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Problems with Scrolling Titles
I’ve tried multiple methods to try to get decent (non-jittery) scrolling titles working in a doc I’m finishing and I’m looking for advice on workflow and where to attack the problem.
The project is DV-NTSC, frame rate 29.97, I’m using FCP Studio 2. The director is having me output an uncompressed quicktime which she will then take to a post house and lay off to digibeta, for festival screenings.
I made off-white titles in Helvetica and they play over the final footage of the film.
I first tried using Boris 3d title which only looked good if I rendered with field dominance set to none. Which I assume would not be good for the rest of the interlaced footage. Otherwise, it looked really terrible.
Then I tried creating the titles in Illustrator and pulling that into AE and exporting a quicktime. I used the animation codec, the field render set to off and motion blur on. That looks a lot better, but still not great.
My questions: Is part of the problem that I can only look at the titles on my computer monitor? I have no ntsc monitor. What is the least I should do to get the clearest idea of how the titles will look projected? Are there other settings I should be using in AE when exporting a quicktime that will be used in a dv timeline? I’ve read about making the pixel/second rate an even multiple of your framerate–how much difference will this really make?
Any tips, advice, suggestions welcome. Naturally, this needs to be done by the end of this week, along with a dozen other things.
Illustrator is CS2, AE is 5.5.
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7 Replies
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Because you aren’t monitoring your graphics properly, it’s like flying blind. So, yes, that is your first problem. You should have it hooked up to your DV Deck.
No access? Try setting your Canvas display to 100% precisely and see if that helps you make a better decision. But really, even if you set up a standard TV set to your DV deck, that would be better than nothing.
Finally, graphics in the DV Codec are never the best. You can change the sequence codec and re-render to Uncompressed or ProRes for better results for all your rendered effects and graphics.
Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro -
Thanks Kevin. If I output a test to mini-dv tape, hook up a camera to my tv, will I that be enough for me to judge if the titles are working?
No ability to monitor properly is a becoming a bigger problem. I’ve been working mostly with projects that were for the web, or that left me to go through a more traditional finishing process.
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Monica,
A trick that works most of the time for me is to create a new progressive ProRes timeline, render and export a self contained QT. Then import that QT into your other timeline and re-render.
BTW, do not change your entire timeline to “none.” However, when you’re done with editing, change the compressor setting in Sequence>>Settings to ProRes and re-render the entire timeline. THat will get your graphics out of the Hell of DV compression.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Monica,
Yes a TV is better than no monitor. Try Boris Title Crawl, and type in returns at the end to get it to go off screen. Also do what the other guys said about changing your compressor to 8bit or ProRes. You won’t be able to see it in real time on your monitor through FireWire so this is the last thing you should do.
Have a wonderful day.
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Thanks everyone, for the suggestions.
I’m borrowing an external video monitor tomorrow, so I can look at my various experiments and see what’s working. So far, the illustrator>AE>FCP workflow for the crawl still looks the best.
David, I tried creating a ProRes sequence, and made the titles again (using Boris Title Crawl this time), rendered, exported, imported and dumped in the dv timeline, and didn’t see a difference. It’s probably not the best solution anyway, since I need the titles to play over footage, and so I had to pull my dv footage into the ProRes timeline as well (unless there’s a way to export a rendered timeline with an alpha channel). I’m curious, what sequence settings have you used that worked? Export settings? I just changed the compressor to ProRes and the framerate to 24p.
Well, maybe it will all look more beautiful than I can possibly imagine on the borrowed monitor tomorrow.
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Standard def is interlaced and the Boris crawl does a great job as long as you are rendering the final sequence in ProRes or uncompressed. DV codec is bad for titles so copy your final into an uncompressed sequence and use the Boris tool.
Don’t deinterlace titles. It just makes them less smooth
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.and don’t forget to check the “1:2:1 Deflicker in the Boris control.
rafael
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