Text in FCE

I'm having trouble with my text in my project looking grainy, almost like a low resolution. The video looks fine. Any setting that I'm missing or what? It even looks bad when importing LiveType projects.
powerbook Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Are you looking at the rendered output on a video monitor?

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Any Way to Get Tapering, Diagonal Sloping Text Using FCE Alone?

The winning film at our club competition on Thursday had an interesting final credit shot.
The background was a three quarter view of a Roman Temple with a flat "gutter" below the roof gradually converging due to perspective.
One line of credits moved along this, with the writing steadily becoming smaller as it moved towards the left.
The video had been edited in FCE but the maker said this effect had been done in After Effects.
As usual I opened my big mouth and stated that it could have been accomplished using Motion in FCE.
I have since tried it !
I got the lettering to move slightly diagonally across the screen but no way could I get it to taper away. Using the Distort controls in Motion had no effect on the actual lettering.
So!.......... is it impossible using just the software that comes with FCE 3.0 ?
Ian.

Thanks Tom - unfortunately there's no way of showing it ..............yet !
Your title is quite different.
I will try to describe it basically.
Imagine a flat plank facing you and stretching across most of the screen. Now imagine the writing appearing and crawling from right to left along the plank. That can be done with the basic Text generator.
However, now imagine that the plank is tilted so that the right side is closer to the viewer. Because of perspective the left side looks smaller and further away.
The writing was crawling from the wider right side to the narrower left and getting smaller so that it appeared to be travelling along the plank.
An easy job in AE using keyframes but I think it is probably beyond the capabilities of FCE or Boris. Unfortunately I didn't think that when I mouthed off to the club !
Ian.

Using Text documents in Video

I'm a novice user of Final Cut Express HD. I'm using equipment and software at the site of a local cable provider. I'm working on a project in which I'd like to place a few pages of text. I used PDF files and just imported them into the FCE browser as a resource, but the resolution of the video is so bad that it's not useable.
Today I looked through the manual for Live Type and didn't find anything that directly suggested a solution, but I'm a newbe so I could have missed a common term or something.
What's the method currently used for bringing pages of text into FCE projects?

Welcome to the family, were were all new to this at one time but there are some fundamentals about imaging and video in general that cannot be covered here, they're just too broad. Video is about 640x480 pixels, that's all. when you bring in a page of text, the page is just an image, it's not raster text. And it will be scaled down to fit the video window. 480 pixels is good to display about 20 lines of very small text and it will be illegible from a comfortable viewing distance so we usually say, in general terms without knowing a great deal about how to compose and maximize the numerous options of the various text tools available within FCP, that video can display only 10-15 lines of legible, sans serif text with a nice shadow and maybe an outline. That's all.
How you work within the limitations of video to display text is going to be a long process of learnign about fonts, controls, coy editing, compromises with clients and much more. Then you will have to convert your 640x460 full frame video to 320x240 for the Web.
bogiesan

Creating text ?

I am working on a project that is mostly slides with text on.
So can I create text in FCE ?
In the manual it mentions using Generators to create text.
On page 868 it says "To create a generator click the Video tab in the Viewer
then choose a generator from the Generator pop up menu."
I have clicked on the Video tab in the Viewer but cannot find the Generator pop up menu anywhere.
Can someone help please ?
thanks
Pete
FCE version 4
Mac OSX 10.4.11

Your best choice for creating text is using Title 3D
At the bottom right hand corner of your Viewer there is an icon that looks like a letter A in a film strip. Open that up. You will see options for Title 3D, Title Crawl or Boris. Select Title 3D for static titles, it is much better than the text generator
Search your manuals for Boris or Title 3D for more info

