PNG fine until put on timeline

[Jack Sewell]

Hi Tom,

A hunter? Blimemy, I got mine from the supermarket. 🙂

Thanks for the info, so just to clarify, if I am getting some slight distortion on the text on the time line, this will be rectified if I render and bounce at DV50 / ProRes.

happy new year, many thanks

[Tom Brooks]

Jack,
DV50 won’t solve all your problems with poor quality text. It is less compressed than DV and the color information in particular is less compressed. So it helps maintain the quality. The difference is minor if your text is well designed. If the text is pushing the limits of the PAL or NTSC tv system the difference can be more dramatic. Best thing is to give it a quick try on your system and see what you get. Simply duplicate your sequence and, in the copy, go to the menu under Sequence/Settings, go the section for Quicktime Video Settings and change Compressor to DV50 or Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2. Render the sequence and compare it to the original DV sequence.

You should see a noticeable improvement in the clarity and definition of the smaller text and less bleeding or smearing of the text color (if it’s a saturated color).

After that, there are things you could experiment with to see if you can get better quality. Those would be color choices, font size, shadow, stroke, font, etc. If you are moving the text you run into another set of challenges with that.
-Tom

PS-Does your supermarket also carry venison?

[Jack Sewell]

ok, I’ve changed the sequence and render settings to DV50 and re-rendered. I must say that I can see a noticeable difference in the overall tone of the picture. So that’ll benefit the DVD as a whole a great deal, especially when it comes to the other menu screens where I’ll get smaller text. Top tip! 🙂

Although, as you say, it hasn’t really changed the text quality. I’ve included a screen shot, which I’ve de-interlaced so you can see exactly what I mean. I hope this has embeded properly, I haven’t done this before.

You can see the rounded edges of the text aren’t rounded. This is by beef. Can I get this rounded edge using DV sequence settings on this sort of text or would I have to go up to 1080×1920?

The supermarket was a posh one where I got the meat for my xmas lunch.
They did venison. Thinking about it, I should really try cooking venison, I haven’t gone there yet. Ummmmmmm, that’s a plan. Another top tip!

cheers 🙂

[David Roth weiss]

Why don’t you post a shot of the original PNG file so we can see those missing rounded edges?

Oh, and BTW, it looks like your whites on the text are getting clipped, thus losing you those “rounded edges,” which of course we wouldn’t know about since we can’t see the version you like.

If you create those whites at 85% instead of 100% you just might see those rounded edges again.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Jack Sewell]

Hi David,

thanks for you comments. I didn’t post the original PNG because it would’ve been interlaced and so the distortion would have been exaggerated further. I had to wack it into Photoshop to de-interlace it.

I hear about the white saturation, I put a glow effect on the text in Motion, but yeah, it could do with a little dumbing down.

However, the jagged edge thing was happening before I applied any effects at all. Am making the text in Photoshop (using a 720×576 canvas to avoid any scaling that FCP has to do on the fly) then importing it back into FCP as a PNG. However, I’m still getting a little distortion as you can see on the pic. Will adjust the white on the text and do another post.

cheers

[Tom Brooks]

Here are two screen grabs showing the difference in text from DV to DV50. First the DV image, then the DV50.


It may be hard to judge the overall quality with these highly magnified images, but you can clearly see the decrease in mosquito noise and perhaps color banding on the DV50 image.

A question Jack…why are you going to Photoshop and then bringing that text into Motion? Isn’t it a simpler process (and thus less prone to problems) to create the text directly in Motion?

Is the “distortion” you are referring to the jagged edge on curved letters such as the “G” in your title? I’m not sure you’re going to get much better in that regard simply because 720×576 is not a very high resolution for text of that size.

You could try another experiment. Compose the title at a higher resolution, say 1024×768 and put that on your timeline. See how that looks. I’d be curious.

[Jack Sewell]

Hi Tom,

I just wanted to thank you for all your help and ideas in regard to this problem. Have posted the final results and am absolutely delighted with them! 🙂

I tried changing the time-line settings to HDV 1080i, and then created some 1920 x 1080 text in Motion, as you suggested. This sorted the problem perfectly!

Although, I couldn’t preview the results on my monitor cos it was all in HD and I didn’t have the hardware for it. Although, this didn’t matter as I had laid the final edit for the montage in 720 res, so it was already set in stone and I knew how it was going to look.

This was then bounced to a 1080i quicktime movie, placed on the time-line. Rendered (tea-break!), and then sent to Compressor with the 6.2Mps 90-min DVD, settings.

And it looks fantistic!! Thanks so much for your help. It’s people like yourself that make these forums what they are.

Best wishes,
Jack