Add Text to Videos

Every now and then, you might find the ocassion to add text to your video. There are only certain times you'll want to add text—afterall, a video should speak for itself—but text can appear as titles, subtitles, captions, overlays, as credits, or a watermark on your video. Adding text is easy to do, you just need a user-friendly video editor like VideoPad Video Editing Software.

Part One: captions, title screens and credits

Text can be added to your videos as captions to describe scenes or to provide commentary to the current action. You can also insert a title screen at the beginning of your movie, and credits at the end.

To add a caption or overlay text to any clip, first select the clip in the sequence, then click the green plus button on the Overlay Track. Make sure the Text option is selected, then type the text for the clip in the text field and click Add when you are done. The text will be added at the 'In Point' position, and you'll see a 3-second-long box added to the Overlay Track on the sequence. You can move this box anywhere in the movie along the overlay track, and you can change its duration by dragging out the left and right edges of the box. Select the text overlay to view it in the Clip Preview panel, where you can change the size, opacity, font, color, and more, as shown below.


Creating a title screen is very similar, but first you have to add a blank clip to the movie. Click the 'Insert Blank' icon in the toolbar and choose to add the clip to the beginning of the movie. Next, add a new overlay by clicking the green plus sign on the Overlay Track and type the title into the text field. Select the overlay on the sequence to view it in the Clip Preview panel, where you can position the text in the middle of the screen using the Alignment buttons, and adjust the size using the Size Slider.

To add text credits at the end, add another blank clip to the end of your movie. Create a new Text overlay by clicking the plus sign on the Overlay Track. Then type the credits into the text box, placing each name on its own line, and click OK when you are done. Select the text overlay on the sequence to make it appear in the Clip Preview panel. From the panel, select Bottom to Top from the Scroll drop menu. Preview the credits. If they go by too quickly, increase the duration of the text overlay. If they stop in the middle, you need to increase the duration of the blank clip so the credits have enough time to scroll off the page.

For visual demonstrations of all the text-tips discussed in this blog, you can view the video tutorial VideoPad Video Editor Tutorial - Part 2 and watch the beginning sections on working with text. Part two will talk about working with subtitles in VideoPad.