[Bob Cole]

Tried the expression — it works. I still have a non-solid font, but I’m thinking that this is just NTSC, and that the quicker movement of the 4 pixel rate (as opposed to the 2 pixel rate) just disguises it.

Thank you very much for your insights. I learned not to nest comps for title scrolls, that is for sure.

Bob C

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[Bob Cole]

First, thank you so much for taking the trouble to try to reproduce my issue. I’m not quite clear though: Did you make a too-big file, then resize the file itself (rather than a comp)? I’ve been rescaling the PSD layer to 64%, adding a drop shadow, applying Mercury Jones. With a 4 pixel frame-to-frame vertical change I get nice solid fonts. Other speeds, the fonts seem to have lots of horizontal lines through them.

The suggestion NOT to bring in a comp, and resize that, is valid: that was “jaggier” on the edges than the “corduroy” effect (lines in the middle) that I’m now getting.

I went back to PS, resized all the fonts in one file, then brought that file into AE so that I wouldn’t have to do any resizing. Same result: bad at 2 pixels movement, fine at 4. But I may be complaining about something that can’t be helped. The fast and good rolls have fonts which seem absolutely solid; the bad ones, running more slowly, have visible horizontal lines through them, as seen on my 19″ Sony studio monitor. Maybe that is just the way it is. I’ve even tried 1-pixel vertical blurring, but I still get a non-solid font.

Thanks for the suggestion about using expressions. I’ve never delved into that world but I may try. In the line
y = i * time / thisComp.frameDuration, do you mean to insert the total number of frames in the comp where you wrote “time”?

Thanks for all of your help. I really appreciate it.

Bob C

MacPro 2 x 3GHz dualcore; 10 GB 667MHz
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[Bob Cole]

[Dave LaRonde] “what happens if you DON’T scale down the layer in AE? What happens if you just run the roll at various speeds as a test?”

Crazy!

When I don’t scale down the layer, it looks great even at 2 pixel speed. Of course the credits don’t fit.

When I went back to PS to scale down the file so I wouldn’t have to scale it down in AE, I got the jaggies again.

But I think you’re putting me on the right path….

thanks.

bob c

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[Bob Cole]

[Dave LaRonde] “You wouldn’t happen to be nesting the comp containing the vertical text roll into a comp of different dimensions, would you? If you are, that’s your problem.”

YES.

I imported text into Photoshop, rasterized the type layer, imported that PSD file into AE as a comp.

Then made only the rasterized text layer visible.

Then imported that comp (which is 1200-wide by 12600-high) into a NTSC-D1-sized comp.

When the vertical pixel move, from frame to frame, is 4, the text is great. When it is 2 or 6 or 8, it is jagged. Night and day difference.

After reading your post, I tried importing the text file as a file, not a comp, with only the rasterized text layer visible in Photoshop when it was saved. I put that file into the 720×486 comp, rescaled it 64%, applied Mercury Jones, and got the same jaggies.

What should I be doing? I’ll try resizing the text file in Photoshop next.

The funny thing is that the same file produces great results, as long as the pixel difference = 4.

Bob C

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[Bob Cole]

[Kevin Camp] “so, if you look at the position values for your credits as you frame advance through the timeline, what does that increment seem to be?”

Long (slow)comp: 2 pixel change vertically = jaggies on horizontal parts of the fonts
Short (quick) comp: 4 pixel change vertically = beautiful rounded font

Both the short and the long comps use a PSD file with rasterized text, scaled to 64%. The position info includes a fraction of a pixel, e.g.

360,1992.4
360, 1988.4
etc.

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[Bob Cole]

[john sharaf] “With the new HD cameras that are so good at reaching into the blacks, we set faces at 45-55ire dependind on whether high key or low key.”

Thanks John. That is really good information. My Sony Z1 HDV camera still seems to look best with the 70 IRE on the highlights. Thanks too for the info about going over 100 IRE and making 80 IRE “white.”

When you say 45-55 IRE, is that for the highlights? I use a “triangle” on the brightest part of the face when I meter 70 IRE.

Still curious about whether anybody heard that old truism about including some white in the shot.

Bob C

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[Bob Cole]

Abraham, thanks for the reply. Great work on the site.

I’m just curious about whether you can offer some search tips, to cut down on the “false positives” — that is, the number of replies that aren’t relevant. Boolean search terms? “Result must include all terms,” or “Negative terms” (e.g. if “Bob Cole” appears, don’t list it in the result).

Again, great work and many thanks.

Bob Cole

[Bob Cole]

Two thoughts:

1. A lot of forums have “stickies,” a post which automatically always appears at the top, which contains links to FAQs.

2. Many times, a COW search gives either too few or too many results. I’ve found that it is sometimes more helpful to use Google to search the COW, than the COW itself. This is no slam on the COW’s programming team, which has created the most useful forum for video pro’s on the web. It’s just that Google has some proprietary tricks which are beyond the budget of anyone else on earth. Use them.

I always try to search for the answer, but I wind up posting my question anyway about half the time, simply because the search was not productive.

Thanks to all who share their expertise even though the answers are already here.

Bob C.

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[Bob Cole]

300 pixels is not the only choice. There are any number of posts about title scrolling here and in the After Effects forum, I believe. I just looked and didn’t find anything immediately, but I’m sure you can. It’s all about keeping the frame rate a multiple of the video scan rate, as I recall, but once you solve it you’ll think it’s easy.

If Boris Graffiti handles scrolling easily, I’ll buy their solution. I was hoping a user would weigh in here and endorse it.

As for the tabs business in the included Boris Title Crawl:

1. don’t set up extra tabs.
2. set up the correct types of tabs — there is a center-justified tab.
3. I don’t know how to import a whole file, but if you apple-c, apple-v some text, you should be able to laboriously tab it into position.

My tendency would be to use After Effects for this anyway because your problems are only beginning, once you’ve solved that tabs problem in Boris Title Crawl.

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[Bob Cole]

[Tom Wolsky] “Can you set pixel per second speed in Graffiti?”

Yes.

Click on “Automated Rolls, Crawls, Fades, Zooms” in
https://www.borisfx.com/product/graffiti/features.php#auto

MacPro 2 x 3GHz dualcore; 10 GB 667MHz
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Sony HDV Z1
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