Flicker Free Text Rolls not possible in Vegas

TeeJay wrote on 4/26/2006, 9:21 PM

I have tried all of the recommendations to try and get a clean vertical scrolling text and I simply cannot get rid of the flicker.

Don't get me wrong, things look fine on a LCD computer monitor, but how many people actually watch a DVD on their computer, besides, telling my Client "oh, but it looks great on the computer" is just NOT going to cut it!

My Project is a PAL DVD, and it is being output as Progressive, although I have tried both Lower and Upper Fields with no dramatic improvement.
Here are some of the other things that I have tried............

- the obvious step of selecting the 'reduce interlace flicker' button
- I changed the text resolution in the generated media properties to double, (no good), then quadruple with no change.
- I tried reducing the opacity slightly....no difference.
- I added a .001 Gaussian Blur. Slight improvement to the flicker, to the detriment of hazy looking text.
- I tried different ways of scrolling. I started by keyframing the text position itself, then tried using the Pan/Crop, and finally tried keyframing the Track Motion setting. All yield similar results.
- set the Video SuperSampling to about 3 on the Video Master Bus

There is nothing else that I can think of. I am currently trying some workarounds such as creating text in Photoshop and bringing it in as a PNG. I'll see if that yields better results.

I think this is a major problem in Vegas and I welcome anyone to prove otherwise.

Regards,

T

Comments

Grazie wrote on 4/26/2006, 10:38 PM

TJ? Can you post an itsy bitsy sample somewhere? I wanna see how bad this is.

Best regards,

Grazie

Serena wrote on 4/26/2006, 10:52 PM

I've had that problem on occassions and I never actually resolved the influencing factors (flicker was noticable but not worse than I've seen on commercial DVDs). I suspected it was influenced by the font employed. Generally my rolling texts have been fine (no flicker). I know this isn't any help at all, other than to suggest that the flicker can be avoided.

johnmeyer wrote on 4/26/2006, 10:56 PM

My Project is a PAL DVD, and it is being output as Progressive

Why progressive? That seems like a recipe for flicker. If you are going to watch it on a television, keep it interlaced, period.

TeeJay wrote on 4/26/2006, 11:10 PM

This DVD is a promotional video for a Piano Manufacterer. Aside from making it available to potential customers, they want to show it in store, on LCD Monitors (progressive). Also, there is a bit of animated stuff which is also prog and all of the footage shot on Green Screen was also filmed as Progressive, because it was shot 90 degrees to get 720 lines of vertical resolution. That's why. As I mentioned though, I did try some as Interlaced, and it wasn't much better.

The DVD is pretty much finished. This scrolling text is the ONLY thing that does not look fantastic, and it would be nice to be able to fix it.

Grazie, I don't have any hosting to post a clip, but could I possibly email you a few seconds of my project?

Thanks,

T

Grazie wrote on 4/26/2006, 11:41 PM

Sure! G

DGates wrote on 4/27/2006, 1:46 AM

As mentioned, some credit rolls on Hollywood DVD's will flicker, as well as those shown on HBO, etc.

This may be too obvious, but why roll the credits? Why not just have them fade in and out like most shows do? Rolling credits take too long to scroll anyway.

ken c wrote on 4/27/2006, 2:27 AM

Try using Bluff Titler, I'm pretty certain it has flicker-free scrolling titles, from what I recall in creating my own.

Vegas 4 has pretty slick titles too, eg see the slide-ins on my http://www.copywritingu.com video, streaming, on the site, that's all done w/Vegas. Though that's brief horizontal slides, vs vertical scrolls.

Ken

craftech wrote on 4/27/2006, 4:12 AM

I have been complaining about Vegas not changing the Credit Roll generator since Vegas 2.0, but "flicker" seems to be present in commercial television and commercial DVDs so that doesn't really bother me as much.

They would however look much better if the Sony team would do even a simple thing like allow you to put a drop shadow behind the letters as in the (nearly as lame) titler. Drop shadow is basic stuff.

If you put the credit roll on it's own track you can use Track Motion to put a pseudo drop shadow behind it, but it doesn't look the same as a basic Drop Shadow found in all titlers and "real" credit roll generators.

John

Paul_Holmes wrote on 4/27/2006, 4:32 AM

Pixelan Creative Ease has some great FX to improve the appearance of Titles, either their "Blur Pro" or" Rise and Shine", which is specifically aimed at adding sheen or depth to titles. I honestly haven't tried it with rolling credits yet but have been very impressed at the smooth look it has given my static titles. Might be worth it to download the trial and see if one of the Rise and Shine settings will improve the flicker. I'm making a note to experiment myself when I get a chance.

I agree with Craftech that it would be nice if the rolling titles allowed a shadow. This is why I rarely use them. Instead I use track motion to scroll a static title list.

