This month we’ll talk about adding intro/ending credits to your videos.
If you right click in the clips holding area, you’ll see the option to ‘Add Title Clip’.
Clicking that will give you a new window (shown right) with a blank title ready for editing.
At the top left of the window (below the menu) are icons that let you move items, add text and so on. Below that are options to choose/change font properties. Vertically down the right side are options to change the duration (of this title), then rotation/alignment options. Finally, you have two tabs to edit the background or animate items.
We’ll keep it simple for now – I’ll add an image, then some text – using the buttons at the top left of the window (shown below right), and put a black background using the ‘Background’ tab and opacity slider. I’ll keep the ‘Duration’ at 00:05:00 (five seconds) and click OK.
Titre : Video Editing with Kdenlive
The title clip I’ve just created is listed in my clips storage area (shown above) ready for dragging into my video:
You can’t treat the title clip just like you would any other clip, so no effects/transitions are allowed. But, as you can see below the title clip in the ‘Video 1’ track, there is a ‘Composite’ box. Click that to edit the properties of how the title clip behaves. First, overlap a video with the title clip. I’ll go for a two second overlap.
You have many options under the ‘Type’ drop-down menu (top right), but just change the ‘with track’ drop-down to say ‘Video 2’ (in my case). Now drag the small black up-arrow along the horizontal line to where you want a dissolve to begin (three seconds in, and lasting for two seconds). Click the ‘Add keyframe’ button:
and leave those settings as is. Now, drag the pointer to the end of the line, and create another keyframe. This time drag the opacity of that keyframe to zero:
Voila! Our title clip fade-out begins at the three second mark, and lasts for two seconds.
If there’s anything you’d like to see covered in this series, please drop me an email at: ronnie@fullcirclemagazine.org.
Next month, we’ll look into more advanced uses for effects.