and also introduce anchors for news and television shows. Scrolling Text is most commonly used for credits at the end of a movie, or to introduce the movie's scenario, as in the famous opening sequences of the Star Wars films. The "Text" option provides a generic template for you to add supplementary facts and information to your project.

2. Using Lower-Thirds



To add a Lower-Third to your project, navigate to the text menu in the Viewer window, and select Lower-third. You should now see a black box in the Viewer window labeled with Text 1 and Text 2. You can think of this as a video clip generated by Final Cut that can be cut, lengthened and spliced the same way as a video clip you recorded with your camcorder.



To add text to your Lower-third and make adjustments, navigate to the Controls tab of the Viewer window. Now you can enter your desired text into the boxes that read "Text 1" and "Text 2". You can also choose your font, text size, and the font color. For this example, I've adjusted the size of Text 2 to be smaller than Text 1 and have also added a solid background, by navigating to Background and choosing Solid from the drop-down menu. This adds a shaded bar behind the Lower-third so that it stands out from the background image.

3. The Results



Voila! You should now have a Lower-third that describes the image in your movie. Now you can lay the lower-third over your image by dragging the video clip into the Timeline, and dropping it into track two, above the existing video clip you want to describe.

4. Using Scrolling Text



To add scrolling text to your movie, navigate to the text menu in the Viewer and choose Text > Scrolling Text. Now go to the Controls tab along the top of the Viewer window. Here you can add all of the information that you need to be part of your credits. You can adjust the settings just as you did with the Lower-thirds, such as choosing a font, an Alignment, and color. The second control from the bottom lets you choose whether your text scrolls up or down.

5. The Results



Drag your credits to the end of your movie sequence, render the video clip, and press play! You should see all of the text you added scroll vertically across the screen.

6. Using Text



If you need to add text to your film in order to supply the viewer with necessary information that isn't included in your audio or video, use the general Text option. To access it, navigate to the text menu of the viewer and choose Text > Text. Using the same controls as above, type in the information you need to include, adjust the font and color, and drag the video clip onto the Timeline.

You can keep this information separate by making it your only video track, or you can overlay it on a background image by putting it on track two above your desired footage. To break up your text so that it's laid out on several different lines, press enter where you want the phrase to break. This will take you to the following line of text.

Now that you know how to add text to your videos, you'll be able to communicate to your viewer all the things that aren't described by the sound and image alone!

Additional Tips:


Editing videos in FCP X is an interesting thing and you can complete a masterpiece by spending some time.

Recommended File Formats Supported by Final Cut Pro

Video Formats: Apple Animation codec, Apple Intermediate codec, Apple ProRes(all versions), AVC-intra, AVCHD (including AVCCAM, AVCHD Lite, and NXCAM), DV (including DVCAM, DVCPRO, and DVCPRO50), DVCPRO HD, H.264, HDV, iFrame, Motion JPEG(OpenDML only), MPEG IMX(D-10), REDCODE RAW (R3D), Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2, Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2, XAVC, XDCAM HD/EX/HD422, QuickTime formats.

Audio Formats: AAC, AIFF, BWF, CAF, MP3, MP4, WAV

Container format: 3GP, AVI, MP4, MXF, QuickTime

Still-image formats: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, PSD, RAW, TGA, TIFF

However, not every movie format can be accepted by FCP X, that not means you can't import the videos, by converting video files to FCP preferred format like Apple ProRes 422 LT, Apple ProRes 422 HQ, everything become easy.

Brorsoft Video Converter Ultimate (for Windows) | iMedia Converter (for Mac) is able to convert a large number of movie formats to Apple ProRes 422 or Apple ProRes 4444, such as mkv, avi, wmv, asf, mov, mp4, mpeg-1, mpeg-2 , Blu-ray/DVD, Video_TS movies and camcorder movie types like avchd mts, m2ts, m2t, mxf, 4k/1080p xavc/xavc-s, dvcpro hd, mod, tod.



Professional parameter settings for target devices

To meet target devices or players more, video and audio parameters in output files are adjustable, including: video codec, audio codec, video size, bit rate, sample rate, aspect ratio, frame rate, etc.

Edit videos for personal customizations

Practical video editing features provided for video customizations, including: trim video length, brighten the video, crop video size, adjust video effects, add watermark, text, subtitles.

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