Sorry it's taken me so long to get back here. I've been a bit under the weather and haven't been online that much, either.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Jen, I'm honored to have taken a place alongside Keane. I know how much that means.
Kathy, thanks very much for the compliments. I'm very glad it worked for you, and in (pretty much) just the way I'd intended.
Mary, thanks for your enthusiastic reply. It did seem fitting to me. I'm happy to hear it clicked for you, too.
Rach, thanks again for your help.
Thanks, too, for sharing the love.
Erica, thanks for commenting, and I'm glad to hear the lyrics helped.
Sara, ooo, two comments posts! Thanks! <g> Glad you got the "Not just anybody" line. I thought it'd be fun, but wasn't sure how obvious it would be. I had actually planned to throw Resplendant Man in on that line (I'd originally misremembered and thought that the line repeated later in the song). It didn't really end up fitting, though, but I was happy to have that nice shot of Clark from the Pilot work out so neatly.
Pam, thanks for your very nice comments.
Glad you liked it.
As for the captions... thanks to everyone who chipped in to that discussion. I'm not sure I think of them as a trademark, but I am thinking that I'll have them in most (if not all) of my future vids.
My original thought was (as Pam says) for ESL FoLCs. Since then, I've found that I just like having them there. They give me a few more options to play with (being able to get away with flashing "HELP ME!" onscreen, for example), and I personally find them helpful just because of the way I process information.
I know you saw them as being more "old movie," Kathy. That surprised me with Rocky because I never saw them that way. They're not really subtitles, and the feel of Rocky (to me, at least) predated subtitles anyway (hence the "dialogue cards"). I was actually worried that they would break the mood of that vid.
For this vid and Birdhouse, I was wondering if they'd be unnecessary and distracting. Both songs are relatively slow and clear. My Beta Viewers liked Birdhouse better with, though, and I thought this one was more fun with them there.
Anyway, I'm sorry they didn't work for you this time, Kathy. Thanks for letting me know. I'll keep that in mind in the future. If I knew how to work with Flash, I'd try to make a vid where you could turn the lyrics on or off. For now, I'll probably just keep them (and try to keep them small).
Thanks again for the input, everyone.
Pam, about your question... no problem about asking. Hey, it gets me a bigger comments folder. <g>
As Sara said (thanks for answering, Sara!), I use the updated version of WMM. It's only available for XP SP2, but luckily, SP2 works better for me (it's a lot more laptop-friendly than it is for desktops, I'm told, and installing it cleared up some issues I'd been having with a corrupted login file). The SP2 version of WMM offers a lot more options than the old version. I'm not sure if the older version can do the captions.
In any case, what I do is select the clip I want and choose "make titles or credits." Then I choose "make title on the selected clip." There are a few different options. I find "ticker tape" works best, but "news banner" and "subtitles" also work for some parts. You have to play around a bit sometimes. Once the title is in place, you have to go to timeline mode and trim it to the right length (by default, captions scroll much too slowly -- usually about half the proper speed).
Other than a bit of tweaking here and there, that about does it. It was a little tricky at first, but it's become fairly easy with practice.
So, if anyone wants to add them to future videos (and, personally, I'd like to see them used more, especially for songs where it's harder to hear and/or keep up with the lyrics), that's how you do it.
Thanks again to everyone who commented. Time to get going now.
Paul
