Enhance readability of small text

[slowtiger]

Right now I'm doing a training video for a piece of software - completely technical animation. My client wants to put it on youtube, so I did some preliminary tests to ensure the small text of the screenshots is actually readable. As a result I now use this workflow:

1. Do screenshots in the best resolution - best doesn't mean biggest, it means a 1:1 relation of pixels to screen pixels. This way you'll get sharp letters.

2. In Photoshop, enlarge these screenshots (already PNG format) at exactly 200% with "nearest neighbour" interpolation. This makes any pixel into a 2x2 pixel with sharp edges.

3. Import these PNGs into AS into a project with the correct dimensions already set. In my case this was 1280 x 720 px, my screenshots were 1024 x 720 originally, but now blown up to 2048 x 1440 px.

4. Put them all into a main group layer before doing anything else. Scale the group to exactly 0.5 - this will be the default size.

(Inside the group layer I perform additional organisation by creating group and switch layers, name everything properly and place all assets at their initial positions on frame 0. I also create masks for parts where stuff is going to scroll.)

5. Animate. Where I need to show especially small writing, I create a scale and a position key on the top group layer, enlarge it some frames later and put it into screen center, then copy those keys after that to get to initial size and position again. (Additionally I use a 60% white mask over everything unimportant which gets faded in where needed.)

6. Export as PNG sequence. You'll notice an unavoidable fuzziness on the result.

7. Create a batch job in Photoshop to perform some sharpening on all PNGs. (I always use "Unsharp mask" with certain settings I've defined during testing.) (This might be possible to do within your video editor.)

8. Use any editor to create a video from that PNG sequence.

The two key operations are:
- double the size of all assets to be able to zoom in
- sharpen the final render.