i'm having really ugly things happen when i put a text overlay on some DV video in FCP.

i heard that FCP uses the compression block arrangement from the video file and dosn't recompress it when you add effects. is that true? because then, when there are areas of low detail text will look aweful over them. i know DV is not exactly known for it's text... but any tips?

Well, I've never had any problems with FCP and their titles (over DV). I use FCP4, maybe that's it, dunno. Since you're using subtitles, you could just crop the image and put the subtitles over black - subtitles ruin your image anyway... *Grrr... subtitles!

Maybe it's the font you use and/or color. I wouldn't get to fancy with the text. I've used moving text for titles that I did over video and it looks fine - so, like I said before... use simple font, a decent size, and perhaps try cropping it (as a last resort)

ehhh... over black. i like that idea. like cool DVDs

thing is, as you may be able to deduce from the image, the subtitles are somewhat of a joke, and occur very infreqently. it may be odd to suddenly chop off the bottom of the image. but i'll try it, cause it is very stylish!

have you looked at them on a ntsc monitor? That's the real test. You won't get much from looking at the canvas window.
here's a few things to try (everything is to the text layer):
Add a slight gausian blur
reduce opacity slightly
reduce color sat. slightly
change to blockier text or bold text

In general I keep text less than 90% sat and luma. And sometimes I'll cheat the opacity down a few points too. The idea is to make the text less contrasty, which the codec handles very poorly.

the video/text is absolutely recompressed after adding a text layer. That's why text looks so crapy in dv. If you're really hard core, you could finish your project in a higher color space (like 601 or DVCPRO50) and add your text there before outputting to DVD or a mastering format other than DV, but you're gonna need phat disk space for that.

So, check a real montitor, reduce contrast as much as possible, and learn to live with !@#$ 4:1:1 color sampling.

all the best

thanks for the insights Joren! those tips sound excellent. somehow i knew you'd have the answer! what WOULD we do without you! lol

no problemo, brutha.

And, for what it's worth, I noticed your canvas size is set to 88%. That could cause the text aliasing to appear crappier that it really is. When doing final looks, blow that sucka up to 100% to if you can't get a NTSC external monitor.

without me you'd have some other know-it-all bored on father's day trying to sound like he knows what he's doing. ;-)

lol - thanks