How To Add Text in iMovie Using a Typewriter Effect

While there is no typewriter effect title in iMovie, you can easily add it with the help of Keynote. This can appear as text by itself anywhere you want, or you can get creative with more graphics like a search box that appears over your video.

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to get text with a typewriter effect in iMovie. 
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So there is no title that you can apply in iMovie that will have text type across the screen. Which is a shame because it comes in really useful in a number of situations. However, you can use Keynote to create such an animation and bring it into iMovie as an overlay. Actually it doesn't take very long to do this. 
So here in Keynote we're going to choose a wide theme and use the default black background there. I'm going to zoom out so I can see the entire slide and get rid of the sample text there. Now I want to do more than just create text on the screen. I want to actually do a search box effect so it looks like somebody is typing into a search box. I'm going to click Shape here and use the rounded rectangle and I'm going to stretch this out to fill most of the space. It's okay to make it fill out this space here. We can shrink it in iMovie.
Once I have the box here I'm going to use this green do to drag all the way over to the right to make the radius at the corner look like the ends are completely curved. Now I'm going to change the color fill to white and I'm going to add a border. I'm going to make that border a gray border and increase the size by quite a bit. Now I'm going to add a little magnifying glass shape. So I'm going to click Shape here and I'm going to search for magnifying glass and drag this in. I'm going to put this here over the edge. I can resize it if I want. I'm going to change the color fill to match the gray there. So now I have a nice little search box. So let's add some text.
I'll click here to add text. Now it's going to be white on a white background so let's change the text color to black. Let's also increase the font by a lot and I'll make it something more kind of typey like a monospace font like that. I'll move it over to the left there. Left justify it. Now I can stretch it out. Now I can add the text that I want for the effect. So something like that. To get it to actually type out I need to add an animation.
So I'm going to select the text. Go to Animate for Build In and Add an Effect. I'm going to select Typewriter. You can see how that works. I can change some things like the duration. I want to keep the direction to be forward, of course. I'm going to click on build order here and have it start after transitions. That way you can add a delay. So I'm going to add a one second delay. So now I can Preview it and it will be blank for a second and then type out.
Even if I don't think I want a delay at the beginning I can always trim it in iMovie later. So having a bit of a delay there is kind of useful. Now in order to export this I need to make the background transparent. I could just have a black background and this is exactly what it's going to look like in iMovie. But I want to have some versatility. I want to be able to apply a background in iMovie and have this appear over some existing video. 
So let's make this transparent. I'm going to click on the background. When I do that I can go down to the Format sidebar and I can change the Fill to No Fill. Now you're not going to see a change here because it's impossible to make this transparent. You can't see through your screen. It's still going to be black but when I export now I can export as a transparent video. So let's Save here. I want to Save because I'm probably going to want to reuse this effect a lot. It would be handy to have this as a template.
I'll Save it out and now I can export it. I'm going to go to File, Export to, Movie. I want to choose Custom Resolution and this is very important. I need to set it to something that's going to fit inside of movie. So a 1920 by 1080 is most likely what you want. I want to change it to Apple ProRes 4444. Make sure this checkbox is checked. If you don't have it set to this with the checkbox checked and the background set to No Fill then it won't be transparent. So you want to make you have all of that.
Now I'll Export this. Let's switch to iMovie now. So now in iMovie I'm going to go and drag and drop this as an overlay on top of the timeline. So now it appears here as an overlay. It fills the space. You can see it's transparent so I can see the video behind it or if I wanted to do a background I could switch to a background here. Put a background there and have it appear on top of a background as well. So you can see there's the versatility. I could have had just a regular black background here in iMovie and use this or I can move it overhear and use it on top of this existing video.
Now if I want to reposition it then the trick is to make sure it's selected here, go to Overlay Settings, change from cutaway to picture-in-picture. Now it's a movable element. I can resize it. I can move it to the bottom of the screen if I want. Now as an added bonus let's add a sound effect. I want to go to the very beginning just where the letters start to get typed. I'm going to click here in the timeline so I have a line there. I'm going to go to Audio. I'm going to search for Keyboard and I have a computer keyboard sound effect. I'm cheating a little bit because this sound effect is actually from Final Cut. It's installed when you install Final Cut. So you probably don't have it. But you could probably download a typewriter sound from online or you can just record yourself using keys on the keyboard and use that sound effect. When I have this in here I can have it start right at the beginning where the letters are typed. I'll shrink it so it ends at the proper point. Like right at the end there. Now I get a sound effect to enhance the visual part.(typing sound)
If you have trouble getting the timing just right you can use the slider here to increase the zoom so you can work with finer controls as you drag this back and forth. Also note here in Overlays you have fade in and fade out. So you have a fade in here. You've got this dot and you can move that to the left or right. You have one at the other end as well. Using one will do the other or you can  hold the Option key down and it will only do one of the dots.
Now it may seem like a lot of steps to create this but it really doesn't take much time. Like, for instance, if I want to do another one I could go back into Keynote here if I don't already have this open. I could just double click to open up this Keynote presentation. I could select the text and type something else. Go to File, Export to, Movie. I'm going to have to change the resolution every time. It won't remember that. Then next name it something. Export it and now I can drag and drop this in here. You can see I've got that. So really it only took a matter of seconds for me to create a new one by switching between Keynote and iMovie.
You can use this for many more things besides a little search box. For instance if I just wanted to have some text at the bottom of the screen I could add some text here. Put it at the bottom. Let's make it larger. Left justify it. I could add something in here. Then apply the typewriter animation to it. Change it up a little bit here. Since this doesn't have anything behind it I may want to separate it from the background a little bit more by going to Style and choosing a shadow and that will help it stand out against the light background. Then I could select the background here. Format, No Fill. Then go to Export To, Movie. Set it up as Apple ProRes here at the bottom. Have that exported there and then bring that into iMovie here. Now it's something there at the bottom of the screen that will type out like that.

Comments: 7 Responses to “How To Add Text in iMovie Using a Typewriter Effect”

Ken Vignona

4 years ago

Gary, You mentioned in tutorial about the audio keyboard/typing sound that could be downloaded from online. What are some of the sites that you download audio or sound effects from?
As always another great tutorial. Thanks Ken

Gary Rosenzweig

Ken: I have some old pro collections from the days when I used to do more game development. I don't have any recommendations for a specific site at the moment. I would search and see what fits your needs.

Douglas Brace

I have started to use Final Cut a little bit more as I work with my Mother to put together recorded worship services. Does Final Cut support (while the steps would be different) this type of effect that is created in Keynote?

Douglas: You could do exactly the same thing, with an overlay produced in Keynote. But there may be a title effect like this built into FCP, just look. Also, with FCP you can use Motion to create just about anything you like.

John Scibal

This is really cool. One thing that I struggle with is issues with resolution, size, and pixels in general when working with keynote or any type of images. For example you talk about resolution at 3:40 in this video, but these resolution numbers are greek to me. Do you have any videos on best practices and understanding resolution, image size, and pixels? I have a feeling I'm not the only one who doesn't understand it very well.

John: It is just the number of pixels in the video. A 1920x1080 video is a grid of 1920 pixels (wide) by 1080 pixels (tall). That's all this means. 1920x1080 is a good standard size.

Gary, thank you for your help. I thought that it would also be possible with Final Cut and there are transitions (not just title slides) built into it but sometimes there is just "something" about them that makes us decide not to use them. Plus, there are just so many that it can be daunting to go through the list. I will explore using Motion.

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How To Add Text in iMovie Using a Typewriter Effect

Comments: 7 Responses to “How To Add Text in iMovie Using a Typewriter Effect”

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