Making Digital Home Movies, Part 2

Making Titles

People want to know who made the video and what the video is about, so you need a title. Titles can be done with either the video editing software or with stand-alone title software such as Bluff Titler . For example purposes, I used the demo version of Bluff Titler. The full version costs $40. For the price, Bluff Titler is amazing, as it shows changes in real-time. It also allows for particle effects like flames and dripping blood from your titles. The text can be made to move around, rotated and whatever else you can think of.

Chromakey applied to a Bluff Titler title. We will get rid of the green inside Sony Vegas.

In about three minutes, I was able to make a nice title with particle effects. Since this title will be imported into Vegas for editing, I clicked on the "Use Chroma Key" setting. This turns the background bright green, which we can make transparent in Vegas.

Particle Effects

Wondertouch's ParticleIllusion

Making particle effects like fire is just as easy. We are going to use Wondertouch's Particle Illusion , which has hundreds of different effects. It took only 30 seconds to make a wall of fire. Just select the effect you want and then click the areas on the video that you want the effect to appear.

Selecting a background video for ParticleIllusion

When you first start working with ParticleIllusion, the effects are done against a black background. It is much easier to use your source video as a background layer. Then you can instant see how the resulting video will look like. Select background image and then find your video that you add the particle effects. After you are done, select save output. The resulting file will be edited within our editing program.

At the end of this article, you can download a video that shows off the wall of fire composited onto a video.