SOLVED: Horribly fuzzy still images

[MatthewJ]

Hi All -- a while back, I posted a couple of times regarding problems I had with still images in some home videos I was creating (a mix of videos and images). The problem was simply that the images (high quality JPGs from a relatively new digital camera) would render with terrible "blocky" quality when I rendered the project into a final video. They looked like they were low quality or low resolution images in the final render.

Here are some of the links to prior posts about it, so I don't have to repeat everything and for future reference if anyone searches based on the same issue:

http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36641

http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... 0&start=15

In brief, I wasn't doing anything fancy with the JPGs, I was zooming in on some of them but they were high-resolution files and I couldn't for the life of me understand why the rendered images were so terrible. Lots of folks offered helpful suggestions for tweaking the settings, but nothing seemed to work and I frankly got so frustrated that I gave up on my project for a few months. But recently I went back and tried some more troubleshooting, and I also stumbled across this post which helped me find the missing link between all the information I had received about setting changes and actually resolving the issue:

http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... 4b#p180414

I'll copy the relevant helpful bit from this post here:

"I downloaded the trial version and was immediately baffled by the fuzzy (out of focus) photos, while the video's were fine. I had set my preferences to MPEG2, 4:3, bitrate of 15000, Frame-based, resampling=Best . . . . I noticed that if I clicked on SHARE and tried to create a video file, only AVCHD would produce clear photos (but only at 16:9). For any other selection (NTSC DVD at 4:3), Videostudio ignored my preferences settings and always did Lower Field First, and bitrates of about 6000 variable. Then I noticed the option "Same as project settings" and when I selected this, it created a perfect slideshow (MPEG2 file) with no fuzzyness."

Bottom line is that no matter what "project settings" I set (from the File menu), when I went to render my project, some default settings kept overriding my setting choices because I was manually selecting render as MPG2 (or whatever) instead of selecting "SAME AS PROJECT SETTINGS" from the list of choices for what file to render as.

This may seem laughably obvious to everyone else, but I didn't realize that my project settings would be totally overrided by selecting anything other than "SAME AS PROJECT SETTINGS" when rendering the file! Doh!

Specifically, I went into my project settings and made sure that everything was set as described above (MPEG2, 4:3, bitrate of 15000, Frame-based, resampling=Best) and then selected SAME AS PROJECT SETTINGS when rendering the file, the blocky/fuzzy image problem was solved.

So if you are having fuzzy or blocky or poor quality JPG still images in when you render your video, FIRST make sure your project settings are tweaked correctly (disclaimer, I haven't figured out yet if the project settings described above are the absolute best, just that they are better than what was happening before) and SECOND make sure you select "SAME AS PROJECT SETTINGS" when you render your file.

Now I'm happily returning to my family video project!

[flahagan]

That's great, thanks for coming back and sharing.

May I ask what resolution your still images were? I just bought a new digital (14 megapixel) and want to resize (convert) them for my next dvd project. I want good pix, but I don't want to bog down the program.
Thanks

[nosnoop]

Another tip: if you are producing HD output and using Pan & Zoom in still images, and find the images soft, here's way to fix it.
Go to "Preference" -> "Edit" and "Image", UNCHECK / Turn off anti-flickering, this would make the images much sharper for HD output.

Yes, this may cause some flickering on certain images during pan & zoom, but I find it less annoying than blurring all my photos.

[MatthewJ]

May I ask what resolution your still images were? I just bought a new digital (14 megapixel) and want to resize (convert) them for my next dvd project. I want good pix, but I don't want to bog down the program.

I believe the still images are 10 megapixel and I haven't noticed any bogging down of the program during editing. It might take longer to render but I haven't had anything to compare it against and to me that's a minor problem I guess. I hope VS works just as smoothly for your 14 megapixel photos.

[flahagan]

Thanks Matthew - I haven't begun capturing them yet, plan to begin the project this weekend. I'll let you know how it works!