Flicker on Roling Credits

[SCDVD]

I just made a DVD with rolling credits. My problem is a distracting flicker on horizontal elements of the letters as the credits scroll up the screen. The DVD is NTSC SD interlaced scan. The rolling credit part is a separate title set so I can give it any kind of special treatment that might help. It is encoded at 8500. I had hoped that the higher encoding rate would help but it doesn't seem to. Would it help if I encoded it using progressive scan instead of interlaced? Since the rolling credits are a seperate VTS, I assume a player / TV can handle the switch from interlaced to progressive scan when it plays through the main movie which is interlaced to the rolling credits VTS encoded with progressive scan. Is that an accurate assumption? What does a player or TV do with a progressive scan input if it doesn't support progressive scan? This DVD will be distributed to a large number of people and I want to be sure there aren't any problems with some players or TVs not being able to play it.

[guns1inger]

Use a larger font
Use a font that is san serif
Use a font that does not have very thin horizontal elements
Finally, if necessary, apply a slight gaussian or motion blur to the text

Basically the same tricks/rules that apply for menu creation to reduce interlace flicker..

[manono]

Since the rolling credits are a seperate VTS, I assume a player / TV can handle the switch from interlaced to progressive scan when it plays through the main movie which is interlaced to the rolling credits VTS encoded with progressive scan. Is that an accurate assumption?

You could have had the credits as part of the same PGC as the main video. It wouldn't have made any difference. They'd still look the same. Film to video to film (or progressive to interlaced to progressive) switches are fairly common on certain kinds of DVDs, docus and anime coming to mind. If those credits are 29.97fps, it's almost always encoded as interlaced, even if the source is progressive.

What does a player or TV do with a progressive scan input if it doesn't support progressive scan?

If the TV is interlaced, the player doesn't output progressive - it isn't set for progressive scan. All DVD players are capable of outputting 480i or 576i, depending if NTSC or PAL.

Your flickering is caused by other things that guns1inger covered, probably mostly due to the small size of the scrolling text and the fine lines it contains

[SCDVD]

Using larger san serif fonts is a problem because some of the characters in the rolling credits are Chinese characters. The more complex nature of these characters is more problematic. They are already as large as they can be without looking just too big.

[manono]

Is not scrolling them an option - making static screens? Just about every retail Chinese DVD with scrolling credits I've seen has that same problem.

[SCDVD]

The only thing that has given me some hope that there is some way to deal with this is that when I play it on a computer's CRT monitor, it doesn't flicker if I play it with VLC. Other players do flicker such as WMP and Nero Vision.

[12Quidkidinnit]

What software did you use to make the credits ?

I recently did some, and the first few attempts were quite shaky. In the end I used the titler in Premiere Elements 2, and even when slowed down so they were readable, it worked well and didn't flicker.
One thing I noticed was that if I exported them as a video sequence, and then slowed them down, they flickered, whereas if I slowed them down in PE 2 before exporting them, they didn't.

[SCDVD]

I used Edit Studio 6 from MediaChance. The scrolling itself is smooth and there is no problem with the English characters, but the smaller and more intricate elements of the Chinese characters are where I see the flickering.

[Midzuki]

Just out of curiousity, with which font the Chinese characters were written

[SCDVD]

PMingLiU

[Midzuki]

Thanks. Sadly both µ$ Windows and µ$ Office do not offer other
traditional-Chinese fonts than MingLiu, pMingLiu and JhengHei---
none of which is "sans-serif". Yes, there exist "sans-serif" CJK fonts
(MS Hei, GulimChe or YaHei, namely), but many times a glyph in a font
is not represented by the same codepoint in another font ---
which makes font-substitution a difficult job in such cases.

[thecoalman]

Try adding the blur. You get that flicker on precise edges. You can also try applying a shadow for same effect. Different textured background... anything to break up the hard edge.

[Relayerman]

I had the same problem with other editor software. So on the chance with nothing to lose I tried exporting the output as progressive even though it was to be displayed on a regular TV. It DID make all the difference in the world. On a PC the results were the same whether i set the output to interlaced or progressive, but on my 36in regular TV the progressive gave my scrolling text no flicker.

[SCDVD]

I had the same problem with other editor software. So on the chance with nothing to lose I tried exporting the output as progressive even though it was to be displayed on a regular TV. It DID make all the difference in the world. On a PC the results were the same whether i set the output to interlaced or progressive, but on my 36in regular TV the progressive gave my scrolling text no flicker.

Does a TV that doesn't support progressive scan play a progressive scan input? Obviously it can't display progress scan but does it choke when it receives a progressive scan input or does it automatically interlace it? If it does, are there any screen artifacts?

[manono]

Does a TV that doesn't support progressive scan play a progressive scan input?

I already explained that earlier. The player will output 480i. If your credits are encoded for progressive 29.97fps, it'll break them into fields and output the fields. A standard interlaced TV set can only receive and play fields.

[SCDVD]

Does a TV that doesn't support progressive scan play a progressive scan input?

I already explained that earlier. The player will output 480i. If your credits are encoded for progressive 29.97fps, it'll break them into fields and output the fields. A standard interlaced TV set can only receive and play fields.

I assumed that was the case. With that being true, I don't see how encoding it as progressive scan will help because it just gets converted to interlaced scan when you watch it on an interlaced only TV. If someone plays it on a TV that supports progressive scan, I can understand how it might help but interlaced is interlaced when you watch it.

[manono]

I agree with you. I didn't make the claim, though, and you'd have to take it up with Relayerman. If you've already encoded the credits as progressive (?), it wouldn't hurt to burn the video to disc and test it out on a few TV sets to see if it really does look better on the TV than it does on the computer monitor.

[Cunhambebe]

Just a thought here...
Use VagRoundedBT, 20; 22.