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Crisp Credit Crawl Issues!!!
Hello everyone,
I’ve read over alot of postings about this, and there have been alot of suggestions. I’ve tried most of them. With that in mind, this is my situation.
I have a short film where I am building the credit crawl at the end. I’ve used a Photoshop file, Boris Text Crawl, Boris 3D Text, FCP text crawl, Alex4D Credit Crawl, and they all look about the same, jittery and jumpy, and overall crappy.
I have an NTSC monitor (flatscreen) aside from my computer monitor. It obviously looks better on my computer screen. I’ve adjusted pixels per sec., I’ve only used the point controls to place text and they are all complete whole numbers, I’ve adjusted color to be not totally black or white (my crawl is white text on black), it moves at a decent clip not too fast or too slow. Pretty basic I think, text is mostly centered, moving bottom to top.My project and sequence settings: This is an SD anamorphic project, shot in 24pa, captured correctly for editing in a timeline at 23.98 (I also tried building the crawl in a 29.97 sequence and still the same crappy text). Sequence is uncompressed 8 bit, NTSC DV 3:2 (720×480), pixels are NTSC CCIR 601. The size and font doesn’t seem to matter since I want to use two fonts that aren’t exactly simple, but they’re not complicated either. I’ve done tests with very simple fonts at large sizes, to no avail, the same outcome. I tried the same crawls in a Prores 422 HQ sequence and no improvement (someone suggested doing this in a posting). Timeline settings are at unlimited RT (in Boris generators, I get dropped frames during playback, I have to render all in order to play without that error), and all settings are set to high quality or best render, or 100% whatever…
I can’t seem to get crisp moving text!!! And the weirdest thing of all…the clip is colored orange, I then render all video, and the text looks even worse! On both my computer monitor and NTSC monitor, usually it looks better on my computer monitor since that is progressive. Go figure!
I’ve tried everything except After Effects, which I am only a novice at and don’t really have the time to try to fiddle with it at the moment. I will try it later, but for right now I need to make a crawl that is passable and not obviously crappy for festival deadlines. I will note however that I have not tried any of the crawls on DVD, except the original Photoshop file I tried first, which looks basically the same on my NTSC monitor.
I’m at a complete loss. If this is something that is inherent in video for tv and there’s nothing I can do about it, then please tell me so I don’t waste anymore time.
Thanks so much for your help, this forum is the best.
Joseph
Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.5.5
FCP 5.1.4
AE 6.5
Quicktime 7.5.5
4GB RAM
Plenty of storage
Panasonic AG-DVX100A -
14 Replies
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Have you tried LiveType?
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None of the methods you’ve tried have a proper high quality motion blur. I’d recommend Motion but I’m not sure your version has all the tools needed to make this work. So bite the bullet and go right to After Effects. Make a comp the size and frame rate (23.976) of your timeline, put a new layer in it, put your text in and animate the Y position. Turn on motion blur. Render it out to Animation with straight alpha (if alpha is needed). You are also badly limited by the DV codec. When your sequence is finished, change the sequence compressor to DV50 or ProRes. There’s also a limit to how fast you can roll titles at a given frame rate without making them flickery.
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First, it’s a roll.
There is only one readable speed for ntsc 29.97 video without flicker. 120 lines per sec.
So I’m not sure what to do with 24p played back at 30p on a 60i screen, but it should apply.
Move the roll up 120 lines every second. If that is too fast or slow, you have to change the leading of the text or the size.
If it’s really slow, you can go to 240 lines per sec.
So you’ll have to do some math. But if the roll starts at Y=0 and needs to last 10 seconds, then the keyframe 10 seconds later should be Y= -1200.
Easiest to make it in photoshop and then animate the still.
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Try creating the credit roll by first making a “Text” (static, not scrolling) and then drop it in and make it long enough in duration to use the Motion tab in the viewer to set keyframes for it’s beginning and end so that it moves from bottom to top. If it still doesn’t look smooth, apply a video filter: Flicker filter. This should work and stave off the After Effects learning process for now. Don’t forget about using a font that is most forgiving with the scan lines, like Gill Sans, and make sure it’s either bold or large enough to be greater than a thin line.
I hope this helps you and you get across the finish line before your deadline. -Stephen
Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer -
Thanks for the response, No I have not tried LiveType and to be honest, I’ve never used it. Not sure if I have the time to fiddle with that one…
Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.5.5
FCP 5.1.4
AE 6.5
Quicktime 7.5.5
4GB RAM
Plenty of storage
Panasonic AG-DVX100A -
thanks Tom, I think you might be right. Actually I updated my specs but it didn’t save apparently. I’m running final cut suite 2 now. But I know AE better than I do Motion…
Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.5.5
FCP 5.1.4
AE 6.5
Quicktime 7.5.5
4GB RAM
Plenty of storage
Panasonic AG-DVX100A -
Thanks Brett. I’ll try that, but I’ve done something similar in Alex4D, where they provide the lines per second speed settings. It still didn’t seem like it improved, but I will try it regardless. Unfortunately, the credit crawl length isn’t a whole even number divisible by 120, so I’ll see where it leaves me.
Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.5.5
FCP 5.1.4
AE 6.5
Quicktime 7.5.5
4GB RAM
Plenty of storage
Panasonic AG-DVX100A -
Thanks Stephen…interesting approach, simple and most basic, and will probably work? I’ll try it.
Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.5.5
FCP 5.1.4
AE 6.5
Quicktime 7.5.5
4GB RAM
Plenty of storage
Panasonic AG-DVX100A -
Does anyone know why the text looks WORSE when I render it out? It looks like it usually does with the orange bar, but then I render all and it looks and moves even worse, can’t wrap my brain around that one…
Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6 something
FCP 6.0.5
AE 7
Quicktime Pro 7.6
4GB RAM
Plenty of storage
Panasonic AG-DVX100A -
Very basic but make sure your viewer is set to 100% in fcp…
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