red text on black- why so blurry?

[Tom Wolsky]

What format are you working in? Red is really, really hard to compress. Usually you don’t use red beyond 190-200. If you’re redder than that you’re going to have problems.

All the best,

Tom

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[David Roth weiss]

What you’re seeing is DV compression at its worst. If you change the compressor in sequence settings to DVC50, Pro Res, 8-bit or 10-bit uncompressed and re-render you will see a huge difference.

Test it out to see for yourself, then the proper workflow is to cut everything in the DV timeline and then change the compressor and re-render when you’re completely finished editing so that you’re not having to render constantly when your in the creative stages…

Make sense???

David

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[Dylan Reeve]

This is probably a DV compression thing… But also, red-black contrast is always a problem with composite video (which is what a lot of people use with the DVD players and VCRs, and is what all analogue broadcasting is) – I can’t remember the specifics, but something about where red is on the spectrum (shortest visible wavelength) and the method of modulation use to encapsulate the luma and chroma signals. I understood it in the lectures, but it’s all escaped me now.

Basically the end result is that solid red, especially on a solid (or black) background is never a great idea with video. However with less saturation the problems are less pronounced.

[David Fortin]

If my long term memory is any good, I remember something from the TV 101 lectures in college about the three colors that make up the video signal Green, Blue and Red. And that out of the three, red has the least amount of information in the signal, so red is the worse reproducible (if that’s a word) color.

I think you’ll have trouble no matter what compression you use. If you have ever rented a movie that has red credits over black, they look nice and crisp in the theater, but when you watch it at home on DVD, you can barely even read it.

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[Alan Lacey]

Saturated red is very low luminance level and with composite, Y/C and YUV it’s only the luminance channel that has greater bandwidth.

What you’re seeing is the lower bandwidth quality of the chroma channels. Increase the red luma somehow – ie desaturate.

Even going uncompressed (YUV) saturated reds will have less ‘sharpness’ than white, greys or blacks.

Alan

[Paul Provost]

red + video = bad
especially SD – HD is a little better

[Rafael Amador]

Everybody right. Red is the most difficult color to manage. Difficult to compress and difficult to filter. That’s the reason why nobody try use a red screen to make a chroma-key.
But fallow the David’s adice and set your sequence with a better codec.
Rafael

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[Tim Wilson]

I also had some of those “not at liberty to change the color scenarios,” and they were a nightmare.

What worked best for me was combining two techniques here — a black border, and red that looked downright pink on the computer screen, but looked close enough to red on the broadcast monitor that I never had a client think twice.

So use a broadcast monitor so you won’t go astray. Even better, output to your delivery format and check THAT on a broadcast monitor. Tweak to taste.

Don’t forget to use black at no more than 16. I never trusted clipping filters.

Note about red-screen compositing — it’s frequently used for claymation and other non-human elements. It also works great for underwater shots where blue and green are the order of the day. I’ve also found that there are some ranges of dark skin, especially very dark skin, that reach almost into the blue spectrum, where red works better.

Markertek sells a kit of Rosco keying gear that includes red paint and tape along with green and blue. (In addition to tape, Markertek even sells mic and other cables in blue and green.)

Rose Brand has a remarkable array of keying fabric, including orange and magenta — don’t forget the object of the game is to use the opposite color of the foreground.

As you can tell, I’m a big fan or red keys for special purposes.

And I believe that red text on black backgrounds is a pain, but you can do it.

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[Kevin Jones]

Could someone explain in detail the DV workfow that David Roth Weiss mentions?
Thanks.

Kevin Jones

[Chris Poisson]

Kevin,

David is talking about simply changing the compression settings of your sequence, which, while forcing a render, can result in improved graphics and transitions etc. from a DV sequence to say, an 8bit one.

Note that if you are monitoring via FireWire, you will not get real-time playback anymore, but you can still spot check your timeline after rendering.

Best advice when working on a FireWire-based system is to wait till you’re sure your done to do this, and if it’s not obvious, this will not help if you are going to tape, only good for Web, DVD and similar delivery, as you can’t play uncompressed to tape via FireWire.

Have a wonderful day.