16.3: Fixing Titles and Graphics
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Checking and Fixing Titles & Graphics
Graphics, images and text in video programs can be a deep topic. A opening title of a project can reveal the need for graphic design experience to more easily place images and text in a readable way on-screen. Choosing “the right” font, colors and sizes can also cause consternation. While this guide won’t replace the years of training graphic designer’s undertake, there are a few steps you can quickly take to improve graphics and text in your projects.
Resolution
To make sure that any photos or images you are adding to a video, ensure they have sufficient resolution before adding them to your sequence in your editor. Resolution is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. Commonly, you’ll be working with with one of these video resolutions:
- FHD (Full High Definition) with a resolution of 1920 pixel width by 1080 pixel height.
- UHD resolution (Ultra High Definition at 3840px x 2160px)
- 4K (4096 x 2160).
When adding full-screen photos or images to your video, try to make sure that their resolution matches that of your video resolution. Also, if you plan to scale any images in your editor, you’ll need images that match the size you plan to “zoom” in on them. For example, if you plan to add a full screen photo to an UHD sequence, use images with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 or greater. If you further wanted to “zoom in” or scale up this photo by 200% - your photo resolution should also be 2x the size to display the best quality. While it’s not always possible to find the perfect graphic assets in the resolution you need, in a professional setting scaling more than 115-120% is generally not permissible.
Title Safe or Safe Margins
According to Wikipedia: "The title-safe area or graphics-safe area is, in television broadcasting, a rectangular area which is far enough in from the four edges, such that text or graphics show neatly". Exact standards have long been set and updated over time for the exact placement of the title safe area, but it is around 10% in from the edges of the video frame. At around 5% from the edge is a larger rectangle called action safe. Even though the issues with the curved CRT screens that prompted the title safe standards are no longer a concern, it’s still almost always a good idea to keep all titles within safety areas.
Editing and compositing software commonly include overlays you can turn on or off that display boxes around the areas deemed best for any action in the video, called action safe and a second, smaller box that should generally show the outer limits within which to place text, the title safe area. Find these in the menu of the software you are usiing (search in help for “title safe”, “safe margin” or “guide”) and adjust your text and graphics by moving them inside the inner rectangle, the title safe area, if necessary.
Visual Hierarchy
For titles and full-screen graphics with important information, such as definitions or explanatory text, it’s important to place textual and graphic elements on the screen in a way that makes them easy and intuitive to read and understand. Visual hierarchy is a term from graphic design that refers to structuring information for an audience by importance. The easiest way to draw someone’s attention to some important text is to establish a difference or contrast to the surrounding element. By creating a contrast in any of these properties below, you will be on your way to structuring the textual or graphic information for your audience, making your information easier to understand and digest.
Use any of these properties to create a contrast and draw attention to an important detail.
- Color
- Size
- Fonts
- Orientation
- Position
- Shape
Here are two examples :
Creating visual hierarchy by contrasting the size of your text elements.
Creating visual hierarchy by contrasting by size and color, thereby drawing attention to the second yellow text.
Typefaces for Video
The same computer you edit your video with has tens if not hundreds of different typefaces for use within applications that use writing. A typeface is a complete set of characters and symbols created with a certain look. Fonts are subsets of these characters with different weights, style and size, including bold and italic versions. Typefaces give personality to your text, have a bearing on legibility. Be aware that decorative typefaces might only have the bare minimum of characters available while those used professionally usually include all characters.
Typefaces for personality
A title of a program will have more impact if its typeface suggests the type of genre it contains. Most NLE’s show you samples of the types and you should take some time to experiment. Since titles are often large, legibility is often not an issue but make sure to test by asking others for feedback. For instance, below is an example of a simple title set with different typefaces that uses the same color, position and size. Don’t these typefaces do a lot to suggest the type of video you might expect to see?
Typefaces for video and legibility
While titles should project a personality and suggest the type of video viewers can expect, other text-based content needs to ensure legibility while still adhering to the style of the program.
Typefaces are classified in a number of ways, including whether a typeface is a serif or sans serif typeface. Serifs are the small strokes on the larger strokes that make up the letters of a typeface and and typefaces without these small strokes are classified as sans serifs (from the french, meaning, “without”).
Since the advent of television in the 1950’s and the beginning of video production in the 1970’s, it has been recommended to use sans serif typefaces for greater legibility. Otherwise, the resolution of early TV and video could blur the fine details of the text. Using sans serifs is still recommended although the increase in screen resolution makes this choice less of a stringent requirement. The main objective is to present your audience with concise textual information, when necessary, that they can easily read and understand.
Side by side comparison of these two common typefaces:
Left side: Ariel (a Sans Serif typeface) and on the right: Minion Pro (a Serif typeface)