Today, we’ll take a look
at how to add title cards to your video
in Final Cut Pro.
I’ll show you how you can add a simple title card
right in Final Cut Pro without having to download or install any plugins,
and a few more advanced ones
where you will have to download
and install a plugin.
I’ll include a link in the video description,
where you can download and install
a title card plugin pack I created,
free of charge.
Hey guys, whats up.
This is Serge, and welcome back to my channel.
Title cards are exactly what they sound like,
basically a background with a title
used to break up your video.
These are useful for multi part videos,
such as top 5 videos,
or basically anything that needs to be broken up,
such as multi step tutorials.
Let’s jump into Final Cut Pro
and first take a look at how to create a basic title card.
Down in my timeline I have a few demo clips in a project,
and say for example,
we want to add a title card between these two clips.
Place your playhead between the two clips,
and open up the media browser,
by pressing Control, Command 1.
Select the Titles and Generators browser,
expand the generators dropdown menu,
and select the Solids category for a simple background.
You can use any of these generators
to use as your title card background,
and customize them for a unique look.
Select your preferred generator,
and with your playhead between clips,
press W to perform an insert edit into your timeline.
By default Final Cut Pro will insert a 10 second clip
in your timeline.
Ripple trim it to the length you want.
For my example,
I’ll ripple trim mine to be two seconds long.
Next, to customize your generator,
place your playhead over your generator clip,
select the clip,
and open the inspector window by pressing Command 4.
Depending on the Generator you choose,
all the adjustable parameters for the selected generator
will be in the Generators tab.
To reveal them,
click the Generators tab in the top left corner
of the inspector window.
For the custom generator,
the only adjustable parameter is color,
but these will be different
depending on what generator you use.
You can click on the color square
to select one of the available color presets,
or click the dropdown menu beside it
to select any custom color you want.
To add a title on top of your generator,
move your playhead to the start of your clip,
expand the titles dropdown menu in the media browser,
and select your preferred title.
For this demo clip, and to keep things simple,
I’ll select the basic title.
Press Q on your keyboard to connect edit it to your project,
and ripple trim it to the same length as your generator.
Select your title clip,
double click on the text in the viewer,
and enter your title text.
You can now adjust the appearance of your title
in the inspector by selecting the text tab.
You can adjust the Font,
size of your text,
the color of your text,
and all the other parameters available in the inspector.
You can also move your text around
by clicking and dragging on it in the viewer.
If like me, you still have the typing cursor in the viewer,
select another clip in your timeline,
then select the title clip again.
You should now have a text box you can move around.
To get your text precisely in the middle of your screen,
drag it until you see the two yellow guide lines
in the center of your viewer.
A nice and clean title card,
and as you can see,
very easy to do in Final Cut Pro.
If you want to try one of my animated title cards I designed,
click on the link in my video description,
and download the Title Card pack i designed.
These are available for free,
but when you go through the checkout process,
the website asks you for some personal information.
I neither need nor do I want this,
so if you prefer not to, just make something up.
Once downloaded unzip the compressed file,
and drag and drop it into the following folder in Finder.
If you want more info about installing custom plugins
such as the one you just downloaded,
I have a video about that,
I’ll leave a link for it in the video description below.
Once installed, restart Final Cut Pro.
When you open the Titles and Generators browser,
if you installed it correctly,
you should see an SM Title Cards category
in the titles drop down menu.
Each one of these Title Cards is three seconds long.
For best results, place your playhead between your clips,
and add a gap clip by using the keyboard shortcut Option W.
Ripple trip this gap clip until its two seconds long.
Move your playhead back a half of second
from the start of your gap clip,
so if your project is set to 30 frames per second,
go back 15 frames.
For a 24 frame per second project,
only go back 12 frames.
Now, select your preferred title card,
and press Q on your keyboard
to connect the title card above your timeline.
Select the title clip,
edit your text,
and any of the parameters available in the Titles tab
of your inspector window.
You can adjust the background colors,
text color,
text background color,
outline,
and a few others.
Try these out in your next project
and let me know what you think.
And if you have any problems installing these plugins,
send me an email to info@lptguy.com,
and I’ll be more than glad to help out.
If you find these title cards useful,
make sure to subscribe to my channel.
I’ll be releasing more free plugins in the future,
so don’t miss out.
Thanks for watching,
and I’ll see you back here next week.