[MacDV] Need to create vertical videos with text

[Mark Des Cotes]

Derek,

Thanks, your suggestion looks very promising, I hadn't thought about  
looking into plugins. I'll wait until it's a decent hour on the west  
coast before calling Gee Three and asking their recommendation. In  
the mean time does anyone know of any other iMovie plugin companies  
that would allow me to add text vertically (rotated 90 degrees) to an  
iMovie video?

Mark Des Cotes
Systems Manager/Graphic Designer

Astro Printing Service (Cornwall) Ltd.
3308 Second Street East
Cornwall Ontario Canada  K6H 6J8
T (613) 932-9281 Ext 106,  F (613) 932-1052
www.astroprinting.com




On 3-Nov-06, at 8:05 PM, Derek Roff wrote:

>> 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
>