Title and credits creation software

Question

I know of many NLE (non-linear editing) video editors but they are very feature rich and hence the learning curve is quite steep.

I have a set of FOSS (free/libre open source software) for my other requirements, but haven't been able to find one for title and credits.

What I am looking for in the software:

1. Should allow effects on text.
2. Should have lots of fancy fonts for title other than the system fonts.
3. Should be freeware.
4. Should work on Windows 7 or 8, but I'm open to online options, too.
5. Would be nice to have animated presets as a background (think of cinematic effect of Windows Movie Maker).

Answer 1

Lightworks

It's an extremely powerful video editor with a pretty reasonable free tier. It offers you full editing power, with 720p MPEG-4 export options.

_{(source: lwks.com)}

Lightworks is EditShare's Academy and Emmy award-winning, professional Non-Linear Editing (NLE) software supporting resolutions up to 4K as well as video in SD and HD formats. In the last 25 years Lightworks has been used to edit some of the finest films in cinema history: The Wolf of Wall Street, LA Confidential, Pulp Fiction, Heat, Road to Perdition, Hugo, The King’s Speech and many more! We’re proud of its heritage and we want to share it with you. Discover the incredible features of this application and why Oscar nominated editors around the world use Lightwork Pro every day.

Notable Features

• Cross platform (Windows, OSX, Linux)
• 2D and 3D Text Effects with Boris Graffiti
• Extensive codec support

Caveats

The program was supposed to have been open-sourced five years ago, but somehow that hasn't happened yet. Even if an open source version is eventually released, it's likely to be crippled compared to the full version.

The inability to export at a higher quality or in other formats may be a deal-killer for some.

Answer 2

With a bit of a learning curve but a few steps to the installation there is moviepy and Vapory.

• Free gratis & open source
• Cross Platform
• Lots of movie manipulations
• Star Wars like titles & credits example
• Text with moving letters example
• Generate rolling credits from a text file in 2-3 lines of code example
• 3D text effects with Vapory
• Moving Text
• You can rapidly build up a set of templates & effects to use.

Example of scrolling, partially hidden credits:

from moviepy.editor import *
from moviepy.video.tools.credits import credits1

# Load the mountains clip, cut it, slow it down, make it look darker
clip = (VideoFileClip('../../videos/badl-0001.mov', audio=False)
           .subclip(37,46)
           .speedx( 0.4)
           .fx( vfx.colorx, 0.7))

# Save the first frame to later make a mask with GIMP (only once)
#~ clip.save_frame('../../credits/mountainMask2.png')


# Load the mountain mask made with GIMP
mountainmask = ImageClip('../../credits/mountainMask2.png',ismask=True)

# Generate the credits from a text file
credits = credits1('../../credits/credits.txt',3*clip.w/4)
scrolling_credits = credits.set_pos(lambda t:('center',-10*t))


# Make the credits scroll. Here, 10 pixels per second
final = CompositeVideoClip([clip,
                            scrolling_credits,
                            clip.set_mask(mountainmask)])

final.subclip(8,10).write_videofile("../../credits_mountains.avi")