Help with quality of exported files

The problem: I'm trying to get a good quality, 34 minute movie onto a DVD with chapter markers separating individual short films. This is supposed to be a compilation of 8 family movies, in addition to an introduction and credits at the end. Four movies are old movies made in iMovie and are .m4v files. Four were made in FCE earlier this year. I linked everything together in a Master Sequence, putting pauses in between each with some livetype text files to introduce each video. The m4v files were imported and placed in the master sequence. The others are nested sequences. I put chapter markers at the beginning of each section. My intention was to export this one master sequence as a quick time movie, then put it into iDVD.
It worked, but the quality was horrible! Everything became grainy, even the movies I had previously created in FCE. This was very disappointing. So I expertimented with a few things, and here’s what I found.
When I exported a quicktime movie, the quality degraded. It became grainy. Also, it changed the aspect ratio and stretches everything horizontally, as if to take a standard size screen and stretch it to a widescreen. It did this even with the original movies I had made in FCE. I don’t like building self contained movies using this mode because the file sizes are too big, so when I export I tend to use quick time conversion. In this case, I was hoping a non-self contained movie would merely point to all the original content and not add compression artifacts (or something like that). It turns out it made it worse.
When I tried to export a quicktime conversion, 640x480 VGA, best quality, H.264, the machine couldn’t do it. It ran for an hour or so and then crashed. Twice. That is for the entire movie. When I export individual clips (3-6 minutes) it works. The quality is good for movies made in FCE, not as good for imported m4v movies made long ago in iMovie, but better than what I get exporting quicktime movie files, either self contained or not. This is surprising to me, because I was expecting the export quick time movie command to produce the best quality. Also, I’m concerned that if I was able to create this, iDVD would not see any chapter markers anyway.
So there is a problem either way. Experimenting has led me to discover several questions/issues which need answering:
Issue #1: Why can’t I get a quick time movie of the same quality as what I see on the canvas, using the quick time movie export command? On a side note, the user's manual says something about a settings pop up menu where you can deselect the "recompress all frames" option. I can't seem to find this, and was thinking maybe that would help.
Issue#2: Why do m4v files which are very high quality in iTunes suddenly become poor quality when imported into a sequence? Seems to be an import problem, because the movies are already grainy when they’re on the canvas. I thought about making XML files and importing them that way, but the original project files in iMovie are gone.
Issue #3: Why do I end up with a stretched picture if I export quick time movies and there are mixed aspect ratio contents in the sequence (the m4v files are widescreen, the others are not)? More important, how to I get FCE to not do this?
Issue #4: When I export movies using quick time movie (not conversion), the grainy movies actually look better when played in VLC. They also look good when opened with FCE. How can I get that kind of quality in quick time, or at least in iDVD? Perhaps that would solve my problem.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
E

Thanks for the response. I’m not fluent with codecs or video compression, so this project quickly became more trouble than I expected.
It turns out the nested sequences are not H.264, the compression field is blank for the nested sequences. I double checked and the other properties are correct. Sorry about that. The other movies, though, (ones built in iMovie for iTunes) are H.264.
These four . m4v movies are in 960x540 and 480 x 272 because of the way they were exported in iMovie (Share -> Export Movie opens a menu with four sizes: Tiny 176 x 144, Mobile 480 x 272, Medium 640 x 360, and Large 960 x 540).
I just imported the final products (what was exported from iMovie) as clips into FCE. Sounds like I should not be doing that. The original media is on my computer, but not the iMovie project files, and for what I’m trying to do it’s just not worth the time to rebuild the movies in FCE.
Bottom Line: Here’s the current status of the project:
All eight of the movies, by themselves, play well in quicktime. I can put all of them on a DVD, and they still play ok. I wanted to string them all together in one sequence, with some transitions in between (creating a “Play All” option on the DVD). That’s why I nested the sequences, and imported the movies made from iMovie, than added chapter markers. Unfortunately, putting these different types of media together and asking the computer to make one sequence is creating a mess. So I’m sticking with Plan B and putting the movies on a DVD without trying to merge them into a single track.
A few follow up questions…
Out of curiosity, when you say “convert everything to QuickTime DV NTSC 720x480 at 29.97fps with 48k audio,” do you mean the original media (all of the bits of video and stills that came from the camera) or the edited sequences I’m currently working with? As a lesson learned, should I be changing properties of clips before importing them to FCE, so the source material has consistent aspect ratios?
The still images, though they are huge, show up with much better quality than the movies (which is expected, and I’m ok with). So I get a product which includes both video and still images, where the images are very sharp and the movie portions are a bit grainy (because they were taken on a small digital camera). If I change the size on the stills, won’t that just bring the still image quality down?
I’m still baffled at why using the export quick time movie command makes a video of lower quality than when using quick time conversion (in other cases as well, not just this project). In every case, I’ve got digital pictures and movies from my digital camera, and some text in FCE or LiveType files on top of that, usually with additional audio tracks.

