Apple Motion 5.1.1 - Manual (Page 1058)

Chapter 26 Video and file formats 1058
Fonts and line art
When creating line art or selecting a font to use in an interlaced broadcast video image, avoid
creating horizontal single-pixel lines. Also avoid using fonts that are too thin. Because of the
line-alternating nature of interlaced video, single-pixel lines flicker when the field in which
they appear turns on and off. This results in a buzzing effect in your graphics, with the buzzing
becoming more pronounced the closer the thin portions of graphics or texture in your image
come to the horizontal axis.
This problem can be mitigated by adding a bit of blur or antialiasing to your image. Nonetheless,
the best thing to do is to avoid single-pixel lines when creating graphics for broadcast.
High-resolution graphics
High-resolution graphics overview
When you need to pan and zoom in or out of an image (such as a scanned map or photograph),
use a high-resolution image. There won’t be any image degradation because you typically won’t
need to zoom more than 100 percent. Scaling video and still images up to more than 100 percent
creates artifacts: individual pixels become noticeable, causing a stair-stepping effect on high-
contrast diagonal lines.
Sometimes the frame size of your imported graphic doesn’t match the frame size of your edited
sequence. If the frame size of the graphic is too large, only a small part of your image appears in
the Canvas. If it’s too small, the background color of the Canvas (usually black) appears behind
the graphic.
To scale an imported graphic to match the frame size of a sequence, use the following frame sizes:
Frame size (pixels) Type of video
1920 x 1080 High definition, 16:9, square pixel
1280 x 720 High definition, 16:9, square pixel
720 x 486 Standard definition, 4:3, nonsquare pixel for NTSC
720 x 480 Standard definition DV, 4:3, nonsquare pixel for NTSC
720 x 576 Standard definition, 4:3, nonsquare pixel for PAL
640 x 480 Multimedia, 4:3, square pixel
480 x 360 Multimedia, 4:3, square pixel
320 x 240 Multimedia, 4:3, square pixel
240 x 180 Multimedia, 4:3, square pixel
160 x 120 Multimedia, 4:3, square pixel
67% resize factor