Veggie_Dave wrote on 4/27/2006, 4:47 AM

The only times I've had flicker with PAL text rolls (viewed on a PAL monitor/TV, rather than on an NTSC TV that can also accept a PAL signal) has been when using an unusual custom font.

Also, I generally render the whole section to AVI first before then rendering to MPG2 (I have an odd way of working sometimes).

When I first got Vegas I would do test renders of projects to WMV and MPG and get all sorts of flickers, judders etc mostly because I didn't know how to set the final file properties properly. These days I have no problems at all.

logiquem wrote on 4/27/2006, 5:06 AM

I made a work lastly with mostly moving text and images and most say that Vegas was really excellent to provide stable and fluid output in progressive. So, i would :

1.try another font
2. if the text is white, drop it to 225 value instead of 255.

logiquem wrote on 4/27/2006, 5:06 AM

JJKizak wrote on 4/27/2006, 5:27 AM

The Vegas credit roll performance at best is mediocre for slow speeds, which it really cannot go slow enough. Adobe premier credit roll just blew Vegas away in my opinion, And that still is the case now. Vegas credit roll seems to have cornered the "blinkies", "noisies", "make something that's easy really hardies". The credit roll is the "Butt Hole" of Vegas. And I am being very kind.

JJK

Grazie wrote on 4/27/2006, 5:29 AM

OK - Thanks TJ.

Emailed you back.

Grazie

TeeJay wrote on 4/27/2006, 6:45 AM

Thanks to everyone for their time and replies,

A huge ta to Grazie for checking out my Veg first hand. It's encouraging to know that I am not doing something drastically wrong!

It seems that the Serifs on "Times New Roman" may be contributing to my 'line crawl' and the shadow is probably not helping.

Logiquem- I will reduce the white and see how it goes.

Paul Holmes- I purchased the entire Creativease package (got a great upgrade deal because I already have SpiceMaster and Spice Filters :)) a little while ago and whilst admittedly, I haven't had a lot of time to experiment with some of the Blur tools, the Rise/Shine tool is really nice and I have put it to good use on a lot of my static text and titles, but it's not suitable for what I am trying to do here.

Anyway, cheers to you all, I have a lot of work to do ;)

T

Laurence wrote on 4/27/2006, 8:00 AM

Try inserting a Sony Gaussian blur filter on the track and setting the horizontal blur to the minimum .001 value. I do that on virtually every generated track I do, be it animated photos or text. It fixes the problem for me.

Grazie wrote on 4/27/2006, 8:04 AM

L? TJ suggests he used Gaussian in the first post:

- I added a .001 Gaussian Blur. Slight improvement to the flicker, to the detriment of hazy looking text.

G

Laurence wrote on 4/27/2006, 10:11 AM

I guess I missed that, short attention span and all...

The one difference might be that he didn't mention applying just the minimum horizontal blur and leaving the vertical axis unblurred. I can see blurring if I apply an overall minimum blur, but not if I apply the minimum .001 blur on just the horizontal axis.

Grazie wrote on 4/27/2006, 10:19 AM

I noticed that too. TJ? Any thoughts on just the horiz?

Grazie

johnmeyer wrote on 4/27/2006, 10:35 AM

Here's an old reply, directly from Sony:

Credit Roll Fixes

It notes that slightly changing the credit roll speed can sometimes help.

Also, I definitely second the idea that you only need horizontal blur. The vertical blur can be set to zero. The horizontal blur should be set to the smallest value possible. Also, NEVER use serifed fonts like Times Roman when scrolling. Those thin horizontal serifs were definitely not designed with interlaced television in mind. Only use sans serif fonts, like Arial.

TeeJay wrote on 4/27/2006, 7:16 PM

Yes, changing the Font definately left me with a more appealing look, and offseting the shadow a bit more a Grazie suggested helped a little more.

I didn't try the 'horizontal gaussian' but will give it a go. All of these things will be good to keep in mind, but for this project, I have decided to keep the text static as my deadline is fast approaching and I need to get this finished today, so I commenced rendering the static text clips last night. It's a 'compromise' for me, but I don't think my Client will be any the wiser.

I will continue to strive for better scrolls but for now, thanks to everyone for your time a fine suggestions.

Kind Regards,

TeeJay

burchis wrote on 5/11/2006, 7:35 AM

Has anyone considered applying the super-sampling filter switch on the video track?

Grazie wrote on 5/11/2006, 7:56 AM

Not moi? Wasnlt even in my brain .. Have you done it? - G

MH_Stevens wrote on 5/11/2006, 8:14 AM

Are you guys all sexist? Serena told you to change the font in post #3 and it took you all to post 30 to work it out for yourselves.