animating text over a gradient background

[Konrad Schroth]

after text is animated (e.g., wiped) over a background or
object that has a gradient fill, the text appears
dirty/fuzzy. the problem is more severe with shadowed
text. this problem only occurs on one machine in our
office - a compaq tablet laptop.

 

[Keith Tromer]

Konrad,

This is a quote from an on-line chat with Microsoft people on Office 2003...
I asked this question and was not happy with the answer...

Keitht: Q: Does Microsoft acknowledge issues with font smooting when
animating text? If so, when will we see this improved?

TomA_MS : A: We are aware of these issues and hope to address them in the
future.

Keitht : Q: re: font smoothing... Does the future mean ver 2003?

TomA_MS :A: We have not made any changes for 2003. Could you elaborate on
the issues you are having.

Keitht: When Text is animated the fonts have artifacts on the edges.
Windows does font smoothing very well in edit mode and when text wipes on as
part of the background. But it looks terrible when text is animated using
DirectX



I'm sure this doesn't help you, but maybe you can feel good that it has
nothing to do with YOUR equipment.



Steve... R U out there.... Maybe this deserves and entry in the FAQ?

 

[Keith Tromer]

Steve,

Just FYI...

It was more than a year ago that I really put this test through the works on
4 different computers with Me, XP, Different Video Cards, Different DirectX
versions etc...

I rand tests on 5 different slides and did screen captures from all the
results and compared them in Photoshop with Difference Mode in the layers.
The problem was idential on all machines!

If text was NOT animated all is well, and if text IS animated all is
jaggy... My memory may be a bit rusty, but I think if you turn Hardware
Acceleration off then the problem is different... a little better, but still
not acceptable. This may account for the different users experiences.

At any rate NOT ENOUGH OF US COMPLAINED because they did not fix it for ver
2003!

I remember posting here when I was doing these tests and there was very
little (if any) response to the thread. That really surprised me.

Enough ranting... I gotta get to work!

 

[Steve Rindsberg, PPTMVP]

I rand tests on 5 different slides and did screen captures from all the

results and compared them in Photoshop with Difference Mode in the layers.
The problem was idential on all machines!

You might want to check the results at

http://www.powerpointanswers.com/article1043.php

where Kathy's got several other folks' screenshots. Variety of systems, OS,
etc.
AAMOF, maybe Kathy'd be interested in grabbing your results as well.

I'll add this to the FAQ with a pointer to the page above, btw.

 

[threeofhardts]

This topic has been discussed quite a bit here and it
looks like there won't be any change in Ppt 2003 version,
either. I have the same jaggies with images that have
rounded edges. When animated, the edges look terrible.
If not animated, they look fine.

Instead of animating the text or the rounded-edged
pictures, I've resorted to animating the slide instead.
You may not get the animation results you'd prefer but the
jaggies don't appear then.

________________________________________________________

 

[Keith Tromer]

Steve,

I linked over to that. I think we are talking about 2 different issue! And
I think I have the answer to the one YOUR speaking about. I have seen the
random red and green hoochamadingies and a number of people's computers AND
I WAS ABLE TO FIX EVERY ONE OF THEM!

Go to Display Settings|Appearance|Effects and check out the dropdown labeled
"Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts." Every time I
have witnessed the abovementioned problem that was selected as "Clear Type"
and by changing it to "Standard" the problem went away.

Let me know.
--
Keith Tromer
Corporate Imaging Inc.

 

[Steve Rindsberg, PPTMVP]

Kathy J - did you see this?

Keith, that second issue showed up as a kind of "and by the way, look what
ELSE it's doing to our type" sorta thing. Your explanation makes good
sense. But even w/o that, we still see the jaggies to one degree or
another, yes? (Duh. Yes. Obviously, we do, Steve, or we wouldn't be
having this discussion.)


--

Steve Rindsberg PPT MVP
PPTLive ( http://www.pptlive.com ) Featured Speaker
PPTools: http://www.pptools.com
PPT FAQ: http://www.pptfaq.com

 

[news.microsoft.com]

Steve,

I will try to look at those test files more tomorrow. I distinctly remember
the problem being VERY consistent (in my vacuum, of course).

Then again, maybe I won't look at it, since we know they aren't fixing it!

It is a fact though that certain fonts look MUCH worse than others.

 

[Keith Tromer]

Wow, been using a laptop that was laying around my house, and I just
realized that all my messages are from news.microsoft.com...

Sorry all... they are actually from ME In case you couldn't tell from
the signature!

 

[Steve Rindsberg, PPTMVP]

It is a fact though that certain fonts look MUCH worse than others.

That might just be because certain font designs will suffer more from low
rez bitmapping (which is what's going on here if I understand it correctly).
IOW, to be expected, given the general problem.

Or it might be something else -- ISTR that we looked at TT vs OT vs T1 fonts
when we collected all the info Kathy's got on her site. I don't recall that
the font technology made any real difference. But could be there's
something else at work too.

 

[Steve Rindsberg, PPTMVP]

Wow, been using a laptop that was laying around my house, and I just

realized that all my messages are from news.microsoft.com...

Sorry all... they are actually from ME In case you couldn't tell from
the signature!

Oh dang. And here I thought we'd gotten The Bill's attention on this
problem.

 

[Steve Rindsberg, PPTMVP]

Yes, gradients do make the problem worse. And that makes sense. The
gradient

background is likely to show jaggies more because it is the least "stable"
type of background pixel by pixel. By that I mean that each pixel is
different from each other pixel. To have PPT compute the clean text as it
moves across that type of background would slow things quite a bit
(computationally), I believe. (I also don't believe that sentence made sense
to anyone else.... Steve, care to take a shot at making the techie correct
version of what you know I am trying to say....?)

Sure. Not that I'm representing this as Revealed Truth or anything (I'll
settle for "reviled"):

As I understand it, PPT figures the computer won't be able to draw fonted
text fast enough to animate it smoothly, so it converts the text to a
"sprite" -- a little bitty bitmap. Windows can pop these into the display
at will much quicker than it can text. There's some transparency involved,
though, so it still has to do some calcs, and I'd guess that doing them over
a background where each background pixel is different from the last (ie, a
gradient) would take longer.

 

[Steve Rindsberg, PPTMVP]

So, my deduction is this.... DirectX 5 is incapable of renderring smooth

anti-aliased fonts.

I'd say this more along the lines of "Fills more pieces of the puzzle in"
than being at odds with my sprightly suggestions. ;-)

In order to create sprites, some bit of software somewhere along the line
has to render the animated text to bitmap. If the rendition is at less than
current video resolution, then the fonts are going to look like something
that's passed not entirely unmolested through a canine digestive system.
And in fact they do.

BTW, this also explains why I (and I'm sure many others) keep spending $$ on
newer better video cards with inferior animation results in PPT... perhaps
the newer the card the more likely all DirectX 5 interfaces have been fazed
out.

Lordy, that's a horrible thought. And probably true.