Maximum Vegas 6 title quality

Sidecar wrote on 11/19/2005, 6:49 PM
I'm making a complex text-only honor roll of names over a gradient background. The audio will be the names being read by a narrator as they appear on screen.

It is text only, has 89 names and will run for more than 7 minutes. At least five tracks with different parts of the text on each track will be employed allowing some text stays on full time while other tracks display the names.

No DV video is involved. I want the titles to be their sharpest. Final output is DVD.

Question:

To get the Vegas titler to be sharpest, should I set up the project properties to be other than NTSC DV? Would Standard 720x486 be better? The tutorial at the COW says that the DV codec is not designed for hard edges like text. Is there some way to make Vegas use a different codec than DV? I understand Vegas works natively in 4:2:2, yet titles are soft.

I really like using Vegas for this type of project because very fast, it's easy to see the whole thing in real time before rendering and it runs in sync.

Should I try figuring out Boris LTD? Being vector based, will it give any kind of real time preview so I can time the names with the pre-recorded narrator reading the names? We use Boris with Media 100 and it looks great, but is very slow to use.

Any suggestions as to Vegas render quality or other check boxes that would make the titles look better? They tend to be soft.

Thanks.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 11/19/2005, 7:51 PM
You can use any number of codecs in Vegas, but rather than accepting that the DV codec isn't good for titles, try experimenting with other things first.

For instance, double the resolution of your text. You'll be shocked at what that will do for you. Make it 1440 x 960, and while it will play back slower in preview, set your monitor to Best/Full to see the real result. You'll be surprised.

Whether you work in Boris or other titler, the result in terms of softness will be the same once it's rendered down. However, doubling your title resolution will make a big difference.
farss wrote on 11/19/2005, 8:31 PM
Why not use a proxy for the narration, record the narration and bring that back into your whatever res you need project.
Bob.
Sidecar wrote on 11/20/2005, 4:10 PM
Spot,

Your advise is what I was looking for: a way for Vegas's existing titler to look better. I really don't want to exit Vegas. This project is all about compositing many layers in sync to a pre-recorded narration track. Vegas is great for that. I just want the text to be as sharp as possible.

For a different project, I did uprez text to 1024x1280 when I did a 1024x1280 hi rez WMV project. It looked great. Played back from a computer onto a huge screen. It consisted of thousands of png's output from the Houdini animation program and imported into Vegas as a single file. Narration, effects, music and multiple PIP video windows were added and rendered out to WMV using the default settings that preserved the project's resolution and frame rate. Worked like a charm. Now *that* text was sharp.

I'll try your way for this project.

The reason I bought into the DV codec "softness" argument is because in Media 100 (and perhaps other NLEs) you can pick from three methods when encoding video from tape: "Natural," "Graphics" and "Architectural". I assume each is optimized for the type of edges one is working with. Graphics and architecture are more hard edged; natural is less hard edged and thus softer. It sounds like DV is more "natural" and by design a bit softer.

Thanks.
Sidecar wrote on 11/20/2005, 4:17 PM
Bob,

Pardon my denseness, but I don't follow. What do you mean by "proxy?" The narration is driving the sync. Each name has to appear just as it's being read.
Current plan is to record narration directly to an audio track from our booth, edit it until it flows properly then add names. A couple of other tracks will have music under the narration.

Are you suggesting I work at a higher project resolution overall (say, 1024x683 or some other 4:3 resolution) and then render that out to MPEG-2 for the DVD?



johnmeyer wrote on 11/21/2005, 6:35 PM
Spot,

I never would have come up with the high-res titles. Excellent advice. Thanks!