FIND THE TITLER THAT'S BEST FOR YOU The Perfect Title.

TITLES. They are often the first thing your audience sees, and they can influence a viewer's opinion of the quality of your production before they see a single frame of your camera footage. Jagged, blocky titles may not match the quality of your pristine DV footage, and can cause the audience to think of your video as amateurish, even if your camerawork and editing are excellent.

There are infinite ways to create titles for your production. The easiest and least expensive way is to use markers, crayons, colored chalk, letter transfers, lipstick, macaroni, alphabet soup, refrigerator magnets, or anything else that can be used to spell-out words, then point your camcorder at your homemade title. If the simpler methods of titling just won't do, and you're looking to take it to the next level, this titlers buyer's guide will introduce you to some of the other options available.

Titlers fall into two broad categories: stand-alone and computer-based varieties. Stand-alone titlers are character generators that operate independent of a computer. They are often used with linear editing systems and live, multi-camera productions. Computer-based editors are software packages (sometimes including hardware as well) that work on your computer. Some are designed for use with nonlinear editing software, others allow you to create titles for direct export to tape.

Titlers that Stand Alone

On the introductory level of the standalone spectrum is Sima Product's SCG-2 ScreenWriter Plus, which retails for $150. This basic titler only has a couple of colors, sizes and fonts to choose from, making it useful for only the simplest of titling chores. Stepping up a rung or so in flexibility and price is Burst Electronics' RCG-3. It features eight different font and background colors, 10 pages of memory, 16 font sizes and its suggested retail price is $395.

DataVideo Technologies' EZ-10 titler provides 30 font sizes, 10 pages of memory, 256 font and background colors, five scroll and crawl speeds and it comes with GPI interface. It retails for $399. Videonics' TitleMaker 3000 comes with 4 font sizes, unlimited font and background colors and 16,000 characters of memory. Its character effects will include outline, dropshadow and transparency with eight scroll and roll speeds. The price of the TitleMaker 3000 is $799.

While the stand-alone titlers in this buyer's guide are all under $2,000, there are quite a few more expensive units available on the market. If you're looking to spend big bucks or need a professional stand-alone character generator, a little research will turn up a variety of more advanced products.