@johnebaker

Hi John.

Thank you for the reply.

I didn't even think about whether it was a MEP font or not. I used the text box rather than MEPs offerings. It must be a Windows Text. It's called Autumn and yes its a bit jaggy to start with and I've tried masking the jaggies but you gave me another idea as I want to try to use that text as it has a 'Tank' like look to it to my eyes. The original masking looked like this.

But I've now changed the mask by adding the New Blue Elements effect 'Alpha Processor' and it now looks more like this.

I will now try that out and see.

Thank you for this. It made me rethink the problem.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray,

Do you mean like this simple example?

Terry

@terrypin

Simple for you maybe Terry 😆.

Yes, but with a bit of an edge to it, or as in your example it tends to bleed into the background when you have two colours the same. Also your S and A have changed shape with the S curves meeting the central body and the centre of the A being reduced in size. But overall, yes.

I think I've cracked it though.

If your method was simpler I'd still be interested. I had to add additional masks to the sides,top, and bottom. I could have made one extra mask with the middle white but it was quicker to just add four copies of a black background and move them.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray,

Your method sounds complex!

Sandwiched inside a couple of hastily chosen video clips I placed a white title, dragged its size to fill most of the screen and set its Chroma key to Alpha.

Stronger colour contrast would look better. The touching of adjacent letters seems inherent in the Autumn font. Letter element changes arise from the non-proportional resizing I used. Other heavy ('tankish') fonts that might work are Arial Black, Acme Font Regular, BN Machine, Clarendon Regular, Impact, OpenSans Extra Bold, Oswald Heavy, Raleway Black and RockwellExtraBold.

Terry

@terrypin

Hi Terry.

Ideally I don't want any curves evident in the font. Crate would have been my other choice but that is even worse for the 'jaggies'.

Haven't seen BN Machine. as far as I know. Definitely not Oswald Heavy.

When you say 'white title' what exactly do you mean? White lettering with black background or something else? Are you using the font directly generated by the titling or a copy like a png or jpg? I couldn't get the alpha channel to work for me at all.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray,

Yes, just using the title editor: Title > Manual, default colours, plain white here.

Did you also try a narrow border, which I think I’d personally prefer?

Terry

@johnebaker

Hi Terry.

Thank you for your efforts.

These talks and throwing ideas around help both now and for future reference. It would have not occurred to me to use white as a background for this. Thank you for that.

I tried using white borders while awaiting your reply but found I then couldn't make any shadowing around the lettering.

I think I've almost cracked the look I'm after.

All I need to do now is add some kind of lighting effect to try to get the lettering to look like a mirrored surface.

You method does work for a cleaner look though so I'll keep it in reserve for another project.

What I'm doing is making titles and background effects for future use. Next project is making a convincing fog-drift overlay. 😉

Ray.

Hi Ray,

That looks good!

But didn’t you say in your initial post that you wanted it without a shadow?

Terry

@terrypin@terrypin

Hi Terry.

Around the outside of the lettering to make the letters sharper, yes, because it was the only way I could find to hide the jaggedness of the outside of the lettering and it needed a wider boarder than I felt it needed to hide the fault. It still looked untidy and didn't hide it well and there was still an amount of movement in the letter edges due to the 'jaggies'.

Your suggestion of changing the background working colour gave me another idea after I found it gave a better sharpness but unable to apply a separate shadow afterwards, so that info alone was valuable to me. Thank you for making me see an alternative as there is normally always another working method but I'd gone too far 'down the rabbit hole' of one method to see it. So thank you for pointing me in another direction.

I don't think I would have found a fix for this font without your input.

Ray.

@CubeAce @johnebaker @terrypin

Hi

This seems to be overcomplicating what should be very simply produced using the standard title creation in MEP.

Choose font - Autumn - type TANKS in the text box.

Slide text size slider to top - 128 or Set width of text area in Size / Position to size of project / export file eg.1920px. Position / centre on screen if necessary.

View preview monitor at full screen (if text looks jaggy at smaller preview size) - no jaggies!

Export movie at 1920 x 1080 - no jaggies!

Jaggies can occur whenever there is a mixture of differing resolution images displaying in another resolution medium, where one or other of the images is scaled. The MEP titler is designed to default to the resolution of the project so that if the text is made smaller on screen by basically zooming it, scaling loses pixels which shows up as stairsteps on sloping or curved lines.

