A Word About Branding:
Brand is a combination of images, phrases, products, ideas – that make up you, your company/organization, and how you are perceived in the marketplace.  It is the recognition of a Logo or a jingle.

In order to help further your brand or at least the consistent look of your videos, having a plate or image at the start and/or end of your video is helpful.  Ultimately, your brand is the quality of what you produce and how you are perceived or understood in the market but let’s do what we can to further our brand with some consistent intention.

Video Title Plate
I could hire a graphic designer or spend a lot of time learning Photoshop or some other graphic program to create a professional looking title plate for my videos….  But I don’t have the budget or the time.  However, I can generate a nice title plate using Powerpoint and a few images from my collection – images of me performing.

I bring them into Powerpoint, set a background color for the slide, and place the images on top of a second colored square – just as a way to border the images – or tie them together.

I save the Powerpoint file – as a powerpoint file first.  This allows me to keep the slide in case I decided to make changes to it later.   Then I save it as a jpeg image by selecting, “File->Save As” – select file type and select JPEG image.  Give it a name you can identify and set the directory you want to save it in.

I have a folder called Collateral\Music – and I save both the Powerpoint and jpeg image in there.

You will be prompted to save the current slide or all the slides.  Select current slide.  Here is what my current title slide looks like:

Your next step is to import the image into Movie Maker so you can use it at the start of your movies.  This is as simple as selecting “File->Import Into Collections” and select the image.

I’ve imported the image into the collection we created before – with the 5 movie segments.

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As you can see, when I highlight the image (or any media) in a collection, it shows up in the preview window at the right.

The Timeline
All movie editing starts with the timeline.

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The timeline is where you place your media and make fine-tuned adjustments.  For instance, you can:

• Cause video or images to fade in and out;
• Adjust audio levels to fade in or out or increase the volume;
• Adjust the length of time an image shows on the screen;
• Add and move Title/Overlays – words on top of or in front of your movie;
• Add affects to the video – like brightness, slow motion, or other features;

I add two title/overlays to my videos, in addition to the intro plate pictured above.

The first is a title I used to put at the start and end of my videos.  Now, however, I have it only at the end.  It is a whole screen title with the name of the song and where it was filmed.  You can see the plate for South To Mexico below:

To create this, you select, Tools -> Titles and Credits -> Title After The Selected Clip.

You will be presented with a box to enter text but we want a different type of animation, so don’t type anything.  Below the text box presented, select, Change The Title Animation.

Scroll down and select Titles, Two Lines->Moving Titles, Layered.

Select “Edit Title Text” and you will be given a two-box title screen.

Enter your text, as shown.  Song title in the top box, specifics in the lower box.

I also edit the “text font and color” – making the background black and the text white.  I adjust the font size there as well.

When you select Done, the title plate is added to the end of the movie or selected clip.  You can drag and drop it in the timeline if you wish to move it.

Differences in Titles and Overlays
Titles, in general, are those text plates that come before or after your movie media.  You will notice that these exist on the same timeline as your movie and your title image.

Overlays, in contrast, have their own timeline and appear “on top of” or in front of the media (images or movies) in the main or top timeline.

The above title appears before or after the media on the main timeline.  However, we also want that VH1/old MTV style title that appears as the video starts and ends.  As in the image below:

To add this, we also go to “Tools->Titles and Credits”

This time we select “Add title on the selected clip”

We select the “Subtitle At Bottom” Title Animation

In this case, based on my dark video, I chose a white font color.

Type whatever text brands your video how you would like – website, copyright, song title, etc.

Press done and it is added to the timeline.

I copy this overlay and paste it a second time, dragging it towards the end of my song as well.  By default, the overlay last 5 seconds or so.  You can zoom closer and drag it by either end to lengthen it’s duration.

I try to place it just as the music starts and again, just as the music ends.

For my videos from my September 27th date – which was quite dark, I also added two brightening affects to the video.

Just click on the video clip in the timeline, right mouse-click and select Video Effects.

You will also note that the video has a Fade In, From Black and a Fade Out, To Black effect.  You can add those here but I added them by again, right mouse-clicking the video in the timeline and selecting “Fade In” and “Fade Out” – which are standard actions.  I also fade in and fade out on the audio.

Transitions
To get that nice fading transition between your intro plate, the video, and the final plate, you can add the video transition, “fade”.

However, all you really need to do is from the timeline, click and drag the video slightly to the left, over the title image.  This creates a fade automatically.  Do the same with the final overlapping title at the end and drag it slightly over the end of your video.

You may need to zoom in on the video to drag it the proper amount.

Below is a zoomed in section of my timeline.  You can see the video is slightly over the VideoTitlePlate and that the overlay starts somewhat into the music (by looking at the audio attached to the video).  You can also see the little blue stars on the video clip – showing you that there is at least 1 video effect on the movie.

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At any time, you can click the ruler above the timeline and press the “play” button on the preview window to see what your affects and transitions look like.

You are almost ready to create, upload, and then embed your movie.

If you have any questions so far, please post them here in the comments.