Blurry Text on Final DVD

[rdastrup]

I just authored a DVD that has simple menus and contains about 20 short videos. The text appears blurry on the menus when I play the DVD back on a Television screen or on a computer screen I used the text tool inside of DVD workshop and used 12 point bold Ariel. It is especially blurry when I enlarge the video to full screen.

The 2nd issue is when we play the video back in MS Media Player instread of showing the video names in the Play List, we just see "title 1", "title 2" etc. instead of the actual names of the video clips. It also says "Unknown DVD" at the top. How do I get that to reflect the actual names.

Russ Dastrup

[the britisher]

Hi Russ

Are your menus motion menus or still?

Do you mean Windows Media Player and if so what version?

What's your operating system?

Anything else you can tell us?

Regards

the britisher

[Devil]

12 points is too small to read off a TV screen at a normal viewing distance, anyway. IMHO, the absolute smallest you should use is 16 pts, preferably more. Just think, you can put about 20 lines, spaced by equal distances at 12 pts. If you are on NTSC, you have 480 pixels in the pic height, so you have 12 pixels high x about 8 pixels wide (depending on the letter width). Do you really think that you can get a sharply defined letter with so few pixels?

[the britisher]

C'mon Devil

It's not up to anyone on this forum to judge what type size people should be using - that's insane.

My initial reaction when I saw this post was that 12 point text may be too small so I checked some of the projects I had done in DVD workshop and I have used 10 and 12 point text with no loss of quality and definately no blurryness.

So in answer to your question - "Do you really think that you can get a sharply defined letter with so few pixels?"

Yes, absolutely I have proof

Regards

the britisher

[Devil]

Yep, but you don't live in Provo, you live in PALland. That does make quite a difference. Notwithstanding, I challenge anyone looking at 480i/576i TV at a normal viewing distance to read 12 points.

If I remember correctly, the text menu templates in WS2 use 16 pts or larger (unchecked).

[Terry Stetler]

Devil is correct: in NTSC-land where we only have 480 lines vs. 576 in PAL sticking to a 16 point or larger font is a good practice.

Personally I don't go below 20 points and often use 22-24 to aid viewing on TV's that are a bit out of adjustment.

[the britisher]

There is a difference between lines and pixels - 12 point text will appear on a computer screen at 12 points whether or not the total resolution of your image is 720 x 480 NTSC or 720 x 576 PAL you're still using the same number of pixels.

Try it in Photoshop or whatever similar app.

Granted, if your TVs a bit rubbish or even NTSC small text will look a bit crap. However, Russ says that he has this problem on a computer screen also, which leads me to believe there is probably an issue here.

Regards

the britisher

[Devil]

I'm sorry, that is not so. A typographical point is 0.376 mm (0.351 in some non-standard countries and, I think, in computer fonts). Let's assume the latter. What it means is that a 12 point letter, when printed out, should be 4.21 mm high (I think the capital I is used as the reference, but I'm not sure). As you know, a 12 point letter on a computer screen can be any size, whatsoever.

The use of points in WS2 is really meaningless, other than that's the size it would be if you printed the text out at 1:1. In reality, I believe it's a function of the available screen height, independent of the format. So, if a letter I, in a large title, is, say, 1/16th of the screen height, in NTSC it will cover 30 lines, but in PAL, it will look sharper with 36 lines. The difference is significant, especially as sharp horizontal lines will "dither" less, because of the interlacing, in PAL.

[rdastrup]

First of all, thank you all for taking the time to debate this font issue and helping me to understand this better.

The menus were simple text non-motion menus. I have gone through and raised all of the text from 12pt. to 16 pt. and will burn a new DVD and test it.

What about the MS Windows Media Player issue? This is in Windwos XP.
When I burn a DVD with DVD Workshop and play it in Windows Media Player, the Playlist area to the right of the movie indicates that it is an "UNknown DVD" and does not recognize the names of any of the videos on the DVD. Is there a way in DVD Workshop to make the DVD function more like a store bought movie?

[the britisher]

Sorry to hijack your post a bit Russ and I'm sorry I can't answer your second question but to Devil:

Hi Devil

I'm not sure you read my previous post but in response:

DVD Workshop has no typographical control whatsoever – no kerning, no leading, no hyphenation or anything but the basic ability to type in some text, align it, make it bold etc. Like I said – basic.

A point, in the digital domain (designated by Adobe Postscript) is 1/72 of 1 inch. A computer monitor’s resolution is 72 dots (or, more accurately – pixels) per inch regardless of operating system, graphics card etc. Windows has always reported the resolution as 96 dpi, but it’s not, it’s 72.

If you create a still image for a menu using a “paint” program whether it is NTSC or PAL the resolution is always 72 pixels per inch as far as displaying that image and using it within the digital domain is concerned. Resolution really only comes into play when you wish to print the image professionally.

For example let’s take a still PAL frame into Photoshop. Create a new image at 720 x 576 pixels @ 72 ppi. Your image if you wished to print it (allowing a standard print resolution of 300 dpi) would be 10 x 8 inches.

If you increase the resolution of your PAL frame to say, 300 ppi, it doesn’t change the number of pixels in the image (unless you resample it – something quite different), it simply changes the size of the pixels and therefore the size of the image. This time the image would be 2.4 x 1.92 inches.

To make that clearer – if you created a movie in standard PAL format and you wanted a still of your movie to appear in a glossy magazine or brochure at optimum quality – the maximum size you could use would be 2.4 x 1.92 inches. Make the image any larger and it will start to get blocky or “pixelate”.

So back to the digital domain, which the DVD format most certainly is, if you create your text in DVD Workshop at 12 points, DVD Workshop will create a capital letter 12 pixels high (actually 14 pixels to allow for anti-aliasing)

This is true whether you are working in PAL or NTSC. Ergo the number of pixels used for a given font size is the same.

Admittedly, once you’re out of the digital domain, things get a lot more complicated i.e. set-top DVD player to analogue TV. Here, there are so many factors that have an effect on quality that it would take dissertation to include them all. However, the smaller vertical resolution of an NTSC TV does not necessarily preclude the use of small fonts.

Regards

the britisher

[Devil]

I'm sorry, but text generated in NTSC takes up exactly the same space as in PAL (I'm not talking about conversions). This is easily seen by filling a screen with text. I've never had to modify the text characteristics when doing a screen-full of text. If your hypothesis were correct, the last line would disappear when I did the NTSC version. I assume this is the same in WS2 menus, although I've never verified it.