Peter

@Scenestealer

Hi Peter. I understand the principles well enough. I may be new to video but not to processing graphics. 😁

I just didn't see any jaggies until after I made the mask and added the chroma key. No chroma key, no jaggies. As for sizing, what if I was doing a 4K project?

Would I have to them accept my titles can only be half the size of doing 1080p?

No, it's just problem to be solved. 😎

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

I agree with @Scenestealer on this one.

I do not see any jaggies either, including at 4K resolution with Chromakey applied, unless you have the Preview monitor Lightning symbol turned on, then you are jagged territory due to the lower resolution.

. . . . Slide text size slider to top - 128 . . . .

You can actually go higher than this by typing in a value then pressing Enter. I went up to 200 - the maximum I could get to with the word TANKS virtually filling the screen.

John EB

@Scenestealer@Scenestealer

Well I was definitely suffering on playback and export. Maybe because of my Nvidia card difference?

Whenever I start doing any graphics work beyond simple text I have to use the blue lightning symbol and work off of proxy files but thinking as you did John, I exported thinking it was just a playback thing and it wasn't.

Anyway. I have a working method for me thanks to an idea Terry gave me even though if you look at the last example I put up and look closely at any straight edge, it's still not perfect There is a shimmer movement now but not that visible.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Well I was definitely suffering on playback and export. Maybe because of my Nvidia card difference?

Doing it my and @terrypin 's way it looks perfect in HD and 4K - in what monitor resolution and player are you viewing it in?

Do you have the antiflicker (actually Anti Alias) option ticked in the export window? It has no apparent effect on or off with me, although I cant see the jaggies so a moot point here.

The Nvidia card should not have any effect on the Export - possibly Preview if you had disabled AA in the Nvidia control centre 3D settings.

I just didn't see any jaggies until after I made the mask and added the chroma key. No chroma key, no jaggies. As for sizing, what if I was doing a 4K project?

If doing it in 4K, just highlight the title clip and go to size / position and change the width to 3840px or type a larger value in to the text size slider in the title editor as John EB has suggested. I am not sure I understand what you are doing with the mask but you do not need it to get rid of the jaggies using our described method - the Masking may be even creating the problem.

By the way your links to members should not repeat if you make sur there is a space between them

Nice titling sequence anyway Ray. I think I will use that effect in future.

@johnebaker said:-

I do not see any jaggies either, including at 4K resolution with Chromakey applied, unless you have the Preview monitor Lightning symbol turned on, then you are jagged territory due to the lower resolution.

Be aware that even without the Blue Flash > Resolution reduction you are still viewing it scaled if your preview monitor is displaying anything smaller than full screen on a Full HD monitor.

Peter

@Scenestealer

Hi Peter. I agree and get the same results as you and Terry if I do it your way but as I said, I then can't add a shadow from the title to the background or a slight edge to give the titling definition and therefore sometimes it becomes difficult to impossible to see the lettering when the background and lettering contain the same colours. If you have a solution to that I'll reconsider my approach again but as it stands it has meant using less tracks and steps than I was doing previously.

It was worse than jaggies when previewing during editing. I actually got dancing black spots around the outside edge of each letter. Unfortunately I deleted all the non working stuff once I had a usable solution so I can't give you a screen shot. Once uploaded it becomes a browser issue and it was easy to see even on YouTube but again I deleted the clip from YouTube as well even before I posted here. I do this quite quickly or I lose which version I should be concentrating on. Once I could adapt my own method from Terry's idea, They were gone. I keep my folders as clean and lean as I can.

I don't hang around.

Sorry. 😉

Ray.

@Scenestealer

Hi Peter

. . . . Resolution reduction you are still viewing it scaled if your preview monitor is displaying anything smaller than full screen on a Full HD monitor. . . . .

Dual screen mode - 2 Full HD identical monitors - with Preview monitor full screen on RH display is my normal mode of working, I only revert to single screen mode for tutorials and screenshots.

John EB

@Scenestealer @johnebaker @terrypin

Hi guys.

I did find a backup project showing the original problem. It is a 103GBs in size. I can't see an easy way of sharing it but I've put the results of what I am seeing at my end on YouTube. It is also how the final rendered file exported.

Ray.

[Edit]

I should explain the mouse movement at the end. I'm showing where the chroma key had problems showed themselves without tweaking the settings. I got excessive bleed-through of background in the shadows under the tank at the end without additional alterations.