snapshot resolution

[slyttle]

I am trying to animate six images and have them fly onto a fixed background in a collage, one at a time.

To accomplish this I am applying a pic-'n-pic effect to each image and flying them in one at a time on separate video channels ... the trouble is, there are only six channels and one of them is being used for the background ... I can't free up any channels in the scene because I want all the images to be displayed right through to the end. So I was initially stuck as to how to fly in the last image.

The way I got around this was to fly in five of the images, and then take a snapshot, thereby flattening the video channels into one, and then using one of the channels I freed up, to fly in the final image. Since the first five images don't move after they fly into the scene, I was ok.

The trouble is, the snapshot tool seems to produce an image that is only ~820 X 480 @ 38 ppc .... and I am trying to render an HD video, so you get this rather annoying shift in resolution as the scene goes from the high res. composite to the lower res snapshot.

So my questions are two-fold:

a) is there any way to increase the sampling resolution of the snapshot tool?
or
b) is there another way I can fly in all six images on top of my background without resorting to this kind admitedly cludgy way of doing things.

many thanks.

-Sheldon

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Sheldon

You don’t say which version of Video Studio.

With earlier versions of VS-----X2 and earlier you were able to change the Project Properties using Mpeg2 compression to reflect the HD size of say 1920 x 1080
Then taking a still image in project playback mode would create an image of that size,
as you see it in the preview window.

There were two ways to capture the screen as an image.
From Clip Mode would save the image as the original video frame size. (Clip-save as Still Image) from video only.
From Project Playback would save the image using the project frame size.(tools-save current frame as still image) as you see on screen.

X3 capabilities to manually set many properties has been drastically reduced.
You cannot set the project properties other than standard DVD settings.
So the snapshot size will reflect the size of the project frame.

If your using X3----You may be best to render the five overlay tracks to your HD format…….Then add the last image.

X3 has a lot of good editing capabilities but has lost a lot of the manual approach which we were used to in earlier versions, it’s a shame…….

[slyttle]

Thanks Trevor

I am using X3 ..... so I guess I am somewhat SOL ... I'll try your suggestion.

[erdna]

Render (create file) the last few seconds of your 5 tracks as an HD (AVCHD 1920x1080)
Play the rendered file with a AVCHD compatible SW player e.g. VCL player
Stop the playback just before file the playback ends
Apply Printscreen (screendump)
You will get an image with the same resolution as yout monitor resolution. If you heve a full HD monitor, like I have, then you will get a 1920x1080 .jpg image which can be used in your project as a fullres still background

[slyttle]

Totally ghetto ... I love it! .... Kind of a variation on Trevor's solution. ... We'll fake it, till they make it.

-S