How to Create Scrolling Credits in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 with the Roll Feature

Scrolling credits are a classic way to wrap up a production and give credit where it is due. Every film, documentary, and professional video ends with them. In older versions of Premiere Pro, creating scrolling text required workarounds or the legacy Title tool. But with the Roll feature in the Essential Graphics panel, it is now just a checkbox away.

Today we are going to go over how to create scrolling credits in Adobe Premiere Pro CC using the Roll feature.

How to Create Scrolling Credits in Premiere Pro

Setting Up the Text

1. Navigate to the end of your sequence where you want the credits to appear.
2. Select the Type Tool (T) from the toolbar.
3. Click once on the Program Monitor. Do not click and drag. A single click creates a text box that scales automatically with your content. Clicking and dragging creates a fixed-size box that you would need to manually resize.
4. Type your credits text. I recommend writing it in a separate text editor first (Notepad, TextEdit, Google Docs) and then copying and pasting it in. This makes formatting much easier for long credit lists.
5. With the text box active, press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on Mac) to select all the text.

Formatting the Credits

6. Open the Essential Graphics panel. You can switch to the Graphics workspace or go to Window > Essential Graphics.
7. Make sure the text is selected. In the text formatting section, set the alignment to center aligned. This is the standard for credits.
8. Format the text with your chosen font, size, and color. A common approach is to use a larger, bolder font for role titles (Director, Producer) and a smaller or regular weight for the names.

Enabling the Roll

9. Click somewhere outside the text in the Essential Graphics panel to deselect the text content. Click on the graphics layer name itself at the top. This reveals a different set of properties.
10. Find the Roll checkbox and enable it.
11. Your text will now scroll when played back. The speed of the scroll is determined by the length of the graphics layer on the timeline. A longer layer means a slower scroll. A shorter layer means a faster scroll.
12. Drag the edges of the graphics layer on the timeline to adjust the scroll speed to your liking.

Adjusting Roll Settings

Inside the Roll settings you will find a few additional options:

• Start Off Screen makes the credits begin below the visible frame and scroll upward into view. This is the standard behavior.
• End Off Screen makes the credits scroll all the way up and off the top of the frame. Without this, the text stops scrolling when the last line reaches the bottom of the frame.
• Pre-Roll adds a pause before the scrolling begins.
• Post-Roll adds a pause after the scrolling finishes.

Tips

• Keep the scroll speed comfortable. Viewers should be able to read each name without straining. A good test is to read the credits yourself at normal speed. If you can’t keep up, slow it down.
• Add a background. Credits over black is the standard, but you can also place them over footage. Create a Color Matte (File > New > Color Matte) in black and place it behind the credits layer.
• Separate sections with spacing. Use extra line breaks between sections (Cast, Crew, Special Thanks) to keep things organized and easy to scan.
• For an alternative approach to scrolling text, check out creating scrolling credits with the older text tool.

That is how you create scrolling credits in Premiere Pro. The Roll feature makes it incredibly simple, and once you have the text formatted, the whole process takes just a few minutes.