Edit Suite: Choosing a Titler (page 2)

Are titlers and titling programs difficult to operate?

Overall, titlers and computer titling software are not especially imposing breeds. If you can operate either an electronic typewriter, or a word processing program on a computer, you can probably master a stand-alone titler without much stress.

Learning the features of a computer-based titling program, however, may take more time. Expect to spend a few hours in the evening or on a weekend learning to get the most from these systems. Knowing how to use a mouse and get around a computer will help speed things up.

What are some important titler features to look for?

• Resolution: If you know anything about computer monitors, you know companies rate them in terms of resolution, or the quality and sharpness of their image. They do the same for video titlers.
  Instead of dragging you through the complete technical explanation of titler resolution and how it's measured, just understand that we measure titler precision in units called nanoseconds. The lower the nanosecond specification, the more precise and crisp the text you'll see on the screen. And better looking text gives your videos a more professional look.
  If the titler's horizontal resolution is rated in pixels, higher numbers mean you'll get sharper text output.
• Anti-aliasing: "Jaggies," or lines and curves that have visible stairsteps instead of smooth shapes, are a by-product of digitally generated images or text. Many software-based titling programs offer anti-aliasing to counteract this phenomenon.
  Anti-aliasing fills in the stairsteps with a color halfway between the text and background colors. This blends the edges of the text into the background image, smoothing out the stair-stepped lines and curves. The result: much cleaner text that makes your video look one step closer to professionally done.
• Colors: Today's titlers generate text in more than plain white. Many offer a wide range of colors, with most supporting a minimum of sixteen. Better models may have anywhere from 256 to 4 million different color possibilities for on-screen text. Software-based titlers also let you color text using graduated blends from one color to another.
• Typefaces or fonts: In addition to offering a wide range of colors, many titlers support multiple fonts. Fonts are the groups of letters or characters that you can type on the screen. They come in different styles and families. A large variety of fonts will give you more creative editing and titling options. Titlers also offer variable sizing of these fonts, both on each text line and on the screen in general.
  Stand-alone models typically offer three or four different sizes, and some allow you to mix different font sizes on a line. Software titlers usually support infinite variations in text size regardless of screen or line position.
• Special Effects: "Drop shadow" is the most common special effect found on titlers. It simulates a light source by creating a small shadow behind and to the side of the text. The effect gives a three-dimensional look, and helps the text stand out from the background image. It's one of the most common special effects, and one of the most valuable to have on a titler. You'll most often find drop shadow on computer-based titling packages.
  Another popular effect is the outline, which draws a colored edge around the outside of each character. You can often choose the color of the edge, so you can create interesting color combinations between the text and the outline.
  Crawls and rolls are two special animation effects most titlers offer. Crawls move text horizontally, rolls move it vertically. Titlers usually offer different speeds for rolls and crawls.
  Some titlers can dissolve, wipe or pop text on and off the screen, too. Dissolves slowly blend the text in and out. Wipes use geometric patterns to reveal and hide the text. Popping text simulates the look of a typewriter by revealing one character at a time.
• Storage: Each titler will offer some sort of long- or short-term page storage. Typically, stand-alone models will only hold text in memory as long as the unit stays switched on, or possibly a few days beyond that. Most support between 10 and 15 pages of text in memory.
  Because of the computer's mass storage ability, titling software packages can store much more information, and for a longer period of time. Instead of keeping text in volatile temporary memory, software packages store text pages on hard disk until you delete them. The maximum number of storable pages depends on the size of your computer's hard disk drive. Even a modest drive will store several thousand text pages.

Can a titler make my videos look more professional?

Over the roughly forty or so years that we've watched television, we've been conditioned to recognize on-screen text as a sign of a professionally produced program.

Sometimes the text tells us the title of a program, or the names of the actors playing in it. Other times, it provides information that relates to what's happening on the screen. In a televised football game, for example, we expect to see the score, along with an occasional player or team statistic. In news broadcasts, we look for the names of people talking on the screen to identify them and evaluate what they're saying.

By adding a titler to your video editing system, you can use on-screen text the same way the pros do. Instead of just showing the video of your last vacation, you can use text to tell the audience more about each place you visited. Put the name of the city or country in the lower left corner of the screen for a few seconds at the beginning of each segment. Later, put the names of people you talked to, or of interesting places you saw.

If you're making a training video for a company, consider emphasizing important points or ideas by putting text on the screen that matches what the host or narrator says. This technique reinforces a point by telling it to the audience in more than one way.

If you're condensing the great highlights from a son or daughter's sporting events, you can use a titler to add text that tells the audience when and where each event took place, and perhaps even the final score of each game.

Will any titler work with my current editing setup?

When it comes to interfacing with an editing system, titlers are fairly simple creatures. Stand-alone and computer-based models both share two basic interface connectors: a Video In and Video Out jack.

If you want to superimpose titles over moving video, you'll need to connect a video source, usually a VCR or camcorder, to the Video In jack on the titler. To record images with titles superimposed, you'll need another VCR or camcorder to function as a record or edit deck. Connect the Video Out from the titler to the Video In on the record deck. As long as you have one source VCR and another VCR to record the on-screen text, you have what you need to record titles over moving video.

If you don't have an additional VCR to use as a source player, you can generate titles over a colored background and insert edit them into your videos. If you choose this method, you don't need to worry about connecting the Video In jack on the titler.

Note: when buying a stand-alone titler, people often overlook the need for an additional monitor for text entry and formatting. Many titlers support one monitor for arranging text on the screen, (often called the "edit" monitor), and another for the actual video signal, (called the "program" monitor).

If you have a monitor with more than one video input, you might be able to get by without purchasing a separate edit monitor. If you don't have a multi-input monitor, you'll need to get an additional one for editing the text.