Tips & Tricks > Make Hollow Tip
3/23/2006 10:39:52 AM
For a particular song this week I am choosing a very subtle, light colored, abstract, motion background and am using the Maiandra GD standard Windows type face for the text. I checked Bold and Make Hollow, and it looks very nice on the old, slow, workstation over a Cat5e connection.
This is V7. Then I tested the program on the projection machine, which is 5 times faster and is on a Cat6 subnet, but surprise - the song text would not display at all; its motion background shows correctly, but there is no song text.
After an hour or so of problem analysis it came down to the Tools > Preferences > Text Quality > Enable font smoothing option.
On the slow workstation with a poor graphics board, the song text displays properly regardless of the Enable font smoothing setting. But on the 2.4GHz machine with a "real" graphics board, it works only when the setting is Disabled (No checked).
So if you want to try using Make Hollow, try disabling font smoothing. Font smoothing is a global-only setting because it is under "preferences" so you would have to live with it disabled for the entire program.
5/5/2006 1:29:22 PM
Lee,
I realize this post was from March but it will hopefully help me. I upgraded our graphics card to an ATI X700 and everything runs great but a few weeks ago I was messing with some display properties or something right before church and all of the slides that I had used the blur feature on the text suddenly had an awful blur trailing down below it that actually made it illegible.
I had to quickly go through all of the slide shows, songs, and sermon outline and take away the blur. I use it a lot because it smooths out the bevel effect really well. I haven't been able to use blur since and my text isn't as smooth as it should be. I will try those settings to see if it works.
Joe
5/8/2006 8:58:52 AM
What I find interesting is your experience that text blur once worked. Several times I have tried text blur in a song only to see the entire text area filled in solid. Using blur on text in SSB doesn't produce any visible effect.
It seems blur may be problematic and I don't know whether it has to do with the video card, its driver, a ssb/ssp setting, or a combination. Sorry.
It seems blur may be problematic and I don't know whether it has to do with the video card, its driver, a ssb/ssp setting, or a combination. Sorry.
Posted By Jkelley on 05/05/2006 1:29 PM
...I haven't been able to use blur since and my text isn't as smooth as it should be...
Joe
Could your text not being smooth have anything to do with anti-aliasing turned off?
...I haven't been able to use blur since and my text isn't as smooth as it should be...
Joe
5/8/2006 3:18:37 PM
Please forgive my ignorance but what is anti-aliasing? If it is turned off I wouldn't know it. LOL.
I did use the tip from above and that was apparently my problem the text looks great now. I should have asked you guys earlier.
Using the blur effect on text in version 5.5 doesn't normally produce a very visible effect either but in conjunction with the bevel effect it helps make it look smoother than just using the smooth effect. Especially if you use a bold font with a gradient color.
I don't make a habit of using such elaborate text but I do like to use it occassionally on an announcement slide show that will be used often such as children's church or regularly scheduled youth ministry activities.
I appreciate you guys. I have been operating SSP for three years and thought I knew a lot until I started reading this forum. I have a lot to learn.
I did use the tip from above and that was apparently my problem the text looks great now. I should have asked you guys earlier.
Using the blur effect on text in version 5.5 doesn't normally produce a very visible effect either but in conjunction with the bevel effect it helps make it look smoother than just using the smooth effect. Especially if you use a bold font with a gradient color.
I don't make a habit of using such elaborate text but I do like to use it occassionally on an announcement slide show that will be used often such as children's church or regularly scheduled youth ministry activities.
I appreciate you guys. I have been operating SSP for three years and thought I knew a lot until I started reading this forum. I have a lot to learn.
5/9/2006 12:15:07 AM
When applying the blur affect to text, it only blurs the fill of the text, not the text itself.
5/9/2006 5:42:03 AM
Ahh - no wonder I didn't see the outline get blurrier! But then, if the fill is yellow, what is a blurred fill supposed to look like?!
