New info on the "Blurry DV Text" issue

Stonefield wrote on 9/19/2006, 12:46 AM
Well I've been working all day at this, scouring the forums, test render after test render, pulled hair, cold pizza, etc.

I'm trying to find a workaround to the blurry DV text problem that some of us have faced in the last couple years. It just comes down to the fact that the MiniDV format was just not made to render out text very well. ( At least for me )

So I put my final render together in my "Master Render" template and rendered away. I looked at the video and sure enough, everything is fine except that darn, fuzzy, banded text. I did a test render of Uncompressed earlier and it looked great. But it was a 3 second clip that came in at almost 100 megs. ( No thanks )
I needed a WMV of the same project and thought instead of rendering from the DV output I had, I'll render from the timeline in WMV.

It was a mid- high rez (3M ) bit rate and took awhile but when I looked at the text in the render, it was beautiful. The only artifacting was from the WMV compression. I'm gonna try another higher render and see what it looks like tomorrow. I'm also thinking about doing a hi rez WMV prerender of anything that contains text, then drop that into the timeline and render out my master DV Avi.

....I dunno, I'm tired and these are just some random thoughts about a problem that's been buggin me for quite awhile. I've seen others on this forum with the same issure, so If I find a work-around, I'll be sure to share....

Night

Comments

farss wrote on 9/19/2006, 12:57 AM
Well there's not much you can do about the limits of DV25 other than work within them.
Worse still is the limits of composite video.
There's plenty of good words here about the latter, watch transitions in levels, keep chroma within spec AND watch out for chroma transition rates.
Even so though just to get the best possible white text on a black background isn't all that easy. However one trick worth a go.
Create the text in a HiDef project and downsample it at Best. The forced bicubic interpolation should give smoother edges.

Also rather than render to uncomp the Sony YUV codec is pretty good without the monster file size. Even so though you've still ultimately got to get it onto DV and/or through a broadcast chain or out of a DVD player, down a 50 cent cable and onto a $10 TV and still have it look OK. The latter part is the biggest challenge.
I oftenly find reducing the resolution can give better results than making it razor sharp in the first place, just a tiny amount of glow at halfway between the text color and the background.

Bob.
Jonathan Neal wrote on 9/19/2006, 12:58 AM
A couple tips on sharpening your text.

1. Don't make it pure white, change those 255 color values to something a little darker, say,238.

2. Give text a softer edge, that will actually make it look sharper in many instances. This can be done in Photoshop or in Sony Text under the effects tab (glow). Just make sure it's a very lite, barely visible glow.
kkolbo wrote on 9/19/2006, 5:44 AM
The blur on the DV you are talking about is generally from interlacing text. When you render to DV you are creating the text interlaced. Then when you show it on a computer monitor or convert it to WMV it is going to be de-interlaced and that will look blurry.

Rendering to WMV direct from the time line will create progressive frames and the text will retain the sharpness.

I reccommend rendering for the timeline to any format. Rendering to DV and then using that to render other formats will cause issues.
rs170a wrote on 9/19/2006, 5:57 AM
Great Titles with the DV Codec is an excellent article with numerous tips to avoid the fuzzies/jaggies.

Mike