I have been doing a lot of video lately for my new interview site FounderBuzz and thought I would share a few of the things I learned that took me some time to figure out. The first thing, I would like to share is how to add your logo to your video. Of course this is a simple thing for people who have done a lot of video editing, but for a complete novice like myself I found it surprisingly hard to find good information about it.
This is how I did it with iMovie, and some of this information will be specific to that, but generally this should apply to other editing software as well. With that said, here is what I did.
Equipment:
- Computer: iMac running OS X Snow Leopard
- Video editing software: iMovie ’11
- Image editor: Pixelmator, but I have also used Photoshop
Process:
- Step 1 Generate a PNG: Get logo in proper format. You need a PNG of your logo, not a JPEG, PDF, or other format. The reason you need a PNG is that it will only show your logo with a transparent background.
- Step 2 Create it in the proper aspect ratio: In order to drop your logo in simply in your video it needs to have the same aspect ratio as your video even though the background is transparent. I have two versions of my logo, one for widescreen HD video (1,280×720) and one in standard (640×480) ratio. This will prevent cropping of your logo or black bands from appearing when the whole logo is shown.
- Step 3 Drag your logo onto your iMovie project: When you do this, you will be presented with options of how to insert this image into your video. Choose Picture in Picture to have it overlaid on the video.
- Step 4 Fit your image to the video: Select your new Picture in Picture image in iMovie and edit it (in iMovie you can just press “c” once you have it selected). Once in editing mode choose “fit” to make sure that your entire logo is selected.
- Step 5 resize your logo and position it: Dragging the corner of your newly inserted logo allows you to make it bigger or smaller in your video and then you can position it in your video appropriately.
- Step 6 imbed your logo across your video: I choose to have my logo show up from the beginning of the video to the end, but you can just have it show up in certain sections of the video if you choose.
Select Picture in Picture for your iMovie
Select your logo
Choose Fit your logo in iMovie
Example of logo in video on FounderBuzz
I hope this helps. I’m sure that I’ve left things out so be sure to post if you have any questions.
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Hi, Thanks for posting about adding logos to iMovie. I have a question regarding how you create the PNG as 1280X720. How do you make it so that it does not stretch it out? Your logo is long but not high and if were to make a logo like yours 1280X720 it would be all stretched out to fit that pixel dimension. I have to add extra text to make it fit those dimensions.
Cheers
Hi Chuck,
I use Pixelmator and am not an expert by any means. If you are creating a PNG which is transparent, then you only need to select the right size for the image and fit the logo within it and it will simply overlay the logo over your video. When you are creating a new image in Pixelmator you can specify the size in pixels and choose the correct exporting format for PNG. You should be able to create an image like this in any image editing software like Photoshop or Illustrator as well. Hope that helps.
We have Snow Leopard and iLife 11′, but when we drag our logo to the video the only options we have are “Replace, Insert, and Cancel” How do you get those other options? Do we need to upgrade to Lion? is there in iLife software update?
Thanks.
We figured it out
I have Snow Leopard and iLife 11′, but when I drag my logo to the video the only options I have are “Replace, Insert, and Cancel” How do you get the other options? Do I need to upgrade to Lion? is there in iLife software update?
Thanks.
You have to drag it into your project onto your movie clip and it should pop up a Picture in Picture option. I am currently using iMovie ’11 and this is how it works so it should be the same on yours. It is independent of your version of OS X. Be careful that you aren’t dragging it in front of your movie clip and instead are dragging it onto the movie itself. Once it is on there you should be able to drag the image start and stop points as you need them.
Ok I figured it out thank you. Do you know how to get imovie to play music and show the logo on the clip at the same time? It appears that whenever I add music to the clip with the logo it freezes my image.
Hi, thnks for this info.
I was just wondering how you would retain logo quality, I have still images in the Background and would like my logo imposed over them. Your way works just fine except I lose quality in the logo as the logo is quite big. In your example your logo is small in comparison…Did you have pixelation on your logo?
Thanks
@Rory,
I don’t have quality images. I created a PNG file in the ratio of my videos, in my case 640×480 and it avoids the sizing problems and retains quality. Hope that helps.
Hi, I have tried numerous times to add the logo however I get a black box (like letter box) on the top and bottom of the logo. Any suggestions on how to fix this? I have a transparent background .png but it changes the picture to a square, with no transparency.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Yes, you have to get your aspect ratio to match your video. For example, I have a 640×480 png for most of my videos.
Scott
Wow – thank you! Just what I needed. I was clueless. Thanks for taking the time to post this! I ended up not having my logo throughout but inserted it instead right when the brand was mention. Looks slick!
I had the same problem as @Chris, @EEI where the options did not show up when adding an image file. In iMovie preferences is a “Show Advanced Tools” checkbox that must be checked for the additional options to show up. The box is NOT checked by default.
Thanks!
Thanks, @Scott for explaining how to insert my logo into my videos for now on. It will be great for video marketing.
Would any body now why my images aren’t showing when I drag them into the movie clip. It was working last week, but now I can’t figure it out for nothing in the world. Please, reply…
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THANK YOU @Lauren. I had the same problem and didn’t know how to fix. What you wrote worked! Thanks.