Introduction

Not every visual element that makes up your movie is shot with a camera. Almost all produced videos have some added visual elements to them in the form of titles, transitions, and generators. Before FCPX, titling in previous versions was a real drag, with limited options and visual flair, often leading to users to head over to Motion or elsewhere to create anything animated and visually worthwhile. But with FCPX, Apple upped the game and integrated many of Motion's titling powers right into the program.

As for transitions, Apple started over, dumping almost all previous effects for a new generation of transitions. Sure; many of them are still tacky, but they look as though they were built for the 2010s, not the 1990s!

Lastly, generators are an often overlooked tool when you have the simple needs of generating a background for text, making shapes, displaying timecode, and more.

All of these tools should always be used in moderation, however. It's easy to get carried away when you...