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FCP 6.0.5 EXPORT – Titles, Name Supers as well as Subtitles awful.
My objective is to get Titles, Name Supers as well as Subtitles as close as possible to major feature films.
On DVDs I have watched many feature films (on Sony Bravia TV 32″ as well as 20″ Cinema Display), all have sharp, crisp and solid colored Titles, Supers and Subtitles, no fuzziness with drop shadows or jagged edges anywhere. Even when I have watched heavily compressed avi movies their Titles, Name Supers and Subs look better than mine on a DVD. I have been unable to get anything near what they do on my DVDs, while If I export from FCP as a QuickTime movie using default settings all seems fine (no conversion or compressor export). To make a DVD I export from FCP using compressor with default settings for best DVD less than 90 minutes. I have also tried CBR 7mbps. No significant improvement.
I have done quite a few tests nothing has really improved the DVD significantly, be it the Titles, Name Supers or Graphic Subtitles. Everything looks as to be hoped for in FCP.
My source files include for the main Title a Motion file – a modified “NTSC Broadcast SD” with project properties: 2880 x 1920 with Field Order: None the rest default. Looks great in FCP but not when exported through compressor as m2v. This Title is superimposed over a moving BG captured DV/DVCPRO NTSC compression (default settings). The problems are: the main Font color is not Solid it is a little fuzzy (I can see speckles), the outline is black and looks similar to the font, the drop shadow is fuzzy (lots of speckles).
BTW all my colors throughout the project is below 235 and above 16.
My end credits also a Motion file with same settings as above but on a Black BG seem to be relatively fine through the chain, my guess is because of the Black BG. My opening Titles have similar settings created with LiveType but they are on a Black BG too and seem fine.
My name supers are Photoshop psd files again 2880 x 1920. Looks great in FCP again loses quality during export.
Subtitles: After having tried several demos my subtitles suffer from a different yet similar problem, I do not get sharp crisp edged subtitles regardless of how much I fidget with subs software settings or DVD SP settings. For example the word “Where” the capital letter W all the edges are jagged. Whereas the letter “h” the vertical lines are ok. I am using Helvetica 26 Bold. I have tried Arial as well. There is no major improvement importing into DVD SP Graphic files or text files. The only advantage seems to be with Graphic files I can control kerning whereas with Text files I do not know how. Maybe the Graphic subs are overall slightly better?
After having exhausted all my resources as well as consulting with Apple’s OnetoOne, my conclusion is I will never have a professional output unless I outsource the compression from my timeline to DVD and is done with a hardware compressor, I guess?
Alex
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2 Replies
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You mentioned your title is superimposed over DV background. If your sequence is a DV sequence, that’s your problem. DV does a very poor job with titles, and sharp contrasty graphics. You could change your sequence compressor to a less compressed format like DV50 or even ProRes and you should get better results.
Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
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Thanks for the suggestion, I have tried both, with ProRes I rendered the whole timeline, while with DVC Pro 50 2min where my titeles can be found, no significant improvement in either case. As well given the fact that my footage is not super high in quality, for a test I chose a random visual from some demo. Placed my graphics on the footage no significant improvement. As I mentioned the quality is fine in the timeline and as a QT Export, so for potential broadcast I do not see a major problem. But for DVD production, it is not acceptable, not sharp crisp or solid colors. Thanks.
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