Jagged text from 4K to 1080P

[Al Lougher]

Hey all-

I'm having a strange issue with a 4K title sequence that was created in AE (exported lossless rgb+alpha) and imported into PPro. I'm mastering in 4K so all looks good, but when I export to anything lower res ie 1080/720 all the text in the title sequence has jagged edges. I've tried h264 and MOV output and they're all the same. All I'm trying to do is create an export so I can upload the clip to Vimeo. Any ideas why PPro can't handle resizing text on export? When previewing it looks fine, just looks bad in the output file.

Preview:

Export:

Here's the properties of the comp that contains the title sequence:

Type: QuickTime Movie
File Size: 1.7 GB
Image Size: 4096 x 2048
Frame Rate: 23.976
Total Duration: 00:01:06:23
Average Data Rate: 25.3 MB / second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0


Cheers.

 

[Victor Lazaro]

any screen grab might help.

 

[Al Lougher]

Hey Victor - Just added it.

 

[Cory Petkovsek]

Try checking max render quality.
Or better, render out of AE.

 

[Solomon Nero]

Al are you using a machine with an i5 or i7? or with some kind of onboard or secondary video card?? whats your machines specs?

Also, what happens when you try rendering out blue instead of red font? is the issue still there?

 

[Greg Barley]

As Cory stated, make sure max render quality is checked. The jagged text is just a scaling issue... AME, Compressor, etc are all notoriously bad at downscaling footage, whether going from 4K to 1080, or 1080 to SD DVD.

There's some info on scaling in this old thread (http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?77890-DVD-resolution-issues&p=995929#post995929). As you'll see, to get the "best" results with text, graphics, etc you still need to use some other (usually convoluted) workflow... but just enabling max render quality gets pretty darn close most of the time.

 

[Al Lougher]

Outputting to a higher bit rate 1080P video and downsizing to 720P was much better than outputting directly to 720P. You can see the jaggies even in the output window in the export screen so Premiere must be doing something odd. Saying that, the 1080P output still stinks. I'll try that thread Greg suggested and see if I can get it any better.

I'm editing on a 27" iMac i7. Max render quality has always been checked too.

Cheers.

Update: It seems changing the font color from red to white actually fixed the issue. Any ideas why the red would cause a problem?

 

[Solomon Nero]

Outputting to a higher bit rate 1080P video and downsizing to 720P was much better than outputting directly to 720P. You can see the jaggies even in the output window in the export screen so Premiere must be doing something odd. Saying that, the 1080P output still stinks. I'll try that thread Greg suggested and see if I can get it any better.

I'm editing on a 27" iMac i7. Max render quality has always been checked too.

Cheers.

Update: It seems changing the font color from red to white actually fixed the issue. Any ideas why the red would cause a problem?

Yes I know your issue, the i7 line has an intel based video card chipset built into it. Make sure whatever program that you are viewing the final export is using your Dedicated video card and not the intel video card (not sure how to do that on a mac)

The reason the color change worked is because Red is a color that the intel video card has an odd time handling when playing back video. Not sure why honestly.

To test this, if you have a second computer that is not i7, i5 or i3, send the exported video to that and see if the red still displays with these jagged edges. If it does, then your intel video is running, not your dedicated video card

I hope this helps!

 

[Mark Toia]

Check you have fields turned of or switched to NON in both AE and Pr.

Another is make sure your bit rate for your H264 is above 2000+

100% RED always bleeds in lower res.

hope this helps

Hey all-

I'm having a strange issue with a 4K title sequence that was created in AE (exported lossless rgb+alpha) and imported into PPro. I'm mastering in 4K so all looks good, but when I export to anything lower res ie 1080/720 all the text in the title sequence has jagged edges. I've tried h264 and MOV output and they're all the same. All I'm trying to do is create an export so I can upload the clip to Vimeo. Any ideas why PPro can't handle resizing text on export? When previewing it looks fine, just looks bad in the output file.

Preview:

Export:

Here's the properties of the comp that contains the title sequence:

Type: QuickTime Movie
File Size: 1.7 GB
Image Size: 4096 x 2048
Frame Rate: 23.976
Total Duration: 00:01:06:23
Average Data Rate: 25.3 MB / second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0


Cheers.

 

[Alexander Mejia]

The 100% red is what is killing you. With downsamples, Its sometimes useful to make a title-less version, and create special titles that will play nicely in the 4:2:0 color space.

Vimeo can handle 1920x1080 4:2:0 h.264, so make sure it looks good when encoded to that. Blurring a title, or just re-creating it at a lower resolution can help.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Alexander's workaround above will do the job. Note that most video deliverables also require you to provide textless elements anyway (for promos, trailers, foreign-language versions, etc.), so it's a step you need to make anyway. Creating the titles in HD should avoid some of these issues.

 

[Al Lougher]

Thanks all. I'll keep the titles for white on the HD versions and red on the 4K, unless as Alex mentions I have to deliver without the titles but I don't think that's a requirement right now.

Thanks again, lots learned!

Al.