Screencaptures look fine as stills, blurry in movies

[AlanCFA]

I have captured some screenshots for use in a video. In VideoStudio, when the video is paused, the text looks crisp and is easily read. When the video is playing, the text becomes blurry and very hard to read.
I have taken the snapshots using the PrintScreen key and pasted the image into Excel where I trimmed them and then used an Add-in called GraphicsExporter to save the images. I have tried saving them as gif, jpg, png, and tiff images and the results are the same. I pull the image into VideoStudio and have it on screen while I narrate. Everything looks great when the image is in the viewing window but when I hit the play button it becomes blurry and some images are unreadable.

Is there something obvious that I am doing wrong? Maybe not using standard cropping margins or some other mechanical practice that I can change?

Thanks
Alan

[BrianCee]

Hello and welcome to the forum

In principle I see nothing wrong with your basic procedure - except - why are you using Excell to handle images, I have never ever done that, in fact it is possibly the very last programme I would think of to handle and crop images - then you have to use yet another package to export them !! . This may well be the basis of your problem, do you not have a proper image editing package - Paint Shop pro/ Photo Impact / Photo plus/ or even Windows 'Paint' or any of the numerous free packages around - any of these will crop and export your image directly in any of the formats that VS is happy with. I would try handling your images in a proper image manipulation package first , see if that makes a difference.

[AlanCFA]

Thanks for the tip. I tried it and posted the images to MS Paint, but I am still getting an image that blurs when I turn the movie on.
However, I tried using the Windows 7 "snipping tool" and only selecting the area that I wanted. While it blurs slightly, it is still quite readable. It may be that getting the full screen and cropping out most of it stretches the image or something. Problem solved, but I wish I knew the reason why.

So thanks - I did find a way to make a useful image, but it still seems strange that the image blurs when it is in a movie when the still looks fine!

[AlanCFA]

Thanks for the tip. I tried it and posted the images to MS Paint, but I am still getting an image that blurs when I turn the movie on.
However, I tried using the Windows 7 "snipping tool" and only selecting the area that I wanted. While it blurs slightly, it is still quite readable. It may be that getting the full screen and cropping out most of it stretches the image or something. Problem solved, but I wish I knew the reason why.

So thanks - I did find a way to make a useful image, but it still seems strange that the image blurs when it is in a movie when the still looks fine!

Update - I found a video online that discussed the problem. Instead of using a photo, the person making the video uses a free program called CamStudio. That allows you to specify an area of the screen and record it in real time, so you can perform mouse clicks and the like. Also, the text does not blur. The downside is that with a photo, you can stretch the time to match your narration, but with CamStudio, you are essentially recording a video. So I had to record for perhaps 30 seconds to match my narration. A couple of times I ran out of video before my narration was complete, so I learned to record perhaps 10 seconds more than I thought I needed, add the narration, and then snip the excess time.

In that video, there was also a demonstration of a tool called ZoomIt that allowed one to zoom in on the computer screen.

This is the video in case anyone is interested
http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Remove ... s-11657291

[ajfudge]

Hi. I have a similar problem with VideoStudio's screen capture.
When I want to "freeze a frame", I just use VS's screen capture feature. I use it as a main clip or as an overlay, with the size the same as the clip it precedes. But the resulting image is so blurry.
I tweaked Preferences and changed captured image format from bitmap to jpeg with the quality at 100%. There seem to be some improvement, but the image is still a little blurry. The blur is more pronounced when I make the image move (pan, rotate, zoom). This happens when I place the image in either the main video track and the overlay track. Is there something I'm not doing right? Is there a work-around for this? Thank you.

[Ron P.]

The clarity or crispness of a screen-capture, (Take Snapshot), is dependent on the project's frame size, and the video file's resolution. For example if your project settings are 720 x 480, then the max size of the snapshot will be 720 x 480. However if your video clip is larger, say 1440 x 1080, AND your Project Settings are 720 x 480, the snapshot will be less than that of the resolution of your video clip. Introducing that screenshot into your HD video file will result in the image appearing degraded, blurry or pixelated. (Note: The web board will not allow BMP images, so they were converted to JPEG for uploading)

To test this I took a screenshot video that had the resolution of 1277 x 770, inserted into VS. Without changing the project settings I took a snapshot. The resolution came out to around 853 x 480, and was not very clear. I then changed my project settings to that of my video clip, 1277 x 770, took another snapshot. This time the resolution of the snapshot was 1277 x 770, and was crisp and clear.

So I guess if you're going to use the snapshot feature in VS, you need to make sure the project settings are similar in size to that of the video clip the snapshot is being created from.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

What version of Video Studio are you using?

When you take a screen shot (Snapshot) (save Current Frame as Image)

You have two options:-
1 / Clip playback mode, will create an image of the video only using the video files frame size.
2 / Project Playback mode, will create an image as seen in preview screen, text and all, using the project properties frame size.

Try it, then right click the thumbnail in the library and select properties, note the frame size (Width and Height)
Knowing the properties of the video file and the project would help in deciding which to use.
Knowing your final output, what are you making? Would also help.


Poor Quality
There have been some issues with quality when using Pan & Zoom, this was attributed to “Apply Anti Flickering Filter” (Preferences edit tab)
Deselecting this option does improve quality especially when viewing text.