Titles with fuzzy text in DaVinci Resolve 14.2

I am a newcomer to DaVinci Resolve 14 (DVR14), in fact a newcomer to video editing. When I try to include a basic title in a video, just plain text over a one-colour background, in the final result, in the rendered video, the text characters always have the borders slightly fuzzy, I never get a text with sharp, clear borders. In the edit window, the text looks sharp, but it is not so in the final rendered version.

I have tried several ways of producing a title: (1) the titles in the Effects Library of DVR14, (2) including in my video a JPG image with the title text, generated by Corel Draw at a large size and high resolution, (3) producing a short MP4 video with just the title in a photo-story (slide-show) software, and then including the short MP4 video in my main video in DVR14. For the final MP4 main video, I have tried resolutions of 1280X720 and 1920x1080, at 29.97 fps, always adjusting beforehand the resolutions in the Project Settings in DVR14. Anyway, the title text in the final rendered videos is always somewhat fuzzy.

In an Internet search, I have read about aliasing as a possible cause of this issue, something that I do not fully understand. In DVR14 Project Settings / Image Scaling, I have tried the Anti-alias Edges setting in either "on" or "off", but this does not seem to make a difference in the final result.

In this Forum, there is a long thread called "Graphics and Text Scaling & Aliasing", started on 03 August 2017, about this topic, but I cannot find there an answer for my issue.

To produce a clear and sharp simple title for a video seems to me to be a very basic task for any video editing software. Would someone kindly point me to a way of producing a clear basic plain-text/one-colour background title in DVR14?

My thanks to Blackmagic Design for providing a version of DVR14 free of charge.

My computer setup:

DaVinci Resolve 14 version 14.2.0.012 (the free edition)
Windows 10 Professional 64-bit with all the latest updates
Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3 4-core 3.40GHz with 32 GB of RAM memory
NVIDIA Quadro K620

To produce a clear and sharp simple title for a video seems to me to be a very basic task for any video editing software. Would someone kindly point me to a way of producing a clear basic plain-text/one-colour background title in DVR14?

Hi Paulo

Since you didn't upload a picture with your post, its hard to figure out your definition of "fuzzy"

In general, if you export text over color to a 4:2:0 codec such as 264 you will be able to notice some "fuziness" where text and background pixels meet. This is inherent to these exports, usually visible when zooming in, and generally tolerated and not considered "fuzzy". The Resolve viewer does not chroma-sub-sample so you don't see it there even when you zoom.
I get practically the same results exporting the same frame in different programs including Resolve.
If you try exporting to any 444 variant (Prores, Cineform or DNX) you will notice its gone.

Or you are referring to something else which has to do with your system somehow, can you upload an image?

the 2 images below are zoom-ins on h.264 (4:2:0) and Prores444 (4:4:4) exports. is this the fuzziness that bothered you?

export to 264-420.png (355.68 KiB) Viewed 10591 times

export to prores-444.png (217.06 KiB) Viewed 10591 times

I get practically the same results exporting the same frame in different programs including Resolve.

That may be true of larger point sizes, but small point sizes fall apart in Resolve, the aliasing makes it unusable.

That may be true of larger point sizes, but small point sizes fall apart in Resolve, the aliasing makes it unusable.

Hi John

I tried it with 30 (Helvetica Neue)... Which is quite small for HD.

look this split image (zoomed in). Can you tell which is from Resolve and which from Premiere?
Both were exported to h264 with same exact settings. I still mainly see what i'd expect in a 4:2:0 export of graphics.

split.png (114.5 KiB) Viewed 10560 times

30.png (54.85 KiB) Viewed 10560 times

I was just doing some more testing, comparing PS titles with Resolve's. And I'm no longer so sure. I may be wrong. Will try to look into it further....

