DaVinciResolve

We're using DaVinci Resolve 18, because HitFilm Express is (in the immortal words of Bruce Wayne) schwarbage.

Sliding Text Around

AKA "The easy way, instead of that complicated fuss described below." We don't need to cut blocks out of our source media or anything!

1. Place the Text+ chunk onto the timeline.
2. Position the timecode needle at the start of the Text+ chunk.
3. Get the text written and placed where you want it at the start.
4. Go to the Settings section of the Inspector for the Text+ object.
5. Tick the "diamonds" for Zoom and Position to generate a starting keyframe.
6. For each goal position, scrub to the right place and tick the diamonds again for new keyframes.
7. Lather rinse repeat until done.

Nov 2023: For some reason the "just tick the diamonds" method isn't working in 18.6.3, but using the splines interface we can make it do what we want. Annoying change, but at least there's a workaround. Use Inspector / Settings to create the keyframes, then manipulate them in the splines view. Trying to use the Transform options in Title or Settings does nothing.

EDIT It seems to work if the Bezier controls are just... visible? Further experimentation needed but we seem to be approaching A System, so that's good.

Bonus tip: You can just "position" the text all the way off the screen at the end to make it zoom away.

Pinning Text To An Object On Screen

It's a silly party trick but hey, my videos are silly videos. So.

1. Find the bit you want to use the party trick on. Ctrl-B it down to just the chunk you want.
2. Make a Text+ element with the same start-and-end points.
3. Edit, size, and position the text where you want it and make sure you're at the start of the clip.
4. Select the text bit and right-click to turn it into a Composite clip. Name it usefully.
5. Go over to the Color function and find the stacked clips. (Enable display of Clips at the top if needed. Might need to switch to the Tracker mode at the bottom center, too.)
6. Select the video (not text) clip.
7. Make sure Tracker is set to Stabilizer, then click the three-dots menu next to the Stabilizer indicator and select Classic Stabilizer.
8. At the bottom-right of the Tracker display, change Cloud Tracker to Point Tracker.
9. At the bottom-left corner click on the location-picker cursor-select button.
10. In the video preview up top a red plus symbol will appear. Use the pointer to drag-and-drop that to the object in the video that you want to track your text against. It should be a clear & distinct object, as best as you can find in the available image.
11. In the Tracker options below, make sure Pan and Tilt are enabled. You shouldn't need Zoom or Rotate.
12. Still in the Tracker section, click the Track Forward button. (It's the "play" button, basically.) You may need to nudge that a couple of times if the tracker gets confused.
13. Once that's done, go back to the beginning of the clip and use the Play button for the preview window to see where your tracking indicator goes.
14. If needed: Use the Tracker window controls to pause and re-adjust the tracker indicator until you can play the clip through and the indicator goes where you want it to.
15. After you have the tracker data created, select the Text (Compound) clip.
16. Just like before you'll need to set Classic Stabilizer and Point Tracker (different clip resets to defaults).
17. Select the video clip (this has the path info we need).
18. In the "three dots" menu select Copy Track Data.
19. Select the text/compound clip, then use the "three dots" menu to Paste Track Data.
20. Turn off the Zoom tickybox (next to the Point/Cloud Tracker selector).
21. To the left of that, make sure Strong is set to -100 (negative one hundred) for whatever reason, the YouTube guy said so, that's why.
22. Click the Stabilize button (which is found under the Stabilizer drop-down selector) to apply the path data to the text/compound clip (which you still have selected, right?).
23. Use the playback control for the preview window up top to confirm it looks good. Ctrl-Z your way out of this mess or delete the compound clip & start over, if needed. Otherwise, you're done!

Thanks to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4G4kVJrBn0 for showing how it's done.