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those old low down credit roll blues…
Hello All Cows,
I’ve been doing this for years and every time I go to do end credits, its the same fricken thing. They look like crap. I have tried almost everything. I’ve used fractal noise, blurs, lowered the opacity, deinterlaced… I’ve also read those articals about speed and timing. They make no sence to me whatsoever. No, I don’t pretent to like math.
This time I am doing credits for a project that was shot on 35mm, converted to HDCAM and dubbed to DVCAM to edit on an Avid Adrenaline. We are recapturing HDCAM tonight and need the credits in a week. I started last night because this time I want to do it right!!!! Anyhooo.
Rather than make the text in Photoshop and import it into AfterEffects, like I usually do, I decided to use the Boris Title Crawl tool in FCPHD using an 18 point Arial font. (FCP because that’s what I have at home.) WALA!! First try and it looks great, perfect. I can’t believe it, I really can’t.
BUT! of course these’s a but. I was in a SD DV timeline to render this. When I created a HDTV 1080i timeline (and with so many fricken choices I not even really sure if this what I want to use) and rendered the same file uncompressed 8 bit. It looks like complete poo. Whaaa? I am running some more tests because I need to eventually export it as a quicktime and import the credits into an Avid Adreniline. Who knows if that will even work?
Any comments from the chicken farm? I don’t often work on real 35mm projects so any help would be great!
The producer is convinced that doing the credits in After Effects is much better that using the Avid Title Roll tool, but after using FCPs Roll and seeing the results I really have my doubts. I’m going to post this on the Avid forum as well.
I just tried rendering it again using:
1920×1080 HDTV 1080i (16:9)
NTSC – CCIR 601 / DV Anamorphic
23.98Quicktime Settings
Compressor DV / DVCPRO – NTSC
Quality 100%It rendered it out with strange green lines, inlarged text and would not play.. Nice. Looks like I will need a week to figure this out.. I will keep this post updated thur the week, as I know this is a problem many of us share. And even more of us don’t even know what a good roll should look like. Hope you guys had a happy Turkey Day!
Chris
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6 Replies
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I would suggest you change your sequence settings. Your compressor looks as if it’s still set to DV NTSC. I would suggest the Apple 10 Bit Codec. You can get around all this by using Final Cut Pro>Easy Setup>HD Uncompressed 1080i (or whatever you need). Make a new sequence and you will be set. You can find a list of Easy Setups in the Sequence Settings dialog (CMD + 0).
And yes, you should be able to output a QT movie with the alpha channel if you use the proper codec. I suggest the Animation Codec with a bit depth of Millions of Colors +.
Good Luck.
Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Seminar!
fcpworld.com -
Kevin,
Yeap it was DV NTSC that was giving me green weirdness. I just tried component video.. that look like poo too.
I’ll Try 10 bit now.Thanks Chris
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Joe’s Field Blender
https://www.joesfilters.com/joesfieldblender.php
placed on the credits has worked for me… not sure what the quality would look like on HD, but it may be worth a shot. -
Yo Zcats,
Thanks for the link, interesting stuff. The thing I am thinking is, that it is 23.98 1080i. Does the “i” mean interlaced? Or is all 23.98 stuff progressive. I imagine I am working in progressive. Film is progressive right? 24p means progessive right? So should I just ignore what I am seeing on my NTSC monitor and imagine it will look ok on a Barco projector? Hummm…
I did take Kevins advice and set my sequence to HDTV 1080i 10bit uncompressed. I can’t play it to my NTSC monitor realtime cause I don’t have a HD card.
I exported 2 files; one file as just FCPQuicktime using sequece settings, this file was 1.4 gigs. The 2nd file using; Quicktime conversion Animation codec at best depth. This file was only 550megs. Hummm, do you think I lost some quality there?
I first watched the QT convertion Roll with the Quicktime 7.0.1 player at half size, but still HD widescreen on my desktop. It drops alot of frames but the text totally holds together, Clean as a whistle. I guess I will not know for sure till I play off the AVID. Which I hope to hell has a HD card.
I then watched the FCPexported QT. It popped up a 720×486 window! Humm WHY? It played fine with less dropped frames and looked great on the computer screen, but definately not 1080i or widescreen.
I also exported the Roll out of QT as an AVI. Trying to antisipate problems on the Windows AVID side of things.
Fun Stuff. Chris
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Hey Chris,
lotta questions there. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I’ll shed what light I know on the subject.
1. Yes the i stands for interlaced. 23.98 is interlaced or progressive and does not necessarily mean the footage is progressive. As soon as you went from film to HDCAM, the footage was probably interlaced, unless whoever did the transfer made sure it was progressive and even then because it was on an HDcam tape and the DVcam, it was ‘interlaced’ for sure and running at 29.97fps.
Now here’s the strange thing, all video formats, progressive or interlaced are in fact interlaced. Meaning, the image is split up into two different fields.
Your NTSC monitor will always show the image interlaced, it has no other choice. The only way to view progressive image is on a progressive plasma TV (or LCD like a computer monitor) that is playing from a progressive DVD player. (or watching a film)
When a progressive image get’s interlaced, it goes through a process called a pull-down pattern, where one picture is broken up into two different fields (half a picture) and then spread out to 29.97 frames a second.
I put together a web page to help go through all this mess….
https://www.mandarinpictures.com/stephenzinn/
It deals more with shooting 24p on a DV camera than HD, but the principles are still the same.
If you are going back out to film, then whoever you give your footage to to make the transfer will convert your interlaced video into progressive pictures. The important thing for you is not to switch back and forth between interlaced and progressive. You should edit in a progressive sequence, and if your HDCAM footage was changed to interlaced, you should be able to convert it back to progressive using CinemaTools (comes with FCP).
Read the webpage I put together and then come back with further questions.
As for the Animation codec export being a smaller filesize…
First thing to check is if you exported as a self-contained movie both times.
Second thing… you may not have lost quality, it all depends on what your initial footage was in, which was DVcam. Going from DVcam to either uncompressed or to animation will not give you any difference in quality. You can only go down in quality and not increase quality. You went down in quality when you went first from 35mm to HDcam, then from HDcam to DVcam.When you watched the FCPexported QT and it popped up a 720×486 window… I’m assuming you are watching the exported footage on an HD monitor? Otherwise, the monitor has no choice but to display in 720i.
So much of this depends on your final footage. Either you will give an edit decision list to a film cutter to cut the film, or you will export out to HD and expose new film to the HD.
I suggested Joe’s Field Blender for the credits because it helps to get rid of some of the jiggers on credits. It treats the credits more as independant pictures rather than two fields.
Hope this helped some.
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Thanks Stephen!
I’ll read that page and get back to you. To clairify though… I am rendering a 1080i sequence with white credits over a black BG using the Boris Roll tool in FCP. No footage yet. I am watching the renders on my computer monitor not an HD or a NTSC broadcast monitor, because I don’t have a HD card at home.It always amazes me how impotant the tranfer of film and intial capture of native footage is. Yet time and time again I see this task left to assistant editors, who have no clue what the presets are for, or why it might matter down the road.
Thanks so much, I be in touch soon after I read that page.
Chris
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