1st mpeg2 movie = why bad results...

[ppanis]

I made a movie from 20 pictures (good quality pictures bought from stock photography)... Because 20 pictures one after the other with a cross-fade effect between each were making a shorter movie than the piece of music I wanted to "illustrate" my pictures with, I doubled each picture first (=> succession of 40 pictures), and then, because it was still not long enough, I reduced the speed of almost 30% to get to exactly to the same lenght of my piece of music...

Unfortunately, after rendering/sharing into a mpeg2 my movie shows jitter, is it because of the slower motion ? if yes, how should I do to extend the length of my "slide show", would it be by adding still more frames than the double ?

I use Ulead Videostudio v.11 and here are my movie properties:

NTSC drop frame (29.97 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps
Lower Field First
(DVD-NTSC), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 6000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 224 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 48 KHz, Stereo

[Ron P.]

Welcome to the forums,

You might try using Frame Based for your slideshow project. Images are not interlaced like video.

Next as you are learning, transitions do not add to the duration of your project, but shorten it. Why?, because the transition overlaps the last part of the previous clip with the first part of the next clip. For example if you have 2 - 5 second clips. The total duration of your video would now be 10 seconds. Now for the sake of demonstrating, let's say you insert a 2 second transition between them. The total duration of your video is not 12 seconds, but 8 seconds. The transition used 1 second from each clip, thus shortening the total duration. A transition causes the adjacent clips to overlap.

It is important to understand this, especially when you're wanting to synch music to the clips. If you have a music clip that is 3 minutes, 20 seconds long, you will need to know how long each clip needs to be, and you must take into account the duration of all transitions used, subtracting that time from the total duration of all your clips. So for 3mins, 20 secs, your song will have a duration of 3x60=180 secs + 20 secs = 200 seconds. Now if you have 20 images, and you want each image duration equal, dividing 200 secs by 20 would tell you that each image needs to be 10 seconds long. Easy so far, now for the transitions. Adding a 1 second transition between each image would give you a total of 20 seconds in transitions. So now the total duration of your slideshow will be 200 seconds minus the 20 seconds of transitions or 180 seconds. To counter this, you would need to add this time to the duration of your images, so that your images end with your music. Not as easy as what you may expect. It involves doing some math..

As far as the jitter, this might be caused from the slower speed applied. However other things such as reversing field order can cause this too. If you don't have any "video" clips mixed with your slideshow this should not be a problem. If you do, then always use the field order that your source video clips use.

[Clevo]

To expand a little more on the above. when you click on a still image on the Video track you will notice two yellow bars on each side of the clip.

You can slide these to the left or right to decrease or increas the duration of the still.

You can also slide the still images while a transition has been applied.

So, if you have an Image+transition+image, all three can be individually clicked and dragged to increase durations.

Now you can adjust the speed of the clip duration if you are using a audio which has slow and fast sections.

This is the fun part of editing.

[2Dogs]

I made a movie from 20 pictures (good quality pictures bought from stock photography)... Because 20 pictures one after the other with a cross-fade effect between each were making a shorter movie than the piece of music I wanted to "illustrate" my pictures with, I doubled each picture first (=> succession of 40 pictures)

There was no need to insert each picture twice in order to increase the duration. I doubt that it reduces the quality, but it's just more work than necessary. As Clevo said, you can go into the timeline view (as opposed to storyboard view) and then simply drag the yellow bars to increase the clip duration.

Alternatively, if you're a bit anal like me, you can click on the clip on your timeline and then adjust the duration shown in the box under "Image" to the right of the preview window (in the default and type 4 ui layouts)

and then, because it was still not long enough, I reduced the speed of almost 30% to get to exactly to the same length of my piece of music...

How did you reduce the speed to 30%? Did you render the project to a file, and then insert it into the timeline of another project, or even your original one with the timeline cleared, and render again at 30%?

Unfortunately, after rendering/sharing into a mpeg2 my movie shows jitter, is it because of the slower motion ?

If you did reduce the speed by the method described above, you will see jitter in the transitions, although not in the static images. Even if you rendered the file to a DV avi file, and then re-rendered that with the speed set to 30% to an mpeg2 file, you will see a loss of picture quality too.

if yes, how should I do to extend the length of my "slide show", would it be by adding still more frames than the double ?

Just drag the yellow bars of original image clips on your timeline, or edit the duration in the duration box under "Image"
You can also change the duration of the transitions, and if you do this in the same way as for the image clips, you won't see the jitter in the transitions that you will be using your previous method. Note that because of the overlapping way that the transitions work, as described by Vidoman, the transition duration cannot be more than about half the duration of the adjacent image clips.

I use Ulead Videostudio v.11 and here are my movie properties:

NTSC drop frame (29.97 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps
Lower Field First
(DVD-NTSC), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 6000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 224 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 48 KHz, Stereo

Nothing wrong with those. In my tests, I was not able to produce jitter simply by using lower field first or upper field first, so I don't think you need to use frame based.

You could raise the video bitrate to 8000kbps or more if using compressed audio.

Variable bitrate is definitely advantageous for slideshows, since the static image sections can be encoded with a very low bitrate. Just check out the file size difference if you encode the same project to CBR!

DVD resolution is only 720 x 480, or 720 x 576. If your images are significantly larger than that, you will be able to use pan and zoom effects. That can add a lot of interest to a slideshow, as well as sucking up hours of your time!

Good luck!

[ppanis]

Thank you all guys, I was very surprised to get so much response from my post and it helped me a lot ! especially the explanation about the calculations with the transitions that decrease the time instead of increasing, I was not aware of that...

Only the "Just drag the yellow bars of original image clips on your timeline..." explanation I could not understand because I couldn't see any yellow bars unfortunately (I use v.11 not the plus one).

By the way, I have 2 small questions about my project:

- I didn't tell that I was putting animated words for each picture, that would have probably be confusing and I had no problem to insert the animated text effects... but about these, is it a way to get what they called in other programs the "squeeze(d)" effect for letters in Ulead Videostudio ? do I need to upgrade to v.11 + for being able to use this particular animated effect or/and more ?
- As I need to convert my newly edited movie into flash to stream it online (as a flash preview on my website) what is the best format to chose from the menu when I am starting the "share" process in Ulead Video Studio, to keep the best quality (except mpg2 and mpg4 that I know are not supported by my flash converter, called "Flash Video Studio 2.02) ?

Thanks again for your wonderful help !