Text looking bad on DVD

MUTTLEY wrote on 5/18/2004, 7:47 PM
Not sure if this is a Vegas thing or DVDA but I've rendered out my vid with the highest quality settings MPEG-2 DVD Architect NTSC Video Stream, than the audio as AC3. The text I'm referring to looks perfect when I preview in DVDA on an external monitor with " Best " settings. Some of the text that's messing up is Vegas generated, some is part of a PSD file, but the graphic in the same PSD file looks great.

Weird deal, anyone got any clues ?

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com


Comments

farss wrote on 5/18/2004, 9:46 PM
How are you viewing the DVD?
Text in particular when fed throug a composite feed to a TV can look really bad. Depends not only on keeping the levels BC legal but you also need to watch the amount of shift in chroma on the adjoining edges of things.
MUTTLEY wrote on 5/18/2004, 10:30 PM
Pretty flat colors, and the DVD player is just hooked up via RCA jacks. Here's the part of one of the images with text that giving me trouble. I doubt taking a pic of what it looks like on the TV would convey the problem, but I'd equate it to " Preview ( Auto ) in Vegas, barely legible.

Original Text Image

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com

Grazie wrote on 5/18/2004, 10:57 PM
Hi Ray . . can we see another text face ?. . Something like bold or Fatish type thing .. like ARIAL bold fat or whatever . . Grazie
MUTTLEY wrote on 5/18/2004, 11:26 PM
Um Grazzie, dont think I understand why. This is the font the client wants, and aside from some super-duper thin font, I can't think of any reason why any font shouldnt look good let alone this one, its pretty thick. And like I said, it does look great on my external monitor and on screen.before going to DVD. Just not sure what your asking for.

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com
Grazie wrote on 5/18/2004, 11:36 PM
Okay - yes, you say it is good on Ext Mon . .that should do it . .forget it! If it aint good on ext mon then okay .. but are we looking at ext mon here? Or the final BAD font? Can we see the final BAD look? Now how can you do that? What monitor are you viewing the DVD on? HAve you had probs with same DVD player monitor on other of oyur projects?

Regards,

Grazie
MUTTLEY wrote on 5/18/2004, 11:58 PM
The external is an old Sony monitor. Cant think of a way to show ya how it looks on the TV, but like its about the quality of " Preview ( Auto ) ", barely legible, and crappier than I would want to turn over to a client.

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com
Jay Gladwell wrote on 5/19/2004, 4:07 AM
Ray, referring to the sample you showed, versus what you mentioned above, I'm a tad confused. How was the text in that sample frame generated?

J--
epirb wrote on 5/19/2004, 4:23 AM
Mutt, kinda going along with farss, have you tried to render out that text say against a black backround,or other solid color . Then maybe burn that to a rw disc and see the results.
just trying to see if its backround thats affecting the encoding or if its the text encoding itself.
craftech wrote on 5/19/2004, 5:24 AM
Put a drop shadow behind the letters.

John
MUTTLEY wrote on 5/19/2004, 7:43 AM
J, That is a graphic made in PSD. Its used in the video I did and one of the text segments that ends up looking horrible on the DVD.

epirb, I'm not unwilling to try but this is not the only part that's looking bad, but again, only some of the text is looking bad, and it only looks bad after burning it to DVD.

John, there is a drop shadow.

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com
Jay Gladwell wrote on 5/19/2004, 8:00 AM
Gee, Ray, I just finished a short three and a half minute thing with title graphics done is PS and had no problems whatsoever. I know, that doesn't help you any. Sorry!

What was the resolution of the graphic?

J--
farss wrote on 5/19/2004, 8:10 AM
Hm,
hard to tell what's going on from the screenshot, it's already low res so when I blow it up in PS everything looks a little sad anyway.
Have you tried playing the DVD on a PC?
If it looks fine there the it is fine. The problem is either the decoder in the player or the way it's connected to the TV. Whne you say RCA connections I assume there's one for video and two for audio? If that's the case then it's a composite feed which if you're lucky means you've got very limited chroma bandwidth which make many things look bad that look just great on monitors fed with component video.
Now maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree totally. Other issue could be the type of font, or if the text has been scaled up in any way. V4 initially had a font problem where it'd let you use any type of font and some would render really badly. Doubt this is an issue here thought, if it looks fine in PS and on Vegas preview then you're really only looking at two possibilities, The encoder or the plasyer setup, as its only a static image just about any encoder should handle that pretty well unless it's at a very low bit rate.

One thing you could try if nothing else makes any sense, as it's being bought in as a still and IF it's being scaled, switch on Reduce Interlace Flicker.