Piexelated Animated Text

[Rick Macadamia]

Flip thanks again. I’ve posted a test which accurately shows my problem here: https://www.mindspring.com/~bfoot/test.mov
MrMike I think we’ve got two different problems here…but what do I know?

[Filip Vandueren]

This animation looks fine:

It is however interlaced footage (jagged edges!), so there are a couple of things that might be going wrong:

– you have the wrong field order (that would cause jittery motion, not true blockyness)
– you’re outputting only 1 field to beta.

Solution to the first is simple. change your output settings to render in the correct fieldorder
The second one:
I don’t know how exactly you’re getting it out of the Blackmagic,
But after effects usually throws away one field for displaying on the computer monitor.
Most NLE’s like Final Cut Pro do the same on screen, and sometimes also to the realtime monitor (depending on what quality you’re working in)

In effect these de-interlacing options are reducing the vertical resolution in half, so there come the blocks.

So the problem is in how you’re outputting to tape.

[Filip Vandueren]

Hey Mike;

[Rant]
What’s happening is the crappy implementation of continuous rasterizing of vector-text.
I remember the first time I used it: I was really angry!
How could Adobe let this pass quality control: the first thing anyone would want to do with Cont. rasters is scale up text, right ?
[/Rant]

Anyways: enabling Motion Blur helps, but slows you down (esp. on 3D layers) and might not be the look you want if there’s faster motion too.
A gaussian or fast blur as small as 0.3 pixels applied to the text layer, is enough to cure the problem and if you’re outputting to video, can never hurt.

[Mrmike]

Thanks for the help, Filip. We’ll try the small blur and see how it looks to tape. Real nuisance though. If it is AE, I wonder if 6.5 is any better (we’re using 6.0).

Mike

[Filip Vandueren]

Nope, It isn’t any better in 6.5.

[Mrmike]

Well, I hate to bring it up, but in terms of text animations, would another product do a better job? Motion, Combustion, etc. It’s a bit frustrating…