Lower Thirds Setup Guides

A lower third is only useful once it plays cleanly over your picture. Each guide below takes a Titlo export — MOV ProRes 4444 with alpha, or a transparent PNG — and gets it on air or on your timeline, including the settings that cause dark edges, halos or a black background when they are wrong.

Which export for which tool

• OBS Studio, vMix, DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro: MOV ProRes 4444 with alpha for animation, or a standard transparent PNG for a static title.
• ATEM Mini family: stills only in the media pool — export a PNG with the Premultiplied alpha (ATEM) option. For animation, go through an external player (see the ATEM guide).

Guides

• Transparent Lower Thirds in OBS Studio — Add an animated lower third with a real alpha channel to OBS Studio: Media Source settings, show/hide hotkeys, and fixes for dark edges.
• Animated Lower Thirds in vMix with Alpha — Use ProRes 4444 lower thirds with transparency in vMix: add the input, fire it on an overlay channel, and send key & fill to a hardware switcher.
• Lower Thirds on an ATEM Switcher (Media Pool & Key/Fill) — The two ways to key lower thirds on a Blackmagic ATEM: premultiplied PNG stills in the media pool, or animated graphics from an external player as key & fill.
• Lower Thirds with Alpha in DaVinci Resolve & Premiere Pro — Drop ProRes 4444 lower thirds with transparency onto your edit in DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro, and fix alpha-mode edge problems.