Smooth Credit Roll?

[rob fisher]

Hi,

Sometimes it seems as though the easy stuff ends up being a real pain in the…

I have a short credit roll to do. It’s a 1920×3000 image created in Photoshop that I am moving on the Y axis in a 23.98PsF Action sequence. I’ve imported it as a matte that I am using with a white frame of equal size for the front. Is there some sort of formula I can follow to eliminate the flicker? Or a better way to go about doing this? I’ve cranked the AA and I’ve added motion blur, aside from giving me a 9hr render it’s not helping much.

thanks so much for any advice.
-rand.

[Anonymous]

You should calculate and make sure that your frame is moved in the Y direction as an integer number. For example, if axis.position.y is 0 on frame 1, on frame 1000 it should be a multiple of 1000.

Hope this helps
Sinan Vural

[claudio antonelli]

Motion Blur doesn’t help when the credits are moving at a constant rate; the move is constant and linear, so you’d get the exact same result with a much faster Y blur. My personal experience is to use neither though, as it just ends up making the type look blurry.

Upping the AA samples will help with the crawling edges. It may be a good idea to make the text matte 2x the size you want it, to get extra smoothness out of your edges when you resize down w/ a nice AA level.

Choice of font can make a difference, with blockier san-serif ones doing better in motion.

Your real enemy here is the framerate, but there’s nothing you can do other than slow the move down.

[Sinan]

@sinancg 28521 wrote:

You should calculate and make sure that your frame is moved in the Y direction as an integer number. For example, if axis.position.y is 0 on frame 1, on frame 1000 it should be a multiple of 1000.

Hope this helps
Sinan Vural

Sinan is totally correct. But I would like to add a few things. Never do sampling in action for a credit roll. I mean both antialiasing and moblur! I even close filtering for my image surface. Ideally design & scale everything in photoshop, don’t scale anything in action. Use action just for animating the Y position of the image.

______ If you have 2010 release ________
But with the new resize module introduced in 2010, you can animate Y position very controllable way. So you can try scaling as well in that module. But if you ask me, you should still avoid filtering in subpixel levels, it will introduce different results for different non-integer position. This will have a bad result on thin characters.

One more general thing. What ever you do, on sharp graphics, on a low framerate display, human eye will suffer from strobing, if the image moves fast. There is no way to make a non strobing sharp gfx on a 24fps progressive display(a movie screen is a good example). This is why all credits are kept with small characters, and they usually move in and out of screen around in 8 seconds.

[new way]

thanks so much for your responses. it really helped me out.

it’s frustrating because the director wants to see the credits moving faster – a 5min film with 2mins of credits doesn’t float his boat. I just don’t understand why everyone needs a credit for a short in the first place. just do the work get a copy of the film for your demo, CV, what have you and be done with it.

too much vanity in the film biz I tell ya.

[bnw]

Might sound crazy, but try two columns of credits 🙂

[claudio antonelli]

@rand_mcnally 28555 wrote:

thanks so much for your responses. it really helped me out.

it’s frustrating because the director wants to see the credits moving faster – a 5min film with 2mins of credits doesn’t float his boat. I just don’t understand why everyone needs a credit for a short in the first place. just do the work get a copy of the film for your demo, CV, what have you and be done with it.

too much vanity in the film biz I tell ya.

That’s the thing w/ short films. A lot of favors are called in, so each one gets a shout out. The person who resolves how to respect everyone’s contribution to a short film without making the credits half the length of the piece itself will be a hero to many.

[Author]

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