There's a notable difference in ragged edges, between (for example) black text on white and white text on black. It can be even more pronounced with colored text on black (worse). Maybe there's an obvious explanation (for people who understand graphics), but I don't get it. The difference may not be apparent as reproduced below, but it's pretty clear on a video monitor, off the timeline. Black text on white is the best:

black_on_white_1.20.2.jpg (51.17 KiB) Viewed 10539 times

and

white_on_back_1.20.1.jpg (51.17 KiB) Viewed 10539 times

and

red_1.20.1.jpg (56.75 KiB) Viewed 10535 times

And exporting a trueType in TIFF: there is a difference?
Concerning fonts and graphics: if it is not in vector, do not overgrow after generation (question)
A specialist ?

You can't judge edge quality by looking at JPEGs, saturated red on black in particular.

Sorry for my delay. Two images are attached, both were text/titles from mp4 videos rendered in DVR14.2, one at 1280x720, the other at 1920x1080.

text at 1280x720 (mp4 video)

test-forum-720.jpg (33.42 KiB) Viewed 10397 times

test-forum-1080.jpg (35.82 KiB) Viewed 10397 times

Each image shows the whole frame area. In the Text editor of DVR14.2, I have used no drop shadow, no stroke, font Arial size 84, in bold. In the Project Settings / Image Scaling, I have used anti-alias edges ON.

Maybe this is indeed the best quality of text/title I can get?

Sorry for my delay. Two images are attached, both were text/titles from mp4 videos rendered in DVR14.2, one at 1280x720, the other at 1920x1080.

test-forum-720.jpg

test-forum-1080.jpg

Each image shows the whole frame area. In the Text editor of DVR14.2, I have used no drop shadow, no stroke, font Arial size 84, in bold. In the Project Settings / Image Scaling, I have used anti-alias edges ON.

Maybe this is indeed the best quality of text/title I can get?

Hi,
I also did tests with Helvetica Neue.
I made these screen captures from exporting a UHD project.
Obviously the Tiff is the best but the MP4 or H264 is not that bad.
I would think that this is for many font of character.
(Ok is a jpg...but all at 100%)

Title_compare_uhd.jpg

The difference may not be apparent as reproduced below, but it's pretty clear on a video monitor, off the timeline.

I've found that red titles on black background always appear pixelated on the reference monitor. I've analyzed this on both normal 4:22 HD 10-bit SDI monitor and 12-bit 4:4:4 RGB Christie CP2220 projector. But once you export, it will look clean. So it's an issue with monitoring.

So there is really two issues with titles in Davinci:
1- Saturated titles on black background looks pixalated on reference monitor
2- The title generator doesn't do high quality antialiasing. Certain size/font combinations are worse than others, but basically, the smaller the font, the worse the quality gets.

The title generator quality in Davinci is definately worse than FCP (7 and X) and Premiere.

Did anybody contact BM support about one or both of these issues?

2- The title generator doesn't do high quality antialiasing. Certain size/font combinations are worse than others, but basically, the smaller the font, the worse the quality gets.

People complain about this all the time. This issue has existed for several versions, I'm not sure BM is ever going to do anything about it. Sadly, Fusion doesn't seem any better.

I have just sent a message to Blackmagic Design's support, about this issue with the title generator in DaVinci Resolve.

I asked them whether they are aware of this issue, and whether it will be addressed in a forthcoming version of the software.

As I said just before, I contacted Blackmagic Design's support about this issue with titles/texts, and in their reply they said they will forward this thread to their developers, so that the developers can take a look at it.

As I said just before, I contacted Blackmagic Design's support about this issue with titles/texts, and in their reply they said they will forward this thread to their developers, so that the developers can take a look at it.

Hopefully they take a hard look at it, because it really does need some attention.

Has anyone been able to get text to not look like junk on DR? I have 16.1. 4k projects exported to 2k (1080) look fine BUT a 1080 project with White letters looks horrible.

This is also true for PNG files with Alpha. 4K PNG look great on 4k projects exported at 1080 BUT not on 1080 projects.

I felt like I was going crazy looking at text after rendering and thinking it should be clearer. I tried rendering the video a lot of different ways to see if this would help. None of these helped. I've isolated it down to the Project Settings. An old test video I viewed had crisp text so I save the Project Settings then loaded them on the video with poor quality text.

I've had these issues on version 16 and 17.

It's a lot more noticeable on the rendered videos.