Cleanest Font for Credit Roll ?

Please suggest a clean font for a credit roll. I'll be using the Boris Title Crawler unless there is another way suggested. I have AE 6.5 but don't have time to play with the results.

thanks,
td

Any of the bolder san-serif fonts would be my choice.

Optima is a little "fancier" than Arial or Helvetica - but there are a zillion more.

Also - as you know - slower is otfen better (as in smoother looking).

Ian

If you are producing for TV or a DVD, take care that the credit roll runs at the same speed as the scanlines. So make the credit roll go up by an even number of lines for each frame. This makes even a fancy font look good, because you won't see any inteference effects on the borders of the text.

Christoph

Readability trumps "fancy" especially with end title credits. You want your audience to be able to READ the names of the people who put all the hard work into your production, so keep it clean and simple.

Stick with Sans-Serif. A Condensed font is OK for saving some space but not too condensed; something like Impact is too hard to read quickly unless it's huge.

Nothing wrong with Helvetica, it's a workhorse; maybe use a lighter weight for character names/crew positions and a heavier weight for the cast/crew names themselves. Arial is just a MS ripoff of Helvetica. Futura is another classic but the thin weights will not hold up on screen well -- same with Gill Sans. Univers 65 paired with 45 is a winning combo. I really like Franklin Gothic, has a bit more 'personality' than other fonts. If you want something a little more modern look at Meta or maybe FF Scala.

JK

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SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

Christoph Vonrhein Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you are producing for TV or a DVD, take care
> that the credit roll runs at the same speed as the
> scanlines. So make the credit roll go up by an
> even number of lines for each frame. This makes
> even a fancy font look good, because you won't see
> any inteference effects on the borders of the
> text.
>
> Christoph

Could you explain this in work flow detail?
C

>> So make the credit roll go up by an even number of lines for each frame.

Yes, I was wondering how this translates to workflow, too. I gather that following this instruction is very dependent on the speed that the credits are rolling by, and the size of the credit text itself. Can you expand on the relationship of all the controls to accomplish this?

Scott

Scott, once you're in the ballpark you'd adjust either the length of the clip or the contents (adding/removing short empty lines or tweaking font size) until it comes out to one scanline per field or frame. You can do a little math to get in the ballpark.

But I'm not here to hold your hand through that, which is incredibly drudgeful and can really dampen the creative spirit.

I'm here to tell you that you don't need to do that unless you're trying to fling by a ridiculous amount of ridiculously tiny type in a ridiculously shot span of time.

If you use vertically thick fonts as has been suggested, reduce contrast, and use type at sizes and speeds that humans can actually read, you should never need to mess with it.

In addition, if you do the scan line per frame/field thing and ever translate the program across standards or formats (NTSC <> PAL or SD <> HD, it withe results will be seriously messed up. On the other hand if you take it easy and make something nice and readable, it should translate wellin general.

This is assuming you use Boris for scrolls. It works great. Just give yourself some time.

Remember not to use 100% white Good NTSC white is 90%; if on a black background, it should be kept to 80% white.
this may help from Kenstone.net
[www.kenstone.net]

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Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
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