How to Make a Credit Roll in Premiere Pro
The credit roll is one of the most important parts to any movie! This is where you give credit and thanks to the team that helped the project come to life. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, making a credit roll that’s hundreds of lines long probably seems like a daunting task that will be difficult to keep track of while animating. Well, if you’re using Adobe Premiere Pro, that is not the case.
Related: 19 Best Premiere Pro Tutorials for Beginners
In this video, we have two methods of creating easy credits, and both will result in the same end-product. It just comes down to your personal preference. Whichever method you choose, it will be a lot easier to make your credits if you’ve already typed them up in a word processor and can just copy and paste them into your project. You’ll still need to apply formatting within Premiere Pro, but it’s much easier to have your text prepared. Cover photo by: Jon Tyson
Watch the video tutorial on Youtube:
Method #1: Legacy Title
The first method uses the legacy Title tool. To access this, go to File -> New -> Legacy Title. After you confirm your resolution and name settings, click on the symbol that has an up and down arrow on it. In that pop up menu, click on Roll. This will turn the layer into a credit roll automatically! To create a full roll that enters from offscreen and exits offscreen, select the corresponding checkboxes. Otherwise, the credits will start centered on screen and end the same way. Click OK, then you can copy and paste your credits, and format them as you wish. As you add lines, a scrollbar will appear, so that you can scroll up and down your new credits. Once you’re happy with the credits, close the window. Then drag the new clip onto your timeline. The speed of the credit roll is directly determined by the duration you set for this clip in your sequence, so drag it or set the duration in order to make the credit roll the appropriate speed.
After you confirm your resolution and name settings, create a text layer and copy and paste your credits into it. Then click on the symbol that has an up and down arrow on it.
Method #2: Essential Graphics
For this second method, you’ll want to be in the Essential Graphics panel. Click the text tool (usually found to the right of your video preview when in the Essential Graphics view), and paste in your credits text. With no layer selected in your Essential Graphics panel (you can click anywhere in the layers box other than another layer in order to deselect it), check the “Roll” box at the bottom of the page of settings. This will enable the rolling aspect of a credit roll. Select Start Offscreen and End Offscreen if you want either of those effects, which we mentioned in the previous method. A scroll bar will appear on screen that you can use to scan through the roll and edit it. You can change the duration of the clip in your sequence to change the rolling speed.
General Credits Tips
Credits can be done any way you desire. However, some more interesting layouts may require more than one text layer. Using the Essential Graphics panel, create another text layer and line it up perfectly with the original layer. Now you can type job titles on the left column, and names in the right column, and it will be much easier to match these up.
These quick tips should enable you to make a credit roll worthy of a feature film, and there is plenty of room for creativity even when you’re dealing with just white text on a black background. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more Adobe Creative Cloud tutorials!
Vastly insufficient detail to be useful. There is no “roll” checkbox anywhere I can find in the essential graphics panel, and you seem to say the text tool is there also, and there is none, there’s a text tool related to the timeline. (I’m on Premiere Pro CC 2021).
Hi David, it looks like we may have had a typo in our instructions. The roll checkbox actually only shows up when you have a text layer in the essential graphics panel and there are NO layers selected. You can see it done properly in the video tutorial within the article, but it seems we wrote it incorrectly in the article itself. We’ve updated that in the article – thanks for pointing it out.