We all know that the best color for subtitles, to get better contrast is to use white letters. Sometimes, if there are very light or white areas on a clip, it’s possible to loose some of the text, because of bad contrast. The other day I saw a short movie, where the author “inserted” a dark but translucent panel at the bottom, which made subtitles much better readable. Could somebody please tell me how to accomplish this?
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Rafael Ucros
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How Do I Obtain a Dark Area To Make Subtitles Better Readable?
Comments: 5 Responses to “How Do I Obtain a Dark Area To Make Subtitles Better Readable?”
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There are two ways to do it. One is to put a shadow under the text. This makes it pop out, even if it is white text on a white video scene. The black shadow will separate the letters from the background.
The "Lower Third" title in iMovie 11 will do this. And if you use the iMovie Font Panel to switch the color of the text to black, it will smartly change the shadow outline to white.
The other way is to put a semi-transparent background behind the entire lower third. There are two titles for this in iMovie 11 too. One is Soft Bar White, and the other Soft Bar Black. There are some other lower third titles you may want to try too.
I don"t know what you mean by "Soft Bar White" or "Soft Bar Black", or at least, I can't find them. Could you help me please?
They are the names of title types in iMovie. Look at http://macmost.com/custom-titles-in-imovie-09.html and http://macmost.com/imovie-title-tricks.html -- in those videos I access the list of titles in iMovie. I don't use those title types specifically, but they are in the list.
Thanks Gary, this is awesome !
It is also possible to use a BLACK background (etc) and WHITE text (etc) in Apple Mail and/or Pages and/or Keynote.