6 Introduction to Titles, Graphics & Stills
Titles, Graphics and Stills play an important role in the work of the videographer. More often than not, an opening title or graphic will be the first thing that your viewer will see. So attention to creating aesthetically pleasing and technically correct titles will prepare your viewer for the oncoming programme.
The basic rules of creating effective and pleasing titles are similar to those in printed media. This includes not using too many font styles or colours at the same time. You must also not use font sizes which are too small to read or use an intricate font style which does not look good on video. The most important quality of any titling or text is that it can be read easily, so attention must be paid to ensuring that the text does not conflict with images or colours they are being superimposed over.
Including too much text on the screen at the same time can also be confusing for the viewer. If you must display lots of textual information, it is better to split this across a number of pages or animate the text (see Rolling Titles and Crawling Titles). In most cases, hold the text on the screen for as long as it takes to read and no longer.
6.1 Title Safe Area
When CRT TV sets were the norm, most magnified the video image so that the edges (often distorted by the effects of broadcasting and technical issues) were hidden out of view, employing a process known as ‘overscan’. Important action could not be guaranteed visible in the outer 10% of the image, and text could not be guaranteed readable outside the outer 20% of the image. This lead to two areas of the screen known as ‘Action Safe’ and ‘Title Safe’.
Modern LCD and Plasma screens do not exhibit such extremes, but whilst CRT displays remain, it is good practice to ensure all text is displayed within the central 80% of the screen area. The title safe area for LCD and plasma is 90%, while web and PC displayed video remains at 100%.
6.2 Rolling Titles
When you have more text than can be shown on the screen at any one time, a common solution is to animate the text in a Rolling Title format. Rolling titles will appear at the bottom of the screen and move up and out of the screen at the top. Again, you must adhere to the Title Safe area to the left and right of the screen. Be aware that rolling titles are often difficult to make smooth on-screen. Fast speeds can create unpleasant juddering, or result in too much blur. Slow speeds can result in a stepping motion. Always check rolling titles in their final format on a range of display devices to ensure that they are represented as you intended.
6.3 Crawling Titles
Crawling Titles are used for the same reason as Rolling Titles, but animate across the screen from right to left (or left to right in Arabic programming). If these are superimposed over live video, they will normally appear at the bottom of the screen. Again, you must adhere to the Title Safe area to the bottom of the screen.
6.4 Graphics
‘Graphics’ contain a number of elements that can catch the video editor unawares. Whilst some are limited to CRT TV sets, the rest can cause problems universally. Here are some common pitfalls.
- Beware of thin graphic lines. As most broadcast and domestic video is interlaced, lines that are as thin as one or two TV lines can either jump up and down (‘twitter’), or flash. The subtlest of blurs applied to the graphic line, which are what most ‘deflicker’ filters are, will stop it.
- Beware of strong colours – especially reds. The video picture you see effectively consists of a low resolution colour image over a crisp black and white image. Thus graphics should be ‘desaturated’ enough to allow the monochrome image to provide acceptable sharpness. Physics dictates that the red end of the spectrum tends to be low wavelength, blues tend to be high wavelength, thus graphics look sharper against blues than reds.
- Fonts should not be less than 24 pixels.
- Be careful with Serif fonts. Fonts are generally classed as ‘Serif’ or ‘Sans Serif’. Serifs are the little ‘ticks’ on the points of letters in fonts such as Times New Roman. These points can easily become a single TV line, so will twitter at smaller sizes. If you need smaller text, stick to Sans Serif fonts like Arial and Gill Sans (‘Sans’ is French for ‘without’).
- When creating graphics, ensure they are ‘Anti-Aliased’ for best results. Old-style computer generated graphics used to represent diagonal lines with steps of pixels; one up, three across, and so on. These were an ‘alias’ of a true diagonal line, and could produce ugly results when displayed on a TV. This is especially important for typography.
- Beware of ‘super-white’ and ‘super-black’. Computers represent colours by mixing red, green and blue brightness values, where 0 is the darkest, and 255 is the brightest value. So, for example, white consists of Red=255, Green=255, Blue=255; black is 0, 0, 0; dark blue is 0, 0, 50; and so on. The problem is that video is set to put black at 16, 16, 16 and white at 235, 235, 235 – known as super-white and super- black. So, when graphics are inserted into the NLE it’s wise to check that it’s treating the graphic correctly, as super-white and super-black can cause problems later. Luckily for PAL TV markets, this problem isn’t as complicated as it is with NTSC.
- Pixel Size. Computer graphics use square pixels, video systems use non-square pixels. Although both 4:3 and 16:9 video contains 720×576 pixels, graphics for 4:3 video should measure 768×576 and 16:9 should measure 1024×576. Again, check your NLE’s handling carefully, as errors (such as bad scaling) will make graphics look ‘lumpy’.
- Moiré Effects. Avoid patterns made up of closely spaced parallel lines, used in some forms of graphic shading, as this can create what is known as ‘Moiré Effects’ (green or magenta patches or boiling effects).
- Jitter on Motion Graphics. Motion Graphics are simply animated titles or graphic sequences. These are often rendered into video clips without fields which can make fast moving graphics appear jittery. Another cause of jittery motion graphics that have been ‘field rendered’ is that they have an incorrect field order. For instance, DV video uses ‘lower-field first’ field ordering. If the graphics have been created with ‘upper-field first’ ordering they will look jittery when incorporated into DV. The solution is to ensure that the field properties of your motion graphics match those of your main programme.
6.5 Rostrum Camera & Scanned Artwork
Video programmes will often have printed material and photographs added to help illustrate the story or message. These can be converted to video by two methods, either filmed with a video camera (referred to as ‘Rostrum Camera’) or scanned into a computer using a flatbed scanner.
A Rostrum camera is essentially a platform on which to place your material with a video camera suspended overhead. Rostrum cameras can be highly mechanised systems, with the operator being able to move the material horizontally and vertically. In addition, the material can be rotated and zoomed into whilst being captured on video. This technique can bring to life otherwise static objects.
A flatbed scanner can scan any printed material into a computer. This image can then be imported into an NLE and then manipulated. By scanning the image at a higher resolution than video, the editor can then zoom into the scanned image without losing definition. Some specialised software programs can even emulate the movements of a Rostrum camera.
The main thing to consider when using scanned artwork is that you will be limited to the aspect ratio of the video you are producing. That means that portrait-shaped images, unless fully zoomed into, will have blank spaces either side. Stretching these out to fill a 4:3 or 16:9 picture shape will unnaturally distort the original image.