Rendering imported images in Final Cut so they look nice

I recently edited a video requiring still image animation, something Final Cut is notoriously poor at. After much experimenting, I got good results that I want to share. Hope it will help someone else. I have also posted this info, with pictures, here: http://members.dslextreme.com/users/craig.lawson/fce/static_images.html
Q: Say you have a nice graphic done in Illustrator or Inkscape. How can you import it into FCE?
A: Not supported. As I write this, I've found no filters which allow SVG to be imported. However, you can convert your graphic to JPEG or PNG, and import that. PNG supports transparency, and is recommended.
Q: I've imported a nice high-resolution PNG and it looks crappy when I try to zoom or distort it. It's 4 times the resolution of my video. +What did I do wrong?+
A: Not supported. What you did wrong is to assume that FCE would use the extra resolution you provided and render a nice image.
Q: Is there nothing I can do?
A: Over in the high-rent neighborhood, people with FCP are using Adobe After-Effects for this. But those of us on a budget bought FCE for a reason. Fortunately, the FCE 4 bundle comes with a tool which gets you partway there: LiveType.
LiveType to the rescue. I hate LiveType. I want to like it, since I like good typography, but LiveType has a weird interface for controlling effect rates, does not support multiple columns credit rolls (hello? Is that basic or what?), and appears to be focused on cheap tricks.
Yet it can import high resolution images, keep the high resolution until rendering, and works well with FCE. I'll describe my storyboard, and how I used LiveType to make it look pretty good. (You can use my sequence if you want, but I'm not writing a cookbook here. My goal is to use my storyboard to describe a general technique.)
Storyboard
My images are two static vector graphics created in Inkscape.
* Start with image one, scale = 100% @ 0 sec, and begin gradual scale increase (zoom in) to scale = 720% @ 17 sec.
* At 10 seconds, begin a 2 second transition from image one to image two.
* While this is going on, begin distorting the image with the vertical Wave filter. Start with amplitude = 0 and frequency = 0 @ 0 sec. Gradual change to amplitude = 10 @ 10 sec and frequency = 20 @ 15 sec.
* Start Bad TV filter at 15 seconds.
* Begin one second fade-out @ 17 sec.
Implementation
If done entirely in FCE, the result is a pixelated mess with moire patterns. The rendered image section shown here is about 10 seconds into the sequence.
Start by exporting your images to PNG at 4 times the resolution of your video (multiply width and height each by 2). Import these into LiveType, size appropriately, and add the transition. (I'm not going to describe exactly how to do this in LiveType. There are many LiveType tutorials available on the Internet, and more words here will not improve LiveType's quirky interface.)
Implement the scale in LiveType, also, but do not scale fully from 100% to 720%. LiveType slows down a lot at high scale values, and we need some headroom to do post-effect scaling in FCE. Instead, scale from 100% to 300%.
Import the project into FCE. Add Wave and Bad TV filters. Notice how when the wave filter makes your image ripple, the top and bottom edges are cut-off? It appears as though FCE imported a rectangular image from LiveType, and there's nothing beyond the edges but black. To complete the effect, add scale from 100% @ 0 sec to 240% @ 17 sec (300% x 240% = 3.0 x 2.4 = 7.2 = 720%). Scale in FCE is applied after the other filters, and hides the cut-off edges.
End result: Much better looking than with FCE alone. Pixelation is eliminated and moire patterns are reduced (though not eliminated). However, it is a pain to set up. But that is the price perfectionists pay, so welcome to the club and suck it up.
*Removing moire & interlace flicker*
Moire & interlace flicker occurs when you use narrow horizontal lines in your graphic. Bad choice, yet here we are.
First off, what is the destination for your work - broadcast TV, DVD, or YouTube? If the first two, you should see how it looks on an interlace monitor; if YouTube, you're probably done - upload a test, see how your careful work has been mangled, weep, and then give up.
For interlace, you'll need to blur vertically to reduce adjacent scanlines flicker. The standard technique for this is to apply:
Video Filters > Blur > General Convolution:
Cell 2 = 0.25
Cell 5 = 0.5
Cell 8 = 0.25
all other cells = 0
Apply as the last filter in the chain. However, if you see moire due to the Wave or some other distortion filter, you might try adding another one at the beginning of the filter chain.
Moire occurs not just in still images, but also when the images animate. Although not shown here (because these are still images), I have not eliminated moire entirely. However, it is improved.
Tips to improve image quality further:
* Avoid scaling in FCE. If you can, scale in LiveType only.
* Avoid using thin lines.
* Use a high resolution source image.
Message was edited by: c555

"A: Over in the high-rent neighborhood, people with FCP are using Adobe After-Effects for this."
Nothing will scale bitmapped images 720% well. Not even After Effects. It may look better than FCE but it will look bad. AE and Motion will support vector images and continuously rasterize to create smooth scaling at high levels.
If you want vector text in FCE that will scale up you can use Title 3D.

