Here's some hints about getting good text in Vegas that I've collected over the years.
Good luck.
Dennis
SUBJECT: Poor quality color text
I made a video for a friend last night. I thought I'd make the text with Christmas colors (Red w/ Green shadow) on a transparent BG. The title comes out very jaggedy. When I redo it with white, things look good (or at least closer to what I see in the preview window on good mode). What's up?
What I do is set my text to 640 x 480. Try that. Also check for illegal colors. Sometimes that makes a difference.
I think it good to also mention that
1. in some cases, creating the text with the BOLD function activated can improve the appearance of color text on video.
2. Red, if to be used in NTSC video will "bleed" around the edges of text and other objects less -- if it were of a darker, "ketchup" like red, rather than the "fire-engine red" variety...
3. Helpful still, might be the judicious use of shadowing -- generally you would want to use black, or extremely dark blue (enhances white text). I'd even try to use a black text OUTLINE from within the EFFECTS tab -- so as to provide some way of separating the edges of that red text from interfering with the edge of the green (in the shadow area you've created).
4. But Beware: generally, you ought to utterly avoid -- if you can, using some intense reds and green colors for text. unless you've got just the right blend of primary color mix and brightness (and using some complimentary techniques such as those mentioned above). Worse still, I think, is the use of color other than black or dark blue for shadows. That can be downright ugly in NTSC television.
5. If you insist on using red and green, why not use those two colors in some other way, rather than within the text as you have done: Eg., you could use two (2) Generated Text events: The first could spell "Merry", and be in Red (the darker, ketchup-like red works better than the bright, blazing one, remember) and the other event could spell "Christmas in Green" -- don't make that green to blaring bright either). Superimpose one atop the other so they show the same time, making sure that the former (Merry) appears to be on one line, and the other (Christmas) appears to reside on a line below.
You've just discovered that Red and Green next to each other in an NTSC TV image will almost certainly produce "dot-crawl". Dot crawl refers to those seeming to move or vibrate, "jagged" artifacts you alluded to in your post.
Those two primary colors tend to produce artifacts around edges of onscreen objects in television -- even when they're by themselves!
If you are encoding in NTSC to be viewed on a TV make sure the colors you use are in the RGB range of 15 - 235. You can also apply the Broadcast Color filter using the extremely conservative preset, to start, to the event.
Thanks for the detailed comments from all.
As a note, I saw the issues rendering from DV to progressive and to DVD. The first try was awful (I was using a green shadow and outline to begin with and that, as you noted, really magnified the problem.). I tried to make the colors legal and that helped some. I tried other fonts (not much change). I tried 640x480, which also helped some.
Clearly choosing complimentary colors and using a reasonable font/shadow color combination should do the trick.
I set the text resolution at 1440X960 and it makes a big difference in the final product.
Sometimes a TINY amount of blur can soothe the savage jaggies when all the good hygiene tips either don't work, or when you want to try to push the best practices envelope.
SUBJECT: Why Do my Fonts in this Veggie look so poor?
I created a free account to put this veggie on, below is the link:
http://www.fileupyours.com/files/35...MenuBadFont.veg
I can't figure out why I have the aliasing so bad along the edges of the fonts, especially when you blow up the video full screen, or, by simply rendering the project out to NTSC-DVD, best quality, on the T.V., the fonts look like a turd on a stick. Any ideas why? I thought I had this font thing figured out but obviously not. What is the best way to get rid of the jaggies?
You are not going to like this answer, but on my system and out to preview, it looks pretty normal for 255 white outlined with 0 black. The only thing I see is the interlacing that you have no control over. The high contrast makes the interlacing much more obvious and in DV it really stands out. Remember that NTSC TV is a low resolution animal.
What can you do? Avoid extreme contrast of colors right next to each other. You can add a little blur, but then you loose the sharpness.
When using this video for a menu on a DVD, it is important to render it directly to MPEG2 and to render it as progressive not interlaced. Some DVD players have difficulty with the last frame of interlaced menu material.
