If you have something important to say,
and really need to drive the point home,
adding pop up text over your video is hard to beat.
This can be done as simple subtitles at the bottom of the screen,
as large text over your subject,
or the text could be the subject over an animated background.
This is a super simple effect to add to your video,
and I will show how,
and a few different ways to animate your text
right after I tell you about the sponsor of this video,
MotionVFX.
I spend a lot of time editing in Final Cut Pro,
and I’ve tried a lot of third party plugins.
One place I find myself consistently going back to
when Final Cut Pro doesn’t have what I need is MotionVFX.
They have a ton of professional Final Cut Pro plugins
that look good, are super easy to use,
and most importantly, deliver exactly what they promise.
Let’s take titles for example.
If you want your finished project to look professional,
you really don’t want to be using cheesy titles,
but at the same time, you don’t want them to be boring.
MotionVFX has quite a few options for this.
mTitle Cinematic for example,
comes with 50 cinematic title presets,
that are simple, look amazing,
and have the perfect amount of animation to stand out.
If you’re looking for something more lively,
mTitle Pop is almost the opposite of mTitle cinematic.
This plugin comes with 50 bright, loud title presets
that are guaranteed to grab your audiences attention.
All of MotionVFX plugins are super simple to install,
are fully customizable,
and look both professional and amazing.
I’ll link a few of my favourites in the description below.
Try them out, you’ll be happy you did.
Now, let’s jump into Final Cut Pro and get started.
First, let’s take a look at timing your text to the voice in your clip.
Down in our timeline, we have the clip from the intro of this video.
First thing we’ll want to do is switch our clip view to audio waveforms,
and turn on audio skimming by making sure this icon here is selected.
Set your playhead at the start of the waveform,
and press Control T to add a basic title.
In the text inspector, replace the default text,
select your font, and make it nice and big.
Go back to your timeline,
make sure your playhead if over your title clip,
and press Shift Command A to deselect any of the selected clips.
Now, in the viewer window, if you hover over the text,
a white text box pops up.
Click anywhere inside this box,
and drag your text using the snap guides
to help your get it perfectly centered.
Skim your timeline to just where the next word starts,
select the title clip,
and press Command B to blade it.
Select the second title clip,
and in the text inspector, replace the text.
Because we’re using the same title, and just cutting it up,
the position, size, font, and any other parameters you adjusted
stay consistent for all the text.
Repeat this as many times as necessary,
for this simple, pop on text animation.
If you have something important to say
and really want to drive the point home.
For the next part, let’s have the whole title on screen,
and animate it on one word at a time.
There’s a couple ways of doing this,
either by using a custom title,
or, if you want it timed perfectly to your speech,
by using a draw mask.
First, let’s take a look at the easier way of doing this
with a custom title.
Move your playhead to where the waveform starts,
go up to the titles and generators browser,
and select the build in/out category.
Locate the custom title, and add it above your clip.
Choose your font, and text size, and type out your text.
Center your text in the viewer window,
and go to the titles inspector.
With the custom title, you get a ton of parameters
for animating text in and out, but for our example,
all we’ll need to do is bring the In Opacity slider all the way down to zero,
and change the In Unit size to Word.
Also, bring the In Spread slider all the way down to zero.
These settings will make the whole title pop on screen
one word at a time like this.
And really want to drive the point home,
adding pop up text over your video is hard to beat.
As far as titles go, the Custom Title included with Final Cut Pro
is one of the most underrated tools,
and most people don’t even know about it.
My friend Dylan Bates has an awesome tutorial on this topic.
Today, I’m going to show you a title
that’s built into Final Cut Pro
with so many features
you won’t even know what to do with all of them.
I’ll link it in the description below.
Check it out after you’re done watching this video.
The custom title method is easy,
but it’s almost impossible to get the timing perfect.
A more accurate way of doing this is by using a draw mask.
Add a basic title above your clip,
replace the text,
adjust your title’s appearance,
and center it in the frame.
Also, to make out text stand out more,
let’s add an animated background under our text.
Press Command 5 to open the effects browser,
select the Masks category,
and add a draw mask to your title clip.
Add a couple control points on the left side of the first word,
and one more above the end.
If you try adding control points inside the white text box,
you’ll notice all you end up doing is selecting the text.
To add control points inside a text box,
press P on your keyboard to switch to the position tool.
This will disable the text box,
and now you can add control points anywhere.
Add one point below your previous one,
and add a bunch along the bottom.
Click on your first control point to close your mask
and hide everything except for the first word.
Move your playhead to the start of the second word,
go back one frame,
and in the inspector window, add a keyframe to control points.
Move one frame ahead,
and move your control points to reveal the second word in your title.
Move your playhead to the end,
add a keyframe,
move one frame ahead and adjust your control points.
Make sure you don’t forget to add a keyframe
one frame before adjusting your control points.
If you don’t the mask will animate from the last position you adjusted it on.
I’ll press command Z a few times to undo the last few steps.
Once you get to the second line of your text,
use the extra keyframes along the bottom to adjust your mask.
Repeat these steps until your entire title is visible.
If your timing is a bit off,
you can always adjust your keyframes by selecting the title clip,
and pressing Control V to show Video Animation.
You can now click and drag any of the keyframes
to adjust your timing.
Doing it this way might take a bit of extra time,
but your timing will be much more accurate.
If you have something important to say,
and really need to drive the point home,
You can also use some of the built in transitions
or effects on your title clips to animate your text even more.
Next time you’re watching some of the bigger channels on YouTube,
pay attention and see how often the pop on text effect is used.
You’ll be surprised.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you back here next week.