Change the lyric style, colour and placement

Your lyrics can appear on the video in many ways: words lighting up as they are sung, fading in one by one, popping up around the picture, written by hand and more. Pick a style, then adjust the colour, size and place to suit your video. Everything is in the Lyrics tab of the settings card.

Before you start

• Open the project in the editor. The look of the lyrics belongs to the cut you are editing, so each cut can have its own (cuts). If the cut has markers, your changes go to the stretch under the playhead (markers).
• To change the words themselves, see fix the lyrics.

Steps

Pick a style

1. In the settings card beside the video, open the Lyrics tab.
2. Click the Style row. It opens on a tile for every style, drawn over a frame of your own video.
3. Click a tile. The video changes at once; play it to see how the words come in.

Change the colour and opacity

1. In the Colour row, pick a colour, or From the style to let the style choose.
2. For a colour from your video, press the eyedropper (Pick from video) and click the spot on the video whose colour you want. For an exact one, press More colours (#) and type its HEX code, or pick one of My brand colours.
3. Drag the Opacity slider to make the lyrics more see-through.

Place the lyrics on the video

1. On the video, drag the lyrics to where you want them.
2. Drag an edge to change their size, or use the Size and Width sliders in the tab.
3. To put them back where they started, press Reset at the end of the tab.

Options

The rows of the Lyrics tab

Row	What it does
In this cut	Shows or hides the lyrics on this cut’s video. The timeline keeps them either way.
Style	The lyric style.
Size	How big the words are.
Width	How wide the lyrics are. Narrower breaks a line into more rows.
Max lines	The most rows a lyric line may take. A longer line is still shown whole, in wider rows.
Alignment	Left, Center or Right.
Capitals	As written, All capitals or All lowercase.
Colour	The words’ colour: the style’s own, one of the swatches, or one taken from the video.
Opacity	How solid the lyrics are, words and shadow together.

Alignment and Capitals start at what the style does; choosing the style’s own value again lets them follow the style.

The styles

Style	What it does
Sing-along	Words light up as they are sung
Whisper	Small, quiet type that stays out of the way
Editorial	Big, calm lines like a magazine pull quote
Pulse	Each word lands on the beat
Stack	Lines pile up as the verse goes on
Marker	A highlighter sweeps across each line
Drift	Lines float up and fade away
Margin	Lyrics sit in the margin beside the chords
Caption	Bold words that pop in, a few at a time
Fade	Each word fades in softly as it is sung
Scatter	Words pop up around the picture as they are sung
Handwritten	The line written by hand as it is sung
Block	Bold narrow capitals, word by word
Paper	Hand-lettered capitals on torn paper

Tips

• New projects start with Fade.
• A line is never cut short: it is always shown whole, at the size you chose. If it doesn’t fit the width, it takes more rows and the lyrics grow taller, away from the chords.
• With From the style, the words turn light over dark parts of the video and dark over light parts, and a soft shade comes in under them over a busy picture.
• Reset puts back the lyrics’ position, size, width, rows and alignment. It leaves the colour and opacity as you set them.
• A line stays on the video until it ends. To keep one up longer, drag its end on the timeline (fix the lyrics).

Common problems

The lyrics aren’t on the video. The In this cut switch is off for this cut. Turn it on in the Lyrics tab. If only one line is missing, it may be hidden from the video on the timeline.

Words only appear as they are sung. That’s how some styles work, such as Fade, Pulse and Scatter. Pick a style like Sing-along to show the whole line from the start.

The lyrics take too many rows. Make them wider with Width, make the words smaller, or lower Max lines.

The colour I picked doesn’t paint the words in Paper. In that style the colour is the paper’s, and the words take whichever ink reads on it.

The lyrics cover the chords or something in the picture. Drag them on the video, or press Reset to put them back.