"LOLcats" style bordered text overlaid in WMM/WLMM?

[CZroe]

OK, I'm getting pretty ticked off that I can't seem put simple text in a video and have it be readable across bright and dark portions of the frame. Heck, I even accidentally bought iMovie on my iPhone 4 and I found out that I can't caption the clip at all! Just a stupid "title" that stays there for the full duration of the video instead of letting me describe certain parts.

Anyway, I'm back to Windows Movie Maker/Windows Live Movie Maker again, where I usually just have to pick a large font and make it more readable by picking a color and style that minimize blending with the background. There has to be a way to make white text with a black border that can be easily read on any background, right? I mean, how can someone implement a text/captioning feature and not immediately see the need to do such a thing? I'm hoping that the functionality exists and that I'm just missing it or something. A little help?

 

[cliffordsfleas]

Yes! I noticed the same problem.

There is an option in WLMM to set the background color for a text object but it actually changes the entire background of the video segment, not the text object background.

I discovered this while making some review videos for internet fax services and in each video there's points where I'd love to have some text on the screen but the background images are extremely busy (web pages) with objects making the overlaid text pretty hard to read.

In WLMM you can get a bit of mileage from choosing one of the "impact" Effects to make the text move across the screen a bit so you'll get a chance to read the characters, but that's the best I was able to come up with and it was so fake/cheese looking I left them out in the final versions.

EDIT: I just installed the trial of Camtasia Studio 7 and white text with a shadow works VERY well to get the font effect you want. You can also put text on a callout box just like you would see on YouTube. Take a look : http://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasia/

 

[Ichinisan]

It bugs me too. I don't understand why TVs and VCRs from the early 90s with on-screen displays did it correctly but casual video editing programs do not.

Whipped up demonstration in MSPAINT:
(make sure these are viewed full-size)

Double size:

 

[Gooberlx2]

I assume that WLMM just works with system fonts, so you could probably download and install one that takes care of the issue.

http://www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/outline-fonts.htm

edit: maybe not. For some reason I thought fonts could contain multiple shade or color values.

 

[CZroe]

Yes! I noticed the same problem.

There is an option in WLMM to set the background color for a text object but it actually changes the entire background of the video segment, not the text object background.

I discovered this while making some review videos for internet fax services and in each video there's points where I'd love to have some text on the screen but the background images are extremely busy (web pages) with objects making the overlaid text pretty hard to read.

In WLMM you can get a bit of mileage from choosing one of the "impact" Effects to make the text move across the screen a bit so you'll get a chance to read the characters, but that's the best I was able to come up with and it was so fake/cheese looking I left them out in the final versions.

EDIT: I just installed the trial of Camtasia Studio 7 and white text with a shadow works VERY well to get the font effect you want. You can also put text on a callout box just like you would see on YouTube. Take a look : http://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasia/

Well, I had already used the "Impact" font (italicized and bolded). Thanks for the suggestion. At least now I know that it isn't just me. I still can't imagine how people can praise Apple for iMovie if it can't even make annotations/callouts or anything like that.

I assume that WLMM just works with system fonts, so you could probably download and install one that takes care of the issue.

http://www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/outline-fonts.htm

edit: maybe not. For some reason I thought fonts could contain multiple shade or color values.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing until I looked it up, but thanks.