[MacDV] Re: Need to create vertical videos with text

[Derek Roff]

> At this url    http://www.imovieplugins.com/plugs/turnclip.html   you
> can download for free a plugin for imovie that will rotate your clip 90
> or 180 degrees.

If I understand correctly, the video does not need to be rotated.  Rotating 
it to add the titles and then rotating it back has several potential 
problems.  It might degrade video image quality (depending on how the 
chosen rotation software handles the mismatch in aspect ratio).  It may 
make it difficult to judge the placement of the text, since during the 
title adding process, the rotated video image may be stretched, cropped, or 
severely shrunk with black bars on two edges.  iMovie titles don't look 
that great anyway, and it may be that they will degrade unacceptably when 
applied and then rotated.

Another reason I don't like this approach, is that the iMovie titles 
couldn't be updated or re-edited, without going through at least part of 
the rotation/re-rotation cycle again.  I wouldn't want to do that for every 
typo fix and date change.

The answer, as the original poster suggested, is to leave the video alone, 
and to apply the titles in rotated position.  We can do that in iMovie via 
plugins.  There are several companies who make great plugins for iMovie, at 
fairly reasonable prices.  Gee Three <http://www.geethree.com/> is one 
company that offers many choices.  Bruce Gee is very responsive, and can 
help you make the best choice from among his products.

I suspect it would be Gee Three's Slick Volume 9 pack of plugins, which 
offers a PDF title option and Place Text II, among other things.  You can 
create your titles in a PDF file, using Microsoft Word, or other programs. 
In creating the PDF, you can rotate the text for your titles however you 
desire, and have greater control over font choice, size and color than is 
available in plain iMovie titles.  You will face the problem that you won't 
see the video behind the title, as you are creating your title in Word. 
However, after setting my margins properly, I didn't have too much problem 
getting the titles where I wanted them, using the PDF plugin.

Perhaps others on the list can suggest good title plugins from other 
companies, to solve this problem.

Derek

Derek Roff
Language Learning Center
Ortega Hall 129, MSC03-2100
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
505/277-7368, fax 505/277-3885
Internet: derek at unm.edu