So as an experiment I went to Song Text > Lyrics > Font tab and set the text to a fat font (bold Ravie), and checked the Make Hollow box. Next I set the Fill tab > Fill Type to Texture, and clicked on Category. I chose a stone brick wall and applied it. Now I can see all the detail of the stones in the letters.
Then I went to the Effects tab and applied the Blur effect, and sure enough, I watched the fill immediately become blurrier. As I upped the value to 4 it appears as a multi-colored gradient, producing a rather nice effect inside the letters.
There are other patterns one can chose under the Category button. You can also apply any image file you want - I chose a photo (hey, it is only an experiment), and a small area from the upper left corner shows up in the letters. The blur again turned the sharpness of the photo into a multicolored gradient. There are also adjustments for brightness and color and they do exactly what they say they do, giving you lots of tweaking options to get the look of the letters just as you want them.
I'm sure we can find many uses for this effect.
So as an experiment I went to Song Text > Lyrics > Font tab and set the text to a fat font (bold Ravie), and checked the Make Hollow box. Next I set the Fill tab > Fill Type to Texture, and clicked on Category. I chose a stone brick wall and applied it. Now I can see all the detail of the stones in the letters.
Then I went to the Effects tab and applied the Blur effect, and sure enough, I watched the fill immediately become blurrier. As I upped the value to 4 it appears as a multi-colored gradient, producing a rather nice effect inside the letters.
There are other patterns one can chose under the Category button. You can also apply any image file you want - I chose a photo (hey, it is only an experiment), and a small area from the upper left corner shows up in the letters. The blur again turned the sharpness of the photo into a multicolored gradient. There are also adjustments for brightness and color and they do exactly what they say they do, giving you lots of tweaking options to get the look of the letters just as you want them.
I'm sure we can find many uses for this effect.
5/9/2006 5:47:46 AM
Posted By Jkelley on 05/08/2006 3:18 PM
...what is anti-aliasing? If it is turned off I wouldn't know it...
Actually, the higher the projection resolution the less noticeable (less useful) this becomes. Otherwise, look under Tools > Preferences > Text Quality.
...what is anti-aliasing? If it is turned off I wouldn't know it...
5/9/2006 1:31:57 PM
Posted By Jkelley on 05/05/2006 1:29 PM
Lee,
I realize this post was from March but it will hopefully help me. I upgraded our graphics card to an ATI X700 and everything runs great but a few weeks ago I was messing with some display properties or something right before church and all of the slides that I had used the blur feature on the text suddenly had an awful blur trailing down below it that actually made it illegible.
I had to quickly go through all of the slide shows, songs, and sermon outline and take away the blur. I use it a lot because it smooths out the bevel effect really well. I haven't been able to use blur since and my text isn't as smooth as it should be. I will try those settings to see if it works.
Joe
Here's
a suggestion about an SSP feature that would probably have saved you
much weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's PRESETS! I have v7
installed as a test on my laptop right now, but we've used Presets in
v5.x for some time, very successfully.Lee,
I realize this post was from March but it will hopefully help me. I upgraded our graphics card to an ATI X700 and everything runs great but a few weeks ago I was messing with some display properties or something right before church and all of the slides that I had used the blur feature on the text suddenly had an awful blur trailing down below it that actually made it illegible.
I had to quickly go through all of the slide shows, songs, and sermon outline and take away the blur. I use it a lot because it smooths out the bevel effect really well. I haven't been able to use blur since and my text isn't as smooth as it should be. I will try those settings to see if it works.
Joe
This tool lets you save your current display settings (all of them, I believe) in a Preset with your choice of names. Then if someone changes a critical setting and you're not sure what it was and how to recover from it, just restore your standard Preset!
You'll find this under Global Display Properties. Look for the word Presets at the top of the screen and click on it. Nice tool to know about!
Roger
5/9/2006 1:37:09 PM
I l ove using presets. We have a preset for the youth on Wednesday night and then a seperate one for the Sabbath services, so we can just switch back and forth.
Works real well.
Works real well.
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