III. Styles
Now for the special subtitle effects. But first, let's make our subtitles less plain. Click on the Styles Manager (the red S at the top, #1 on the picture I gave for the interface) and a window should come up.
On the top, there's a bar saying Default. This is the catalog of available storages. In short, a simple library of your fonts. You can label your storages so they'll have the special fonts, like "School Projects" or "Movie Presentation" and they'll have the storage of all the fonts you need.
Let's make a new storage. Click New at the top and enter what you want the storage to be. Make it meaningful if you plan to use it multiple times. I named mine Tutorial. Now there should be two choices in the bar.
Obviously it's a new storage so you need some fonts. Pick the Tutorial storage, and in the left panel, select New on the bottom. A new window should pop up.
Style Name: What your font will be called. You can make it "Default subtitles" or "Author's Note."
Font: What font your text will look like. It's currently Arial, so change it to what you want it to be. Then choose the size at the right, and on the bottom are effect options.
Colors: These are very useful. Primary is what your main color will be. If you're doing karaoke subtitles and want to change color, the secondary color should be different. And different fonts have different color matches, so experiment a bit.
Outline: The border of the words. It's preferable if it's black.
Shadow: How much shadow you want at the back. Different fonts call for different shadows.
The margins determine how much your subtitles can fit on a line before it automatically goes to another row, and how far it is from the top or bottom. It's generally a good idea to bring the subtitles vertically a few pixels down or up so there's no cut.
Alignment is where your subtitles are located. By default, it's in the middle bottom of the video. 1 puts it at the bottom left, 9 at the top right, etc.
On the bottom of those options are a number and 2 arrows. They determine transparency.
The left side has Outline and Shadow. Change those number to change how much outline and shadow you want.
The bottom of that has more options, they just determine scaling size and encoding. Skip that unless you really know what you're doing. It's not going to cause a crash, but most people generally won't need it.
The preview let's you test what the text will look like. Type what you want on the bottom and see how it turns out.
Make a few fonts, and when you're ready, go back to the Style Manager window.
