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Rolling Credits have me stumped….
(I’m posting this over in FCP forum as well….)
Here is the situation.
I’m trying to create a high quality rolling credits for an independent feature length film, but once they get into FCP, they dont look good.Project is PAL 10bit Uncompressed Anamorphic 16×9
Credits need to run about 00:00:02:40 (approx)
Font is Helvetica Neue Roman 24pt
Size of Illustrator file is 1024px by about 30,000px.I laid out the credits in Illustrator CS2. I tried both exporting the text as is, and also tried selecting the text and using the Create Outlines option. (I have NOT tried exporting as as Photoshop PSD yet. Perhaps I should be rasterizing the sharp vector text???)
I tried bringin the Illustrator CS2 .AI file directly into AfterEffects 7.0, but it wouldnt show me the text. I then tried exporting as an EPS from Illustrator, which worked.
In AfterEffects, created a composition as PAL D1/DV Widescreen Square Pixel(1024×576), set my keyframes for the beginning and end, and rendered the sequence out as 10bit Uncompressed with no filters.
The resulting QT movie looked very good on the computer monitor. I then imported into FCP (5.04).
When I inserted into the timeline, it needed rendering as the timeline is Anamorphic and the credit rool is square pixel.
The resulting credit roll flickers and the fonts are not as nearly as clear as they should be. I tried using the flicker filter set to Medium, or Minimal, but that didnt help.I think I am doing something wrong here.
Should I be doing something to smooth out the sharp edges of the Illustrator vector text in the EPS? Should I rasterize before exporting from Illustrator? What about blur in After Effects or FCP?
Should my AE project be Square pixel or just regular anamorphic?
I’ve heard about the scanline issue, where the lenght of the entire roll in pixels should be an evenely divisable by the frame rate. Is there an easy way to figure that out?
Should I be ending up with an Anamorphic movie to bring into FCP? (When I make my subtitles in AE, I make them Anamorphic. They look fine in FCP…)
Any suggestions greatly appreciated….
Matthew -
2 Replies
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Quote: “In AfterEffects, created a composition as PAL D1/DV Widescreen Square Pixel(1024×576)..”
I’m no pro (I dont even know what 10bit is) but my feeling says you should try it with an anamorphic Project in AE instead of a square pixel project. This problems you describe can appear when square is mixed with anamorph pixels…
Dino
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Square vs. Anamorph should only affect the horizontal scaling, not a problem with a vertical scroll.
Q: Did you render the animation out without using Fields ?
Using Fields, it will look crappy on the monitor, but much smoother on a video. (if you choose the correct field-order !)
If you’re not outputting to film or the web (other media than TV or DVD), absolutely render with fields.I always add a gaussian or fast blur of less than a pixel (0.25 – 0.5) to any text layer.
Also, many people add an expression to the position after setting the keyframes so the text will always fall exactly on a pixel value and no differences in anti-aliasing of text occur from frame to frame.
the expresssion is:
[value[0], Math.floor(value[1]}]
Sometimes this gives better results:
[value[0], Math.floor(value[1]}] + [0,0.5]
do some short test-renders with each of these tips, and decide what works best for you.
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