Set a background using a still image (TIFF)?

Hi, I am trying to use a still image as a background behind the text for visual placement and text effect evaluation. I have seen how to place a video, etc but can't seem to get a still in there. I can create a video from a still but trying to save steps and improve workflow. Thanks.

Can I assume your are attempting to use this image inn FCE HD?
Why not simply place your background image on a track underneath the track with your livetype text in FCE. This way you can adjust the duration of your background image to be anything you like. hope this helps.
Mac Book Pro 15" Mac OS X (10.4.9) 2GB RAM, 2.33Ghz Intel, 256mb Video

Fuzzy Fonts

When I try to use Borris for text in FCE, when the size gets too small, it gets fuzzy and is not sharp. I need to be able to make graphics for sports videos. Example:
Small picture of athlete inside a red box. The picture is on the left side, the font on the right. Joe Slama Jama, leads league in points. 2009 Rookie of the Year
How do the CG guys do it for the NBA and NFL? Are they just using better quality programs that are meant for HD tvs? None of my video is in HD, and is shot with a Sony MiniDV cheap-o $200 camera.
By the way, I LOVE THIS FORUM...it always gets my creative juices flowing when I read what others are doing.

So is the solution to buy a better quality camera? Perhaps a HD camera like you can buy at the big box stores? I was thinking of upgrading to either Flash drive or hard drive cameras that shoot in HD. They are around $500 each. I am very picky about my work and I can only afford what I can afford, but I want the most bang for my buck.
Back ground - I shoot for the local roller derby league, and the lower quality graphics are fine when you are watching at home with the team, and they know what is going on, but there is talk of having it aired on one of the local channels as a paid program. I use the cheaper cameras because I use 4 of them to cover the action (I am the only shooter) and when the rollergirls crash into one and it breaks, its cheap to replace.
I am also using a GoPro as the ref's helmet cam and the quality of that footage makes my current cameras look like crapola.

Anamorphic material in iDVD6

I thought this was going to be fixed. Don't get me wrong. I'm happy just for the new iPhoto and iWEB!!!
But really. Toss in some great DVD themes and I'm a sucker for it. Except when it won't (I mean I can't figure out how to get it to) do what I need!!
I edit in FCP and generally publish to dvd with DVDSP.
I need to get some films which are shot anamorphic to work in iDVD.
I've got one project here with 7 short films. 4 were shot 4:3 and 3 are 16:9. All 7 come out as 4:3. I thought there might be an issue with the preview feature of iDVD so I burned a copy. No luck.
Did a search here and found some sort of hacks but as you've already assessed I'm an idiot and need some step by step hand-holding if I'm going to do anything to my computer and applications that Apple didn't have the decency to fix on their own.
Please tell me I'm just missing a button somewhere.
Again, I set up my project as a 'widescreen' project. Menu looks great in widescreen. Press to show a film and oops... everyone's tall and skinny.
Should I just stay with DVDSP? Am I really asking too much for iDVD?
Thanks,
CaptM

When I use anamorphicizer, it only works for me if within FCE I disable the "anamorphic" checkmark on the clip properties. This forces it to looked stretched to fill the 4:3 window in FCE and when exported as a QT file. But then after using anamorphicizer, it correctly is shown as widescreen in iDVD6. If I leave the "anamorphic" checkmark on the clip properties in FCE, then it exports as a letterbox QT file and then anamorphicizer simply stretches it in iDVD6 but still with the letterbox black borders on top and bottom. Does it sound like I'm doing something wrong.
Secondly, if I try to use titles within FCE, checking or unchecking the "anamorphic" checkmark has no effect and so they are shown as normal proportions regardless of how the clip works. Then after using anamorphicizer, although the clip is now widescreen properly, the text now gets stretched from left-to-right. Is there a way to distort the text with FCE so that after using anamorphicizer and bringing the resulting QT file into iDVD6 that the text will look correct?
Sounds like this anamorphic is more trouble than it's worth and I'll stick with shooting 4:3 video since I prefer FCE to iMovie. But still, I'd like to learn how to solve this problem. Thanks.

