Add a title to your video and set when it appears

A title is text on screen: a name, a label, or a line that hooks viewers in the first seconds. DepCut treats each title as a bar on the timeline, so one title is both a design choice and a piece of timing.

Add the title

1. Move the playhead to the moment the title should start.
2. Press T, or click the Text button, the T icon at the left of the timeline toolbar.

A bar reading "Your text" appears on the rows above the video. It starts at the playhead, lasts three seconds, and is already selected. If another title occupies that spot, the new one slides to the next free space on the row.

New titles start with the look of the last title you worked on, so a run of titles in one project matches without extra work.

Write the words

Double-click the title in the preview and type. Press Esc or click away to finish. You can also open the Text tab in the right panel, which has a text box and an Insert emoji button.

To place the title, drag it in the preview. It snaps to the frame edges, the margin lines, the center, and the edges of other items on screen, and guide lines show what it matched. Hold ⌘ or Ctrl to place it freely. The round handle above a selected title rotates it.

Pick a look

With the title selected, the right panel lists a tab for each part of its style:

• Font holds the font menu, Bold and Italic buttons, and an Upload font option at the bottom of the menu.
• Align sets left, center, or right alignment for multi-line titles.
• Size is a slider.
• Color has swatches, recent colors, and a custom color picker.

In the Text tab, Save style names the current look. It then appears as a chip you can click to apply the same style to another title.

Set when it appears

The title bar on the timeline shows the title's text. Its position and width are the title's timing.

1. Drag the bar left or right to change when the title starts.
2. Drag either edge of the bar to change how long it stays.
3. For fine control, open Trim in the right panel and use the Trim start and Trim end shuttle bars. Press on a bar and drag, and the distance from where you pressed sets the speed.

Bar edges snap to the playhead and to the edges of clips and other items, so a title can start exactly on a cut. The small eye on the bar hides the title without deleting it.

Give the words time

Keep titles short and leave them up long enough to read at a relaxed pace. Lines of a few words read faster than full sentences. If a title crowds the frame, shorten the words before you shrink the size.

Try it

Open DepCut, park the playhead on your first clip, and press T.