Apple LiveType 2 - Manual (Page 7)

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An Introduction to LiveType
Welcome to LiveType, a special-effects titling application
that’s powerful, easy to use, and completely versatile—
whether you’re creating movie titles and credits,
broadcast ads, or web banners.
Producing dynamic video titles—titles that really pop—can be a painstaking process,
fraught with manual adjustments and keyframe stacks daunting even to experienced
animators. With LiveType, you can create phenomenal results, in the output format you
require, with a fraction of the effort.
How Does Titling Work?
Traditionally, titling was the term for adding text to film. The evolution of digital
graphics and video technologies has expanded the definition, which now includes just
about any combination of text and images you want to add to a movie. Titling is the
process of creating a digital overlay, which is added to edited footage in your nonlinear
editor (NLE), or compositing program. LiveType is the design studio where you
generate titles to import into Final Cut Pro.
Alpha channel technology is the basis of titling. Most compositing and animation
programs allow you to create art with an alpha channel. In addition, most NLEs use
alpha channels they detect in an image or movie to properly lay the element over video.
An alpha channel represents eight bits of grayscale pixel information in a 32-bit file. The
eight grayscale bits determine which portions of the image to superimpose over other
layers. White alpha-channel pixels make the superimposed image completely opaque,
while black pixels make the overlay completely transparent, or invisible. Gray levels
represent varying levels of opacity.
LiveType automatically creates an alpha channel for your project when you render it
with a transparent background.