LiveType Won't Import into Final Cut Express

I recently purchased the new Macbook Pro and migrated Final Cut Express and LiveType from my old iMac to my MBP. However, when I try importing LiveType text to FCE, I get the following message:
+File Error: Unknown file.+
Did I forget to copy something over when I migrated?

migrated Final Cut Express and LiveType...
There's your problem. FCE places lots of files at system level, many of them in invisible folders. Migration Assistant does not copy these properly.
You must use the original discs to install FCE & LiveType.

Exporting marker notes to text file in FCE

Hello all--
Hope this isn't too basic, but can't seem to find an answer. I'm going through videos of interviews and using markers to set interesting quotes, translation points, etc. In these markers, I'm using the comments and name to highlight the thing being said. Is there a way to export these comments, along with the time they're said to a plain ol' text file? Or at least is there a way to get them into one using FCE 3.5.1?
thanks,
chris

Chris,
Not that I know of. You can't even Copy/Paste.
Al

Live type text not appearing in FCE

I've got a 3 track video (green screen). The top track being a LT project. I cannot get the text to show up at all, not in the preview window or editor window. I made the title within the boundaries and made the project apple codec 1080 60i just like my project in FCE. It's white text no background, and it's the very top track. Even when i export as a movie the movie doesn't play any text. If i export as a preview however it does show up.
Anyone have a clue what this could be?
I've got 3 month old macbook pro, 4 gig ram. And the lates version of FCE.
I'm using a live font with an anitgravity effect. I save it as a project file and import in into FCE, then drop it on the top track and render. (FYI stuff)

Hi(Bonjour)!
Try to import the livetype project file itself into FCE. It will render and should play fine from FCE timeline.
Michel Boissonneault

FCE HD Titles - text moves down screen

Hello all. When I first started to use FCE I made a title using the in-programme title system and the text displayed etc just fine. Now when I make the same kind of title the text looks much the same in the Controls pane but it tends - usually - to move itself down to the bottom of the picture when in the video pane. Needless to say I am not adding carriage returns before the text, but still down it goes as though I had done.
The text is centered - but what other controls I wonder are there perhaps that I'm not understanding that are causing this to happen?
Ancilliary question; is it possible to italicise one word in a title without the whole text being italic as well?
Many thanks
Stephen
PS its FCE HD 3.0

OK, thanks. Firstly, I was simply using what's within the programme, I tried Boris and the other complicated thing and it was rather fiddly for what I need, at the moment at least.
I went to Effects then Text then Text (all on the top left box), which opens with SAMPLE TEXT. changed the font to Baskerville and changed the colour. I then, having made a combination of font, colour etc, copied that Text item into other videos which need the same style and indeed actual text.
I've just done that again and the text stays in the middle, just fine.
But in the one in the video that actually matters, the text is up in the top of the Controls pane (under Parameters) but when you leave Controls it aligns with the bottom of the box.
That any help? Thanks again...

FCE 4.1 crashes repeatedly when adjusting a text item

I have finished all of my video cuts and am going back to put in titling, transitions etc etc.
I just put the main title in, and now every time i twiddle a parameter, like font size, kerning, color etc the beach ball spins and the FCE crashes,.
At this rate I am going to have to etch the screen to get titles in ...:) I am not even using anything fancy .. just what i found out of some books, etc as a way to get a nice title and whatever apple has given me I tried deleting the whole thing and starting again and same thing happens.
I went to my disk and ran fsck - or equivalent and everything is ok. Anyone have any suggestions. The video ( 45 minutes of it seems to play just fine at this point, but the titles dont wanna go in .

What are you using to create your title? One of the standard text generators, Boris, Livetype?
Try trashing preferences and repairing permissions exactly as described here:
http://fcpbook.com/Misc1.html

Boris text crawl in FCE

Is it possible to animate this in FCE? I for the life of me can't get my text to move, even though I select roll or crawl.

huh. thanks. i could have sworn that's what i was doing. in any case, it works now. any way to get rid of the staggering/jitter in roll?

Text in FCE

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