Boris Graffiti & NLE

[King_Diamond]

Does anyone know whether Boris Graffiti caters for jittery titles (razor sharp edges) when watched on tv? If not, can anyone suggest some titling software, easy to use, preferably does only titling?

[Arky]

If you are referring to anti-aliasing, then Graffiti is more than capable of taking care of your requirements. It's a great titling package.


Arky ;o)

[King_Diamond]

I'm not sure if this is a case of "anti-aliasing" or I don't know what exactly is. What I mean is that I want to make rolling titles for credits and on screen titles that look smooth on standard TVs not like ... visible interlacing.

[King_Diamond]

Any suggestions pls?

[Arky]

It's a little difficult to ascertain exactly what you mean - your subjective description might not match my interpretation of it, so we might be talking at crossed purposes. I believe that what you are referring to is 'jaggies', which might be exacerbated by interlacing artifacts. Generally, a combination of the following three factors would go a very long way to reducing artifacts on titles/characters (and, of course, progressive rendering and encoding is always a factor, but I shall assume that you have good reason for going wth interlaced):


1) Anti-Aliasing

2) Making titles/characters a sensible size (i.e. not so small that they appear differently according to whether the upper or lower field is being displayed - having titles so small means that the characters appear to 'move'. This is a common error with DVD menus, for example).

3) Sub-pixel rendering. Poor title/character generators do not utilise sub-pixel rendering engines, whch leads to very jumpy/uneven scrolls across the screen, particularly when slowed down (Premiere 6 used to be pretty bad for this, IMHO).


Boris Graffiti does a great job. I suggest you try the demo (http://www.borisfx.com/esd/main.php) first, though, just to see if it satisfies your requirements. I would be very surprised if it doesn't. If you need to know how to use it, there are some tutorials (http://www.borisfx.com/products/GRAFFITI/) on the homepage.


Arky ;o)

[King_Diamond]

I think we are on the same line.

I used interlaced because I need to play it on an interlaced tv. Do you think de-interlaced is better? Doesn't it need to be interlaced again while being played?

Btw, i used Premiere 6 for this project because only recently got the pro version.

Re sub pixel rendering, what can i do to achieve it apart from text size and font? Is it a setting in the NLE program? I'm not quite aware what it is.

Will try the demo. Thanks for your help.

[Arky]

Originally posted by King_Diamond

I used interlaced because I need to play it on an interlaced tv. Do you think de-interlaced is better? Doesn't it need to be interlaced again while being played?





Yes, the player will do that automatically. The benefit of encoding progressively is that your DVD will look much better if it needs to be played on computers as well as on televisions. This will obviously vary from project to project, though, so it is not always beneficial, and, if your original source is interlaced, then there is potential for introducing unwanted artifacts during the de-interlacing process. It's a real can of worms. I would suggest that if you are ever generating a 'virgin' composite (i.e. not integrating existing interlaced source files into the composite), then it is worthwhile rendering it as true progressive.





Originally posted by King_Diamond

Btw, i used Premiere 6 for this project because only recently got the pro version.






I must confess that I am not a big fan of Premiere, full stop. However, Premiere Pro was definitely a huge improvement on Premiere 6, so I suggest you get familiar with Pro as soon as possible.





Originally posted by King_Diamond

Re sub pixel rendering, what can i do to achieve it apart from text size and font? Is it a setting in the NLE program? I'm not quite aware what it is.







Sub-pixel rendering is dependent upon your NLE's underlying code and codec - it's not a simple 'setting', unfortunately. Basically, sub-pixel rendering means that the editing system has the ability to make scrolls and special effects much smoother in motion, because it can calculate them on the basis of much smaller increments, even though the physical number of display pixels remains limited to the standard size. I'm not an expert on this, but I can assure you that the difference is quite noticeable. I'm not sure if Graffiti operates on a sub-pixel basis within Premiere 6, because I am uncertain how 'independently' it operates from the core code of Premiere 6 itself. You might try also using Graffiti in standalone mode, if possible, and compare the results.


Arky ;o)

[King_Diamond]

Thanks for your help and suggestions. Will try your suggestions.

[King_Diamond]

Did some research on sub pixel rendering. Seems a good technique.

I was wondering if Boris Graffiti 3, Premiere 6 or Pro has this facility. Does anyone know?

[Arky]

Although the following document is aimed at FCP users, if you do a google search, you will find numerous references to Boris Red, FX and Graffiti, all of which, irrespective of host platform, suggest that the Boris plugins themselves operate on a sub-pixel basis.

http://www.borisfx.com/pdf_files/GRAFwhite2.pdf

I suggest that if you need absolute reassurance with regard to using Graffiti within Premiere Pro, you send an e-mail to Boris support. It does appear, though, that they are likely to tell you the plugin uses sub-pixel rendering regardless of which NLE it is plugged into.


It's also only $199 (http://www.videoguys.com/graffiti.html), for Premiere Pro use, so that's a pretty good deal.

All the best,


Arky ;o)

[King_Diamond]

Thanks Arky. Will confirm with Boris as you rightly suggested.