Grapple Download

Text and titles.

A title in Grapple is an ordinary text layer you can type into, style and key like anything else. Text animation brings it on letter by letter, word by word or line by line, and captions come straight from what was said.

Make a title

  1. Choose the Text tool (T) from the rail down the left of the Stage.
  2. Before you click, set the font, style, size, colour, alignment and line height in its Tool options; they apply to the next text you make.
  3. Click the Stage and start typing for a single line. Drag first to set a text box, and the text wraps at its width.
  4. Press Esc, or choose another tool, when you're done.

Double-click a text layer to change its words. The text is a layer on the Timeline, with a clip you can trim and move like footage.

Style it

Select the text and set its look in the Inspector:

Text
The words themselves.
Font, Style, Size, Color
The family, a face such as SemiBold or Italic, the size in pixels, and the fill colour.
Text box
The box the text wraps in. Text outside the box is clipped, and the box doesn't grow, so widen it or set the size smaller if words go missing.
Horizontal alignment, Vertical alignment, Line height
Where the lines sit in the box, and the space between them.
Backdrop color, Backdrop opacity
A panel behind the text, for a caption that reads over a busy picture.
Shadow color, Shadow opacity, Shadow offset
A drop shadow.

Values with a diamond beside them can be keyed, so a title can change colour or grow during its shot.

Animate text

  1. Select a text layer. Its Text animation section in the Inspector opens on style tiles: None, Fade, Rise, Drop, Pop, Slide, Spin and Typewriter.
  2. Pick one. Fade fades in from transparent, Rise comes up from below, Drop comes down from above, Pop grows from half size with a small overshoot, Slide comes in from the left, Spin spins and grows into place, and Typewriter shows one at a time, like typing.
  3. Choose Animate In or Out, and whether it moves By Letter, Word or Line.
  4. Press Preview to play it once.

Shape the timing

Order
First to last, Last to first, From the centre, or Random.
Each
How long each letter, word or line takes, in seconds.
Next starts
The gap before the next one starts, in seconds.
Timing
A strip with one bar per unit, showing when each one moves.

Advanced values

Each style is made of a few values. Open Advanced to see and change them: Move from, Scale from, Opacity from, Rotate from, Color shift, Ease (Linear, Ease in, Ease out, Ease in/out, Hold or Overshoot), Only from and Only to for part of the text, Starts after, Repeat, Pause between repeats, and Back and forth. Change one and the style reads Custom.

Text on a path

A text layer has a Text path section. Turn it on and the text runs along its path instead of wrapping in its box. Start sets where along the path the text begins, as a percentage, and Reverse runs it the other way.

Captions from a transcript

With a transcript in the project, choose the Transcript tool (Y) and press Create linked captions in its Tool options. The timed words are placed on a visual layer as captions. Later corrections to the transcript update the captions' words, and their styling stays your own. To write a caption's words yourself, choose Make caption text independent; it keeps the words it shows and stops following the transcript. See Transcripts.

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