images are not clear

Klaus Christo · Post by **Klaus Christo** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 10:51 am

Now that my movies are looking good, I find that some of the images I put into the clip look quite fuzzy. I remember at one stage about a year ago I reduced the size of my images which I wanted to insert. Lately I have not needed to do this. But now again I find that the images are really not clear.

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 10:56 am

Thanks for sharing that with us.

Do you want to do something about it?
Have you tried to load your images into the time line as bmp?

I found that bmp 1200x900 px gave me very good results.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 11:55 am

Klaus -- somewhat off your main topic, but now that you have learned the trick of inserting an image of yourself (!!!), or at least your alter ego (??), you might want to look at reducing the image considerably in size since in this case, unlike your occasional problematic slideshow, the image you have used is all too clear!!!

Klaus Christo · Post by **Klaus Christo** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 3:05 am

Too right Ken, I got a shock too lol
Anyway I usually insert jpg into the timeline and the last ones are really blurry. Can you tell be what I could be doing wrong now.
I have inserted the images into a timeline with video clips.
this cat looks just like my persian (better size now?)

Post by **Ken Berry** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 4:27 am

I am not a particularly good person to ask about still images and VS 7, 8 or 9. I use Movie Factory 4 (and before it 2 and 3) to make my slideshows, and with that program, it seems to be a no-brainer as our American colleagues would say i.e. it seems to accept photos of any size or quality and produces marvellously clear slideshows with no effort from the user apart from getting the photos in the order you want them and adding transitions and background music and/or a voiceover.

The few times I have inserted still images -- not a formal slideshow -- into a video sequence (either as an opening title or internally, to pad out sparse video of a particular subject with one or two still images of that subject with pan and zoom applied to them), I don't seem to have had any trouble with them. In the main, they have been taken at around 4 megapixels, so are relatively large and pretty sharp (though some people advise the application of a gaussian blur which you will find in any good photo editing program e.g. Photoshop or Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro). And I insert them as jpegs -- though as Heinz has advised, others use BMPs to good effect. But beyond that, I can't say very much else. They get rendered along with the video, using lower field first and fairly standard PAL DVD/mpeg-2 properties, and as I say, seem to come out quite well.

roberto.lenti · Post by **roberto.lenti** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:22 pm

Klaus Christo wrote:Too right Ken, I got a shock too lol
Anyway I usually insert jpg into the timeline and the last ones are really blurry. Can you tell be what I could be doing wrong now.
I have inserted the images into a timeline with video clips.
this cat looks just like my persian (better size now?)

Hi Heinz-oz.
Hi Klaus i'm writing from Italy, i've the response for your problem try and then let us know the result.
In the encoding settings change the default setting "First Fielsd" or "Last Field" with the "Depending on Frame" setting.
With this setting the photos are very very very clear but the video have a little loss of quality (is less clear then "First Fiels" setting).
Infact my problem is to have best quality encoding Video and Photos together.
The "First Field" is the best setting for endoding DVD from DV AVI.
The "Depending on Frame" is the best setting for photos.

Bye.

Trevor Andrew · Post by **Trevor Andrew** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:06 pm

Hi Klaus

Video Studio does not pretend to be an image editor, it’s a video editor.
We insert any size of image and assume that VS will be able to re-size without problems.
It has to resize the image as the video frame size for say pal is 720 x 576. Well actually 768 x 572.

Pulsating pixels have been a constant problem, but Video Studio 9 seems to be able to cope with still images much better than the earlier versions.

I now resize all my images to 768 x 576 before inserting them to video studio.
Larger sizes are sometimes ok but I believe they match in aspect ratio.
Using 16:9 widescreen I size my images to match, 1024 x 576 (I think)

I have just completed a dvd containing some 600 images, perfect, not one bouncing pixel, all view as on print.

Poor images have been a problem for ages, I only know if I take the time to re-size I get good results.

As for image type, I have no preference, bmp, jpg, png, all seem ok.

Trevor

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 9:31 pm

Same here. I used to have problems with jpeg images and pulsating detail on them in the past.

I still use 4:3 aspect ratio and resize my images in PI to 1200 x 900 px and save to bmp. I have also used targa files where I wanted the background to be transparent. Works well for me. As a rule, if there is a lot of fine detail in the image, I introduce a 1 - 2 pixel vertical motion blur. Never had a problem since and images look as good as printed.

It is important, I believe, to crop your image to the aspect ratio and use a 2D motion path with no motion

(start and stop position are the same) to get a good result. At least that works for me and I dont have parts of my image disappear in the overscan area.

Since I use a MATROX tripple head graphics card and preview my projects on the TV, it's very easy to fine tune the frame size to display the image exactly in the size I want.