In the last tutorial, we used a masking technique to simulate a curved line drawn on the screen for a short branding bumper. Now we will add the branding elements to this bumper short.

Branding Elements

The ebooks in the series have a common subtitle “All you need is a mouse” to reinforce the most important feature of the DIY book series, which is that no program coding is needed. This subtitle will fade in and move slowly to the left until it is next to the mouse, which will move in from the left and stop at the high point of the curved line. On the right, the company logo and url will fade in at the lowest point of the curve.

Because the short audio isn’t 5 seconds in duration, it will begin playing .5 seconds after the start of the animation and last for 2 seconds. A second audio, the mouse laugh, will play at the end as the background changes. The white gradient background fades at the 3.5 second point to allow the sky background, which is also prominent on my website, to become visible. The 5 second animation short will take 3 seconds, with an additional 2 seconds on the end as a placeholder. This placeholder will be replaced with the marketing video that the bumper prefixes.

1. Open ScreenFlow and close the Configure Recording window.
   
   
2. From the ScreenFlow Menubar, click File - Open. Open the .screenflow project file.
   
   
3. We want the mouse to enter the screen .5 second from the start of the video, as the drawn line reaches the top of the curved line. Place the Scrubber at the .5 second point on the Timeline. Click Insert - Choose to import the mouse .png, which will be placed in the center of the screen. Drag the mouse to the top of the curve.
   
   
4. The new track will be at the top of the stack. Click on the handle at the left edge of the track to drag it down under the audio track. It is optional to keep the audio track at the top. This is just my preference.
   
   
5. The mouse will be on the screen to the end of the animation. So, drag the right edge of the mouse track to the 5 second point, which is the end of the animation.
   
   
6. The movement of the mouse from the left of the screen to the top of the curve will take 2 seconds and stops just before the first audio ends. Place the Scrubber at the 2.5 second point (2 seconds beyond .5 seconds) on the Timeline, which is the end point for the mouse animation. Select the mouse track and click the Add Video Action in the Video Properties pane. The small yellow rectangle on the mouse track represents the video action. Click on the left edge and extend the rectangle to the beginning edge of the mouse track.
   
   
7. Move the Scrubber to the left edge of the mouse track and drag the mouse to the left off the screen. Deselect the mouse track by clicking outside the screen.
   
   

Next we will use the Text tools to add the subtitle and logo text to the animation.

ScreenFlow screenshots used by permission of Telestream.