Arrows, shapes and pictures

An overlay clip does not have to be text. The same clip can hold a shape or a picture, and you choose which on the Overlay tab.

Shapes

An arrow, a rectangle or an ellipse. Colour and Thickness set the outline; Fill, Fill colour and Fill opacity set the inside.

An arrow pointing at the thing you are talking about is the single most useful overlay there is, and it is worth more than another sentence of narration. A rectangle around a region is the second.

Place and size them by dragging on the preview.

Pictures

Choose a file, or copy an image anywhere in Windows and press Paste. PNG, JPEG, BMP and WebP are accepted, and a PNG with transparency keeps it.

Size and Opacity control it, and the fit setting keeps the picture's own proportions inside its box rather than stretching it.

Remove the picture empties the box without deleting the clip, so the animation and the timing you already set are kept.

If the file goes missing later, the overlay draws nothing and keeps its place rather than throwing an error at you.

Animations apply here too

The same entry and exit animations work on shapes and pictures, playing over the first and last seven tenths of a second of the clip. Type is the exception: it has nothing to reveal on a shape, so it holds still. An arrow that fades in a moment before you mention the thing it points at is worth the ten seconds it takes to set up.

A rule of thumb

Every overlay is a thing the viewer has to read while also watching the video. Two at once is usually one too many.