Font Jaggies Antialiasing Photoshop Text Titles

PassTheHat wrote on 9/12/2009, 9:09 AM

Thanks again to everyone that’s been helping me with my first Vegas edited short film. This is a problem that I’ve had for ages. I make beautiful titles in Photoshop at the correct resolution to match the footage. I bring the PSDs into Vegas (used to be Final Cut). I look at the titles and the text has jaggies.

Now, preview looks worse than actually rendered video (I exported the sequence into my Final Master Cineform .AVI to see if that fixed the problem). I will also be downsizing the video from 1080 24p to the 720 needed for DVD creation and distribution but I doubt that that will help much.

In the past, I either gave up and lived with the jaggies or I gave up and used a different and less artistically satisfying font. Boo to either option!

I’ve only ever found one recommended fonts for video site (on an Adobe page trying to sell those same fonts). I am looking for either: 1. a way to make my selected and beautiful font look better. Or: 2. a definitive guide to which fonts always work including font sizes if it makes a difference.

Thanks for the help. This forum is the greatest (as TT often said to Phineas J. Whoopee).

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 9/12/2009, 9:56 AM

Well, there are two main possibilities, possibly a combination of both.

Can you link to an example of your image somewhere? One picture is worth a thousand words.

1) If your image file dimensions are smaller than your project or output dimensions, upscaling will cause the pixel edges to show.
2) If your project properties are set to interlace, the edges will be jagged on diagonals and in motion areas in the preview.
3) If your render properties are set to interlace, the edges will be jagged on diagonals and in motion areas in the output.

A few suggestions:
-- Take a close look at your Photoshop files. If you are using Windows fonts with anti-aliasing "on" and can still see jaggies when zoomed in, try using Adobe PostScript fonts instead. Adobe Illustrator actually may be better for this kind of work.
-- PSD files are pixel-for-pixel (no edge shading). Try saving as PNG instead (preserves alpha and more Vegas-friendly).
-- Make sure your file dimensions are larger than your video output dimensions (double if you are going to use any pan / crop). Common wisdom used to be to make your image exactly the output size to preserve detail. Vegas however, resamples images as good (or better, in some of my tests), as Photoshop.
-- Select a deinterlace method and "Progressive" in Project Properties.
-- Set your Preview at "Best / Full."
-- Render "Progressive."
-- Serif fonts exaggerate interlace artifacts. Use sans-serif instead.
-- Keep fonts large enough that small details don't shimmer.
-- You can try "Reduce Interlace Flicker" but that may soften the image more than you want.

In the alternative, you can always go all interlaced, and let your DVD/TV or computer do the work for you. This is a bit of a crapshoot though in my experience, esp. on computer players. Media Player mushes everything, but VLC doesn't deinterlace unless you tell it too every time.