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Kevin Stratvert

How to Add Text in DaVinci Resolve

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Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today I want to show you how you can add text in Davinci Resolve. We’ll start with the absolute basics of how you can even just add plain text just like that. Then we’ll look at how you can animate that text, and then we’ll look at how you can add styles so you can make your text look really beautiful. If you’re new to Davinci Resolve, it’s fantastic video editing software that you can download entirely for free. I personally use it to edit all of my videos on my YouTube channel. If you just want to get started, check out the video right up above, otherwise, let’s add some text. Here I am in Davinci Resolve and I’m currently on the edit page. I’ve already added some video clips on my timeline. Here I have some videos of kids making and then also eating some really delicious looking cookies. Ideally, I’d also like to include a text overlay on top of these video clips. How do I do that? Well, first off, in the top left hand corner, let’s click on the media pool just to give us a little bit more space. To the right of that, let’s click on the tab titled effects and this by default drops us into the toolbox. Within here, there is a category called titles. Let’s click on that and here you can see all of the different titles that we can insert onto the timeline. Here at the top, we see some of the basic static titles. For instance, here’s one called left lower third and when I hover over this, in the top right-hand corner, we can see a preview of what this title looks like. Here I can see a preview of another one, and here’s a preview of a different one. There are also some animated titles. Here for instance, is one called scroll. And as I move my mouse over it, we can preview what the animation looks like and here I can backtrack on the animation. Now, once again, there are all sorts of different titles that you can insert, and it’s well worth looking through here to see if maybe there’s already a title that meets your needs. And here once again you can hover over to preview what that title looks like. Now first I just want to insert the most basic type of title and this text one fits that bill. To insert a title, simply click on it and then press and hold and you can drag it over onto the timeline and this is just like any other clip that you’re bringing to the timeline. You can position it wherever you want it. Now I want it to overlay my video clips so to do that I’ll place it on the video track right above my video clips. And here in the preview you can now see the text on top of all of the video clips. Once I get to the very end here, you’ll notice that the text goes on beyond the video clips and I can take this text and trim it just like any other clip on my timeline. Here, for instance, I can hover over the end and here I’ll trim it so it’s the same exact length as all of my video clips. Currently the title just says basic title and I want to modify what that text says, and I also want to format it, so it looks a little bit better. So, in essence I want to adjust the properties. To do that, first off, click on the title on the timeline, so this is the current selection. And then in the top right-hand corner, let’s click on what’s called the inspector and this opens up all of the properties of the text. To modify the text itself, here I could click into this box, and I could type something else in like Order at KevinCookieCompany.com. Here I can select a different font and I can use any font that’s installed on my computer. You can set the font face, the color, the size tracking. Here let’s say I adjust the tracking and maybe I change it to something that I didn’t intend to change it to. To reset it back to the original value, I can click on this icon, or alternatively, I can double click on this text and that’ll bring it back to the original state. Here we see many different options that you can use to format your text. Here I can also fine tune the exact position of where my title appears. Or even easier, I could simply click on the text and then I could drag and drop it to where I want my text to appear. Here I’ll center it right at the bottom. And here I have different options. Here I can add a stroke and there you see what that does. I could also add a drop shadow if that’s what I would like and let me add a little bit of drop shadow. I think that’ll help the text stand out a little bit more. And right down here, I could also add a background if I’d like to do that. Now right up here, you’ll see that some of these categories have a toggle. If I click on that, that’ll turn it off, but it’ll maintain all these settings, so if I want to turn it back on later, I can do that. Also, you can collapse some of these different categories. Here I could click on background, drop shadow, and here I can click on rich text, and that way I can very quickly navigate to the different categories that I can use to modify my text. Currently my text is just static, but I think it’d be more fun if I animated my text. To animate the text, over on the left-hand side, let’s shift into the video transitions category. And here, just like with the titles, we can hover over any one of these transitions to preview what it looks like, and we can apply any one of these many transitions to text on the timeline. Here, for instance, one of my favorite transitions is crash zoom. Here I can simply press on it and then drag it over to my timeline and I can release it on top of my text. Here I’ll move my play head to the beginning and here I can play it and look at that. The text now animates and flies in. That looks pretty nice. To adjust the duration of this animation, here I can simply drag it shorter so that way it goes a little bit quicker. Or if I want to extend it out, here I can drag it a little longer and then that animation is a little bit slower. Now if I click on the animation itself or the transition also in the top right-hand corner within the inspector, here I can change different properties related to this transition. So maybe I want to add some motion blur as it’s moving. Here I could adjust that and if we play it again, now we see a little bit of motion blur. That looks pretty good. I can also add an animation to the end. Once again, I can select the crash zoom and I can drag it to the end of my text and here it now animates out. To remove one of these animations or transitions on the text, I can simply click on it and then I can press backspace or delete and that’ll remove that transition. Now one alternative and also a classy way to animate is you could simply have text fade in or out. When I click on the clip, you’ll see this little handle appear right here. I can drag it and I can select how many frames I want it to run over. Now here if I play