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Need help keeping text clean after letterboxing
I’m editing a show in Final Cut Pro, timeline is 720×480 anamorphic 16:9. The footage is DV, but I have the timeline codec set to Apple ProRes 422, which helps keep the graphics and text looking good after rendering. Everything looks great in both my canvas window and on my external Sony monitor, set to 16:9.
One of the things I need to deliver is a 4:3 letterboxed version, and am struggling with my text looking poor on the letterboxed version. I’ve tried two different methods to letterbox:
1) Nest my anamorphic timeline in a 4:3 timeline, then render out. When I view the 4:3 movie on my Sony monitor, the text looks noticeably softer, and a little degraded.
2) Render out stand-alone movie. Then take that movie into Compressor, turn on the Letterbox filter, and set output to 16×9 1.78:1. Render out a new movie. Result: text that is not moving now looks great, not soft. But now end credit scroll looks really lousy – text very jittery as it crawls up the screen. Also I notice some subtle jitteriness on my footage, especially if there’s dramatic motion. I’ve tried messing around with the Frame Controls and Encoder tab settings, but nothing seems to help. It’s almost like there’s a field order problem, but no combination makes it look any better.
At this point I’ll choose the lesser of two evils – option 1, where things get a little soft. Does anyone have any advice for me as to a better way to do this, or what setting I might try tweaking? Maybe this is as good as software letterboxing can do, but I don’t have any hardware way of doing it. My last resort would be just editing in a 4:3 timeline all along, doing the text there, so the text never gets distorted.
Thanks a lot for reading this & providing help if you can. Let me know if I need to provide any further details.
Mike
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7 Replies
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Is FULL checked in your Sequence > Render All options?
Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro -
How about adding titles in the letterboxed sequence independently? What if you take the content and nest that and bring your titles in on track 2 as clips? Better? And definitely check the 4:3 sequence settings, especially render settings…
Michael Gossen
Helium Digital Media -
Yes, Full is checked. In fact if I render out an anamorphic stand alone movie, using current settings, and reimport the movie back into FCP, it looks fine. Only when I letterbox that movie, either using FCP or Compressor, does text start to degrade.
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I think what your saying is more or less the same as my “last resort” option in the original post. In other words, doing my text on a 4:3 timeline with all the footage being letterboxed. One reason I prefer to stay in a 16:9 timeline is that another delivery format for me is DVD, and I’d much rather my material displayed full quality, full screen on a widescreen TV, rather than being letterboxed and pillarboxed. Also I like to use Motion to make my graphics and lower thirds, and I like working in a 16:9 canvas.
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Export as Quicktime (self contained or reference)
Open in Compressor. Double check that Compressor has guessed your field order correctly (sometimes it is wrong…fix it if necessary) Do not use the Letterbox filter. Use the padding in the Geometry tab instead. Turn on the Frame Controls and set the scaling to Better or Best.
Verify that you are maintaining the correct field order all the way through the process.
I just did a bunch of these and they look pristine.
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Thanks –
I’ll give it a try tomorrow at work… -
check in sequence settings. video processing tab
motion filtering quality should be set to best.
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