Make sure that you’ve completed STEP 1 and STEP 2 before you attempt this step!

 

First, a quick little tour of the work area. At the top, you’ll see a big black box. That’s your Program Monitor. It’ll show you your video as you move along the Timeline

Below that is the actual Timeline. It starts at 0 seconds on the left, and stretches on toward the right as you build or view your movie

You can zoom in or out on your timeline by moving the little slider on the right or clicking the boxes next to it

When you want to watch your movie and move across the Timeline, you can press the Play button or the space bar.

There’s a red line with a blue pointer at the top that moves along the Timeline. That’s called the Playhead.

Down along the left side, you have different layers for audio and video. Just like Photoshop, the bottom layer (Video 1) is in the background and the layers on top will cover that background layer.

 

The first thing we’ll add to your Timeline is the title screen for your movie. You have two options:

You can either have your title show over a black screen:

or you can show it over a picture:

If you want it over a picture, you have to drag a picture into the Video 1 track. Choose a picture from your Project Assets:

and pull it down into the track:

You may see this warning. Turn on “Do not show again” and click Yes:

 

Either way, you need to go to the File menu, then choose New, then Title… (F9 is the shortcut)

You’ll see an “Add Text” box over top of either your photo or a black screen:

Highlight your text. ALWAYS CHANGE THE FONT. Make your own choice about what you think will look best!

You can also make your text Bold, Italics, or Underlined (just like in Word)

There’s a little paint pallette where you can choose your colour:

Choosing a colour requires two steps. You have to move the little slider bar on the spectrum:

Then you have to move the little colour selector dot onto the shade you want:

You can also choose to add a Drop Shadow

Or fill in your text with a Gradient effect

OR, you can choose from one of the preset Styles

Once you’ve chosen the style for your text, press Esc on your keyboard and you should see the boxes around your text that will allow you to stretch it to size and place it however you want

You may also align your text if you want it properly centered either horizontally or vertically

 

NEXT, you can choose to put in your MUSIC OR your PICTURES

I’ll start with the MUSIC.

Go into your Project Assets and find the music file you want to use. Drag that file  down into Audio 1 (you could also use the Music track if you wish, but I’ll use Audio 1 since we don’t have any other audio to add.)

As you move through your timeline, your music will play, even if you just move a little bit. This can get annoying after a while. You may wish to right-click on the audio track and turn off Enable. That will mute your audio for now.

 

Next, we’ll add the pictures

Go into your Project Assets. You may wish to turn off the icons for video and audio so you just see the images:

If you have a specific order in mind for your photos, you’ll have to drop them into the Video 1 track individually. This can be very effective if you want to group certain types of photos together. You can click on individual photos and drag them down, just like you did with the music.

 

If you want to do it the quick and easy way and not worry about the specific order (although you certainly can still reorder them any way you like), you want to find your first picture and click on it

Then, scroll down and find the last photo. Hold SHIFT and CLICK on it to select everything in between:

Again, just drag them down into your timeline

Your photos should play in order for 4 seconds each (if you changed the preferences…)

SAVE your work! You’re now ready for the next step!

Right now, my video looks like this: