#Video titling fonts
33 messages in this thread
I am using DPaintIII and would like to hear some comments on fonts that
people are using specificly for video titling. There are so many out
there, and I'm not too excited about the expensive fonts that are offered
for Pro Video Post. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. -Chris
Chris,
The Zuma Fonts collection from the makers of TV-TEXT PRO are well done.
Also all of the Kara Fonts if you're into metallic finishes (or wood, or
brick, marble, etc.).
I'm not too thrilled about the $200 Master Fonts series; there are some
nice font designs in there but they were scanned in using a digitizer and
then had some cleanup done, the problem being that the fonts themselves
were not designed with an eye toward the Amiga video display. Therefore
they're more prone to aliasing than Zuma Fonts.
Pete
I might mention that the Masterpiece people have converted their fonts to
InterFont format, meaning they are now available in outline format for use
with our InterChange and InterFont programs. With these, you could select
a font, enter, justify and size lines of text, then press a button and
create an object for any of the 3D programs supported by InterChange. If
you're looking for good anti-aliasing, you take this object into one of the
3D programs and render it, which anti-aliases it as well as animating it,
for example…
There isn't a way to make postscipt fonts using interfont is there?
No, sorry. We made a design decision when we made InterFont, that it was
going to be a tool for 3D text. In an update, we added the Pro Draw and
Aegis Draw output modules. What I'd consider a good PostScript font editor
is a lot more work, a lot more complex than InterFont's editor. Someday…
someday the Amiga market might make me enough money so as to hire someone
to work on it for the time required to do it right. One unfortunate aspect
of a good PS font editor, is I'm not convinced it would sell well. The
Amiga doesn't have its act together when it comes to PostScript
integration. I can think of a dozen or two people who want one, but most
of them would demand a free copy for review or testing or promotion; and
we'd sell about as many, at the price needed to recover the development
cost.
Can you tell I'm worrying more about business-related concerns, as opposed
to things that would be fun to program? 🙂
John:
well then, I guess I'm stuck with Mac fonts for now. BTW, I would be
willing to pay regular price for such an animal, and wouldn't even think of
asking for a free 'demo' copy. Gee, if I didn't know better, I'd swear
you're trying to make money with Amiga programming (as opposed to doing it
as a sideline)!! <grin> Maybe a ProPage/Draw support package, containing a
PS font editor (would it really be that hard to add the capability to
interfont?) and your illustrator->Prodraw conversion programs?? See, I can
dream too!
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
I could convert InterFonts to PostScript fonts, but that doesn't mean
they'd look pretty. It doesn't let you control outlines to the degree you
need for good PS fonts, IMHO. InterFonts use a strange set of splines as
opposed to Bezier curves, and I've researched the math necessary to convert
them to Beziers, and it makes my head spin. 🙂 I suspect it's one of
those tricks that takes three weeks of preliminary research, at which point
you discover the conversion is done with a tiny matrix operation.
That's good news. Have you heard if they're doing something for those of
us who already have the collection (in terms of an upgrade or whatever)?
Pete
I know they did a mailing, using our list of registered InterFont owners,
perhaps they added their list of registered owners, too. I'm hoping to
include their InterFonts in a future mailing offer that Syndesis will send
out soon, but I haven't worked out all the details.
Pete,
Thanks for the recomendation. And the Z fonts are alot cheaper than the
PVP fonts! I have the old TvText, and one set of fonts, and they are nice.
Perhaps I should get another set.
-Chris
Chris,
Another neat thing if you're using DPaintIII are the KaraFonts "Anim
Fonts." At the moment there are only two, and only in one size each. One
is a chrome script that writes itself onto the screen, the other is a gold
bevel font that starts out with an edge-on view and then rotates into
position, catching a glint of light as it turns.
Both fonts are actually collections of anim brushes with the required moves
built-in. It takes awhile to use them (about half an hour to build a
selfwriting title page) but the effect is definitely worth it for certain
kinds of productions.
Pete
Pete,
Right, I have both animfonts on order. Sure wish there were a wider
variety of elegant designed fonts around. You can only use so many Brick
and Cast KaraFonts before you run into limitations. -Chris
There will be as many well-designed fonts available for the Amiga as there
are people willing and able to design them, which in turn depends on how
many of us there are out here who are screaming for them!
Pete
Pete,
Ah, you're looking also?
-Chris
Just screaming for them isn't enough. They've got to be willing to
purchase them too. Despite the fact that we are the only company producing
Amiga fonts in a complete range of sizes and in both normal and extended
versions, font sales are pitifull. I'm afraid that too many people (as
well as some software companies) consider our fonts "freeware."
Producing fonts, in whatever format, is a painstaking, tedious, and
thankless business. Each of our Zuma Font volumes contains 36 alphabets,
that's well over 1900 characters, each of which is processed by hand, not
once, but many times. You wouldn't believe the time and effort that takes.
I'm sorry to say that from a purely financial point of view, it's not worth
it in this market. My wife, Copper, who punishes herself doing these
things, is finishing up Volume 6 now. She swears that'll be the last of
them from us. She'll get no argument from me.
I'm sorry to hear that producing Amiga fonts is such a frustrating,
thankless job. Take heart, though — the Amiga market is growing. The
release of the A3000, combined with current and upcoming products, are
going to catch a LOT of people's attention. Meanwhile, if it helps any — I
expect to be buying some Zuma fonts soon, and I'm also considering getting
TV*Text Professional. But a faster modem must come first. 😉
=Tom=
I second what Tom sez elsewhere. I swear, by all that is holy, I'm running
out tomorrow to buy the entire Zuma Fonts collection for my new 2500!
Having done a few custom logos myself (on the Mac and on the old Vidifont
V), I know exactly how tedious good typography can be. So…chin up! 🙂
–MFW
Could you send me some info on your fonts? I'm just starting to look for
fonts for professional video production, and yours seem to be well
recommended. Thanx -SJK
We'd be happy to send you a color brochure describing our fonts and other
Amiga products. Send me EMAIL with your address. -John Bittner
Zuma,
Our sales of KARA fonts are real good… how do the Zuma fonts compare?
-John
Zuma Fonts are monochrome amiga fonts that include complete alphabets, not
just caps, in a complete range of sizes from under 20 lines to over 100
lines high. (Actual sizes depend upon the particular font). Each type
style includes both a normal and an extended version. The extended version
renders correctly in medium res (640×200) and looks great in hi-res
interlaced screens since its aspect ration is complementary to the video
aspect ratio. Five volumes are currently available at a suggested list of
$34.95 each.
Sounds like they would complement anyone's font library, John. I got a
call today from one of my distributors and he is going to send me a couple
of Volume 5. Can you tell me what to expect? Is it 1 font, in 2-4
different point sizes? Or a whole bunch of fonts, in one size only?
Thanks for the info!
-John
John,
This is in response to your July 17th note about fonts (I just got back
from a location shoot & only got your message now).
It's a shame that producing fonts is such a thankless job. My principal
use for the Amiga is in titling; without fonts, that's kinda difficult.
I'm REALLY sorry to hear you're going out of the font business, as I don't
know another source of fonts that is as well-constructed (with the
exception of Kara Fonts, but those are special-purpose items unsuitable for
general use. Kara Fonts can make great title pages but obviously don't
make sense for credits and lower thirds).
Any chance Copper will change her mind if we beg and plead enough?
Pete
Just so no one gets the wrong idea, we're not going out of the font
business, Pete, we just have no plans to produce any additional ones after
we finish and release Zuma Fonts Volume 6.
I'm sure Copper would change her mind about producing more if sales
increased substantially. 😉 Another hope is that we can up with a less
labor intensive method of producing them.
Anyway, we appreciate the support of yourself and others here who have
given us words of encouragement on our fonts line.
John Bittner
More than just words of encouragement, John. I buy each set as soon as it
comes out, and will do the same with Vol. 6.
By "Going out of the Font Business," I did not mean that I thought you were
withdrawing the existing volumes from the marketplace; I simply meant that
if you produce no new font sets, then that effectively takes you out of the
marketplace for someone who has the existing sets and wants additional new
fonts.
What I'm hoping for, frankly, is that the rescalable fonts which supposedly
will be available in the future will be of sufficiently high quality to
make them usable for video applications. Fixed point sizes often don't
work in specific applications, and resizing a bitmapped image is not an
acceptable approach. The ability to have infinitely rescalable fonts which
maintain high resolution (it would be even better if there was some kind of
antialiasing scheme built in) would be indispensable.
Hey, here's an idea: a program that will read an Amiga font, determine the
font's outline, then offer infinite resizing of that outline, and finally
produce as output a colorfont, which would contain the resized original
font with a face color plus one or two antialiasing colors added. The
program would determine where the antialiasing pixels would have to be
placed based on the shape/size of the output font. This would be
completely distinct from something like Calligrapher, which will simply
resize the bitmap. This program would resize the SHAPE, determining the
best bitmap to represent that shape at any given size.
Sounds like a nice, simple, easygoing project, eh?
Pete
The central problem is that a 9 point Topaz font doesn't have enough
information in it to extract an acceptable – or even tolerable – outline.
You stated the best demonstration of this: rescaling the bitmap. I, too,
eagerly await the introduction of a good font scaling system for the Amiga.
Unfortunately, Commodore hasn't done much in this regard. The last three
dev cons had talks on font scaling. All we got was a way to scale existing
bitmaps.
Okay, so suppose you start out with a large font, like the Masterpiece Font
set. Would that not have enough info? The problem is that even if you
rescale the bitmap SMALLER than the original, the rescaled version is never
as well constructed as the original. Rescaling is not enough; the program
would have to figure out, at that size, how best to draw each character
given the limited resolution (relatively speaking) of the system.
There were rumors that the Innovision folks (who put out Broadcast Titler
and Video Effects 3D) were working on such a program. But they've proved
to be extremely unreliable; their product support is rotten; they keep
promising upgrades that never show up. So I hold out small hope that their
mythical program will ever appear.
Pete
Converting bitmaps to outlines or digitizing fonts as outlines to begin
with is just as painstaking as creating bitmapped fonts, if not more so.
In addition, to make it worth while, you have to have a standard format so
that what you create will useable by a sufficient number of people.
We agree that scaleable outline fonts is the answer, but it is also true
that Commodore will have to adopt a standard and support it in the
operating system before you see any progress in that direction. Its been
talked about, but my fear is that the standard Commodore adopts will be out
of step with direction the M & M machines are taking, very much limiting
what will be available on the Amiga.
Well, this is why we invented InterFont. 🙂 Yes, you're right, a large
100 pixel tall character has a lot more information in it. On the other
hand, it's not perfect, but it's better than 9 pixels. For example, a 100
pixel font built by hand will have things like descenders that go "too
far", little tricky anti-aliasing pixels in corners and on edges, etc.
Someday, we might add some kind of autotracing to InterFont.
Gold Disk has a set of extra structured fonts available for
Professional Page. Included on the disk is a program to produce bit-mapped
fonts any size. I don't know how the quality is because I don't have the
package, but I imagine that they should be just as good as ProPage
dot-matrix printouts, which is excellent (no anti-aliasing, though).
I've been working on a program to make outlines from Amiga bit-map
fonts, but I haven't really got much time to spend on it and I can't
guarantee how the results will be. The biggest problem is getting good
source material. Many PD fonts are lousy, and I understand that the
quality of that large font collection is not necessarily consistent. I'll
keep your suggestions in mind.
Neil
One thing (of many) that really impressed me about DPaint III is the great
job it does with anti-aliasing.
**** Vance ****
That's true, but ONLY when it's rotating or tilting something. There's no
way (that I know of — correct me if I'm wrong) that you can take an image
and antialias it without rotating it or something. Other than that,
antialiasing still has to be done manually, pixel by pixel.
Pete
Well, as an example, I grabbed a brush of KARA fonts and selected the DO
function in perspective, then simply stamped it on the backing with
anti-alias settings at maximum.
I also do the same with the pics I make. I grab them as a brush when I
finish, do a DO PERSPECTIVE, and stamp it. It does a fine job for me.
**** Vance ****