Which Font To Use For A 'Star-Wars' Type Intro?

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Level 1

30 points

Which Font To Use For A 'Star-Wars' Type Intro?

Hi

I am trying to create a 'Star-Wars' type intro to my movie (i.e. where the text scrolls up the screen and disappears towards a vanishing point in the distance).

I wanted a 'Lord of the Rings' type look so I tried using Apple Chancery as the font. It looked great on my Mac playing the movie from within iMovie, and on Preview in iDVD.

But when I burn to DVD, the finished result is very poor, with very severe artifacts on the scrolling text, to the point where it is difficult to read it on my TV.

What can I do to improve this? Anyone know another good font I could use for a similar effect, or technique to improve the quality?

Is there a 3rd party plug-in or app I could use to create the effect and then import to iMovie?

Why is the quality of text over black so bad on the final DVD, ads I have notived all of my titles, including those on video clips and photos, look much less sharp on the final DVD than the preview....

thanks

David

Macbook (Black), Mac OS X (10.4.7), 1GB RAM

Posted on Sep 26, 2006 6:26 AM

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Answer 1

SDIllini

Level 6

16,675 points

Sep 26, 2006 7:43 AM in response to davidroom

Hi david:

I am sure that others will find this topic and give more advice, but in the meantime, have you ever seen http://www.rqs.ca/RollingCredits/?

It's Rolling Credits and it is awesome!

Sue

iMac ppcG5 1.8 GHz 20FP & (2)iMac G4 800MHz 17FP Mac OS X (10.3.9) OS X 10.4.6 / iLife 4,5,6 Superdrives & 1 G RAM / QT6 pro

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Answer 2

Sep 26, 2006 8:17 AM in response to davidroom

Slick has a Star Wars effect but BIG BOLD fonts are paramount.
http://geethree.com/slick/V_05.html

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Answer 3

Sep 26, 2006 9:37 AM in response to davidroom

for my StarWars project I used the "FarFarAway title" built in in iM5... no severe artifacts... (have a look here, pre-pre-beta version!!)

Apple Chancery is a serif-typo.. thin lines could "flimmer" finally on TV...

my basic concern, reading about "bad quality":
a) iM/iDVD are made for TV - never judge pic quality in the "Mac's emulation" of a TV pic...
b) what was your workflow from iM to iDVD? because, I simply drag'n drop the iM project onto an open iDVD project - pic quality is superb... on TV.

improvement? stay within iApp's "concept", stay with DV as codec, avoid lossy inbetween compressions....

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Answer 4

davidroom Author

Level 1

30 points

Sep 29, 2006 10:26 AM in response to SDIllini

Sue

Thanks for the reply. I took a look at rolling credits. It's quite useful in that the interface is a lot better than iMovie's credits tool.

But it doesn't seem to offer a Star Wars type effect aka the Far Far Away effect in iMovie. I could only get it to do straight scrolling credits.

Is that your experience too?

Thanks anyway for the input.

david

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Answer 5

davidroom Author

Level 1

30 points

Sep 29, 2006 10:30 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

Karsten

Thanks for the post.

I think I have solved my issue.

The main problem was my movie format. I re-rendered my star wars intro in DV, as it was originally in MPEG4, and this vastly improved the quality of the titles.

Now it's probably good enough to stick with my Apple Chancery font after all, although I did increase the size of the text as well it make it even clearer.

Using MPEG4 has actually caused a lot of my problems, and I am now contemplating starting again and re-rendering my entire movie in DV to get the quality I am after.

I think Apple need to make the differences in the formats more clear, seeing as the consequences for selecting the wrong one are severe.....

cheers

david

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Answer 6

Sep 30, 2006 8:22 AM in response to davidroom

David,

"with very severe artifacts on the scrolling text"

I've tripped up iDVD a couple times when I have have a fast moving scroll. I've found slowing it down helps.

Matt

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