it, we’ll see the text fade out. You can also animate your text by using something called keyframes. So, what is a keyframe? Well, it allows you to define the properties of an item at a certain point in time, and if that sounds extremely confusing, let’s make this real with an example. First off, select the text once again and then move the play head to let’s say right about here. Once again, make sure to open the inspector and then let’s click on the video tab. Within video, let’s once again expand the rich text category and also let’s click on effects in the top left-hand corner just to give us a little bit more space to work with. Now I want to add a little bit of a wobble to this text, and here if I scroll down, we see that there is an option for rotation angle. Over on the right of that, there is this diamond icon. When I click on that, that applies a keyframe. Now once again that allows me to define what the rotation angle is at this specific point on my timeline. So let me give this just a little bit of a rotation, maybe like that. Now I can move forward on my timeline and let me add yet another keyframe. And here I want it to wobble back the other way. So let me adjust it so it looks just like that. Now I could go towards the end and once again let me apply yet another keyframe. And here too, I can also adjust it, so maybe it wobbles back in the other direction, just like that. I’ve now applied three different keyframes. I’ll move my play head back to the beginning and hit play, and here we can see how it animates this wobble on my text. To visualize where all of those keyframes are, here I can click on this diamond icon on my text and here I can see that there are three different keyframes. So at this point in time, I defined what I want the rotation angle to be. At this point in time, I also defined what I want the rotation angle to be, and Davinci Resolve does the magic of moving from this angle to this angle between these keyframes and that in a sense creates an animation. That’s a pretty easy way to make an animation. Now what’s neat too is, let’s say I want this rotation to go a little bit slower. I could click on one of these keyframes and here I could extend it out and maybe I want to extend this one to the end. Now, if I play again, we see the rotations start from the beginning and here it rotates the other way all the way through the end. If we look up in the top right hand corner at the inspector, you’ll notice all of these different properties allow you to set keyframes. Here I could set the position or the zoom. Here if I click into settings, here once again, we could apply a pitch, a yaw keyframe, so you could pull off some really impressive animations simply by defining what the properties are at different points in time. So far, we’ve just been working with the most basic text in Davinci Resolve, but Davinci Resolve also offers something called Text+, which gives you even more control over how your text looks. I’ll click on the text on my timeline and then delete that, and let’s once again click on the effects tab up on top. Click on titles and at the very top we have something called Text+. Let’s drag this onto the timeline and here I’ll trim it so it’s the same length as my clips. To modify the properties of Text+, just like we did before, let’s click on this on the timeline, and that once again opens up all of the different properties in the inspector. Now once again, you can click on this to expose all of the properties, and at first glance it looks pretty similar to just the basic text. Here, for instance, I can type in my text, but as I scroll down, we have even more settings here to modify what the text look like. And also over on the right hand side, you’ll see that just about every single property allows us to set a keyframe, so you could animate just about everything. You might also notice that we have all these different tabs across the top that give us even more control over what this text looks like. For instance, I’ll click on layout, and here we can adjust all these different pieces of the layout. For example, I could rotate, let’s say on the X axis and there you could see me rotate the text and once again I could apply a keyframe there. Once again to reset, I’ll double click on the X and that brings it back to the original state. Here I could also transform the text. I could decide, do I want to transform on the characters, the words, the lines and here you can see all the different things that I could transform. Here for instance, I could apply a shear to the text and there you can see what that does. And once again I have that keyframe ability right here if I want to animate it. Now once again, I’ll reset by clicking on the X. Let’s now click into shading. Shading offers you even more control over what the text looks like. Here for example, I can see that currently the text just has a white solid fill, but if I scroll down, here I can adjust the opacity or I can set it to a gradient. Maybe I want to have a gradient on my text and here I can adjust what that looks like. Up above, I also have different elements that I can choose. For example, I can add an outline, and here too I could also apply a gradient to my outline. Over here I can click into another element. Here I could add a shadow or here I can add a border behind my text, and I could customize what this border around my text looks like. So, I have lots and lots of control to get the text to look exactly how I want it to look. With Text+, I could also use the video transitions as a really quick and easy way to add an animation to my text. Once again, I’ll click on video transitions and if I scroll down a little bit and here’s another neat one called drop warp. I can drag and drop it on the beginning of my text and here now you see my text animate in. So once again, very easy to do. Along with being able to create your own text in Davinci Resolve, once again, there’s also a massive collection of pre-created text effects that you can just insert. Once again, I’ll click on titles and here towards the bottom, you have this category called Fusion titles and there are many, many different options that you can choose from. Here for instance, I can choose text over shape, and I’ll place it on my timeline. Here, I’ll trim it and if I click into this item, within the inspector, I can customize what this text is. So, let’s say Kevin Cookie Company. Here I could type in the first text, and here I could type in the second text, and I’ll scroll down a little bit more to enter in the third text. Now when I play this on my timeline, you can see what this looks like and it’s a really nice text effect and I was able to just use this pre-created title animation. It couldn’t be any easier than that. All right, to watch more videos like this one, please consider subscribing. I’ll see you in the next video.

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