The Overlay Track quality

[david reece]

Has anyone noticed that the quality of the video or pics placed in the overlay track gives poor image quality

ie slightly pixelated, jaggedy edge on str8 vertical edges, light greyish lines across the picture where the jagged edges are.

I can only say i looks like a low res photo or an MP1 quality video.

This is despite the project being set to MPG2 or DVD-Pal template.

It is strange as this happened in Pinnacle 9+ as well.

[thecoalman]

Try blurring or softening the image slighlty in an image editor before you import it. You might want to also try resizing it smaller, how big is the source image?

Not sure how VS8 handles them but is there any options for how it handles the source if you right click?

[david reece]

yeap i have resized it, added a blur and still it looks like an MPG1 video instead of an MPG2 video.

you name it have done it.

even targas look bad!

[thecoalman]

How small did you resize it? Have you tried the same size as your video res.? Might be a interlacing issue because of the stir stepping: http://www.digitalfaq.com/capture/interlace.htm

Might want to try a test clip with AVI if your using MPEG source.

[david reece]

in vs8 you drag the corners of pic to resize in the pal safe area.

regardless of field or framebased it still occcurs.

Also it it occurs regardless of DV.AVI or MPG.

I think something is seriously screwy with the overlay track in VS8. VS7 have no problems!

[thecoalman]

Hmmmm, I unfortunatley don't have VS8 to try it out. Is there "media Source options" when you right click on the image? Set it to frame based or try a different setting if available. I noticed the same thing in MSP on a image I made. I believe changing it to frame based source fixed it.

[david reece]

ok here is how to solve the pic quality.

resize image to 300x400 pixels at what ever DPI. I used 300.

insert the image to the overlay track.

right click and set to correct size. this gets rid of the distortion jaggd edges etc...

problem. It all looks wonderful on screen but blinking awful on output ie fuzzy in the background of pics (i am assuming the further compression of JPG's has done this) .

Therefore i am of the conclusion that the overlay track is at fault.

Dont resize an image in the overlay track either.

If you want images in the pal safe zone set to 300x400 pixels.

I am nopt satisfied whoever with the output as discussed.

[thecoalman]

resize image to 300x400 pixels at what ever DPI. I used 300.

DPI is irrelevant. http://www.nepadigital.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=140

What if you resize to full PAL resolution? Or are you not using full size?

[david reece]

i only used 300 dpi as original pics were at this. i have used 96 and 72 still with problems.

Actually 96 dpi seems to work better in the timeline than the overlay track.

[gordonwd]

Has anyone noticed that the quality of the video or pics placed in the overlay track gives poor image quality?

I'm not sure about still pics, but video sequences that I recently put into the overlay track (and in reduced size) really came out well. My main track had an image of a picture frame, and I was able to resize the overlay video so that it appeared to be playing inside the frame. My source video was in AVI format. So my final sequence had the picture frame with the active movie inside it, and my titles above and below the picture frame. It looks pretty cool (IMO).