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Cards

A card is a clip with no footage behind it. There are three kinds, each a tile in the Features tab. A title card draws one of your overlay templates over a background color.

Tile Is On drop, opens
Image Card An image held on screen Choose an Image, a file picker for PNG, JPEG, BMP and WebP files
Color Card A solid color Card Color, a color picker starting on black
Title Card An overlay template drawn over a background color Title Card, to pick the template and the background

Add a card

  1. Open the Features tab.
  2. Drag a card tile onto the reel timeline. A white line shows the cut it will land at.
  3. Pick the image, color or template in the dialog that opens.

The card lands at the line, selected, and holds for five seconds. Canceling the dialog adds nothing.

The Color Card tile dropped past the last clip, the color picked, and a five-second card landing there

The reel timeline's right-click menus add cards too:

  • Empty strip: the Add submenu's Image Card…, Color Card… and Title Card… add the card at the end.
  • A clip or card: the same three under Add After add the card directly after it.
  • A gap: the same three under Fill With put the card where the gap was.

In the Title Card dialog, Template lists your saved overlay templates, and Background shows the color behind the template: click it to pick another. With no templates saved yet, No Templates Yet offers to open the template editor instead.

A title card landing at the head of the reel, then playback running through it into the first shot

Change a card

Right-click a card for its own item:

Card Right-click item
Image card Change Image…
Color card Change Color…
Title card Change Title Card…, and Edit “Lower Third” Template…, with the template's name, to open it in the template editor

A changed card keeps its place and its length. A title card follows its template, so editing the template updates every title card that uses it.

Select an image card and Selected Clip Settings shows Image with the file's path, a folder button, "Point this card at a different image file", and a color button, "The color behind an image that doesn't fill the frame". An image card has a Scale too.

What happens

  • A card is a clip. It trims, reorders, slides, replaces and deletes like one, and it counts against the budget. Its Holds for has no ceiling, since there is no footage to run out of, so the full length button is unavailable.
  • A card takes no fades, and the reel's overlay template is not drawn over it: there is no shot behind it to describe. A title card draws its template with every field item empty, so a template made for title cards holds text you typed rather than shot fields.
  • On the reel timeline a color card shows its color, an image card its picture, and a title card its layout. While ShotWork prepares a card for preview, a thin bar sweeps along the card's bottom edge.
  • Export Video renders each card at the output size, an image scaled to fit over its background color.
  • Export Timeline carries each card as a still image on the track: the image file itself, or a PNG ShotWork writes for a color or title card.
  • A title card whose template was deleted shows its background color alone.

Tip

To end a reel on black for a beat, fade the last clip out and add a black color card after it.

A contact card

Not built yet

The contact card template is not built.

ShotWork comes with a Contact Card overlay template: your name, email, website and a headshot, laid out for the end of a reel. Open it in the template editor and fill in your details once. Then add a Title Card at the end of any reel and pick Contact Card.