If this is the total of your menu, you may like the results better if you created it in DVDA instead of Vegas. If you are adding other video elements to it then by all means build it in Vegas.
I'm confused about your numbers you gave for the color levels. I am pretty sure that specifically changed the color settings for the white to be 235, and the black to be 16.
What I don't like is the jagged edges along the curves/outlines of the text which I understand to be called "aliasing". Have I introduced this by including the outline effect? I've spent hours trying to figure this out and googling/searching on dmn/cow/sony and I still don't get it. If someone well tell me the best font, and the effects to use, I will gladly follow exactly the advice as far as font, etc., whatever. I would just like to get rid of the jaggies. Is there a way to do this or are you saying no?
As far as whether I should be doing this in Vegas or not. I only included the the generated media so that you would get errors when opening the .veg. But for the actual menu I've created has a snowy photo in the background, an animated lower third at the bottom of the screen, and a video that is playing in the middle of the screen through a mask I made in photoshop. I assume this is best done in Vegas as opposed to DVDA. right?
Also, you lost me when you said that should render this out as progressive scan. I thought that since I am going to be playing this on a interlaced, analog TV, that I needed to render it as interlaced, lower field first. Am I just confused in the part that the terms "interlaced" & "progressive scan" play in this whole thing?
Aliasing in that text is minimal. If you are zooming in on it you will see aliasing. It is not meant to be zoomed in on. Most of what I am seeing, looks like aliasing, but in fact is interlacing artifacts. Remember that NTSC TV is only 480 pixels tall, but more realistically it is watched on TV's with a few as 300 discernible lines of resolution. Making tight curves, the interlacing will sometimes show as stairsteps or lines. Yes, Aliasing and interlace lines are different animals, but to the normal viewer they look the same.
Yes the outline makes the jaggies more noticeable if the colors are as much of a contrast as yours are. Making your colors closer in nature rather than the far ends of the spectrum like black and white will make the interlacing less noticeable, not make it not exist. The grey beside the black does not look so bad.
Yes, most video you would render as interlaced for NTSC TV's, but when you are going to a DVD and the video will be used as a menu background, trust me, render it progressive. Also render it straight from the Vegas timeline to MPEG. Do not render it to DV and then encode it to MPEG. Your text will look a lot better that way. If you must render a menu background to interlaced, which risks playback problems for the last frame of the menu on some DVD players, search the DVDA help file for the "render menu to progressive" switch and turn it off. It is on by default and it will rerender your video causing a loss of quality.
Remember, you can always double the resolution of the text as well, and this carries over very nicely into MPEG encodes. For DV, it doesn't help a lot. In the text generator, you can change the resolution to 1440 x 960.
If I'm just using Vegas' titler (which is what I'm doing in this example), how do you double the resolution? Or were you assuming I was creating the text from within bluff titler/3d prod studio or other graphics program?
You can also try using a slight blur on the fonts just for giggles. Just apply it to the event. Who knows.
No, all font titlers are not created equal. Vegas has a utility character generator (titler) but most agree that we have seen better. The kicker is, it works well enough for me, so I use it almost exclusively.
Just to make sure. You are viewing it in preview settings-Good, aren't you? viewing in draft can cause it to look like you have severe jaggies when you don't.
No, I was using Best, Auto for my preview. I didn't like the fonts when I had rendered it to highest quality and watched in on a monitor after burning it to DVD. But I think that I was being too picky about it, and also I think that Arial Black is not that great of a font because the shaping of the letters looks crappy on screen (too fat, the letters mash together and I do get jaggies on the edges). So opted for just simply Arial, bolded, Italics and it looked much better. Also, upped the resolution of the text titler to 1440x 960, and rendered progressive via the DVDA NTSC video stream, I liked the final output.
I use a lot of impact, but many others work for me. The key is for them to not have any small details. I wish there was some magic to it, but I really don't do anything special. I do use Photoshop to create some of the titles because I can do more with it.
Linear Mode
