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Flickering Credit Roll
Hi,
Just been adding vertically scrolling credits to the end of my programme. I was using a pretty thin font, Julius Condensed Regular, which probably didn’t help matters, but it’s hard to get a really stable smooth scroll.Here’s the situation so far:
* BAD flicker during first attempt.
* To improve the situation, I checked the 1:2:1 Deflicker box in Boris FX.
* As the text moves up the screen, the colons shimmer, and the thin parts of letters, such as the tops of “a”s and bottom of “e”s flicker a little.
* Added an edge to the letters, using Boris, making the thin text look a bit thicker (didn’t use any softening though).
* Then things looked perceptually better, but every few frames the tops of “a”s and bottom of “e”s, “y”s, “g”s, etc, still appeared to trail a bit. A flicker is still obvious close up. From a distance, all appears fine, but it makes your eyes go funny. And when a lot of text is scrolling at once, the bottom of the letters do look as if they’re made of jelly.
Seriously, I have no problem fading static text in and out, why is scrolling text such a bugger (due to interlacing perchance?) and what can I do to further improve this, and have a solid flicker-free credit roll?
Just wondered if there were any tricks of the trade?
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13 Replies
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Hi Ajmetz,
I don’t know if this will do any good, but you could try converting the text to vectors to see if that helps at all.
As you’ve already tried the 1:2:1 option, then maybe the larger font is the only option.
K
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Hi!
The way I found to make this better was to use Photoshop and After Effects: I’d make the text in PS (yes, you get a huge file) and then import it into AE and animate, precompose and add a “Reduce Interlace Flicker” filter.
You can also play with the “Shutter Angle” setting.
It’s more work but the resulting movement is more pleasant to the eye.
HTH
Jj
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I used to make my credits using bitmap sequences and flash, so, have used seperate programmes in the past, but now I’ve got Boris FX, I’ve got lazy and like doing everything from the M100 timeline, although I will keep my eyes peeled for the “reduce interlace flicker” filter next time I’m in AE as that sounds groovy ^_^.
But I just solved the problem in Boris, by performing the following additional steps:
selected “Render fields as frames” in preferences
set edge softening to “1”.It looks a bit fuzzy in places, due to the softening/blur, but it doesn’t flicker at all now.
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Hi Ajmetz,
[Ajmetz] “But I just solved the problem in Boris, by performing the following additional steps:
selected “Render fields as frames” in preferences
“Just FYI, Boris recommends that this is always on for use within Media 100. As you have said, some effects look decidedly dodgy with it off. It gets renamed “Better Quality Field Rendering” in later versions.
K
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Well thats odd, as I can’t have that feature turned on when there’s video beneath the graphics, or the video flickers instead. For credits its plain black, so doesn’t matter, but when I tried it with my rotating polygons over a video, the jaggies in the polygons were reduced, but the video flickered like it had the wrong field order all of a sudden.
Hence I don’t usually have that option ticked by default.
In this case though, I saw the biggest improvement from softening the edges, as it took some of the thinner parts that were causing problems and diffused them into the black so they sat on it a bit better.
Render fields as frames did help a bit too mind, but the softening clinched it.
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Hi Ajmetz,
[Ajmetz] “Well thats odd, as I can’t have that feature turned on when there’s video beneath the graphics, or the video flickers instead. For credits its plain black, so doesn’t matter, but when I tried it with my rotating polygons over a video, the jaggies in the polygons were reduced, but the video flickered like it had the wrong field order all of a sudden.
“That is odd, though to be fair I have only used it in the OSX flavours of the software/Media 100. Perhaps it is something they altered.
Just checking though, is the video beneath just “showing through” or are you using a video track within Boris? Are you using Boris as an effect, a comp or a title?
Check the preferences are set for “upper field first” for video as well, mine always seem to default to NTSC’s lowerfield.
K
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That is odd, though to be fair I have only used it in the OSX flavours of the software/Media 100. Perhaps it is something they altered.
>>>Yeah, I’m talking Boris FX 6.1, and Graffiti 1.0
Just checking though, is the video beneath just “showing through” or are you using a video track within Boris?
>>>It’s a dedicated media track [3D plain, imported M100 By-Ref clip].
Are you using Boris as an effect, a comp or a title?
>>>A Composition Clip.
Check the preferences are set for “upper field first” for video as well, mine always seem to default to NTSC’s lowerfield.
>>>Yeah, hang on, the Media’s FACE is set to lower field. And Interpret Field Order in preferences is Lower Field.
I’ll try changing the FACE to upper and re-render, and let you know how I get on.
Having said that, I’ve actually finished the effect I was working on last week, and got past this problem by just leaving “render fields as frames” unchecked. It’d be quite a major headache to go through all last week’s work and re-render it all. But if this works, I’ll know for future use, so ta. -
Brilliant!
Just re-rendered, and it worked like a charm!
Probably should have guessed it myself, since the frame order looked wrong, but leaving the default at lower had never been a problem in the past.Anyway, it’s nice, because the “render fields as frames” option makes the polygons look a lot more hi-res.
Too busy to redo the whole animation now though. Might revisit it in a week or so if I get some spare time though.
Ta.
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Hi Ajmetz,
[Ajmetz] “Yeah, hang on, the Media’s FACE is set to lower field. And Interpret Field Order in preferences is Lower Field. “
That’ll be the one! Hope it works out for you.
K
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Yeah, just posted above [reply to my last post] that it did [work out]. Ta ^_^
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