I am using VideoStudio Pro X3, with all the updates (I think, I checked for updates from inside the program and it said I'm up to date). I tried to make a video slideshow for a teacher at the end of the school year, and am frustrated to the point of crying (almost) by how badly it has turned out. All our images are very high quality: 4000 x 6000 pixels, 180 dpi. I have set the project settings to "frame-based" and turned off the anti-flicker filter as per discussions on the board, but when I save the project to a file the images themselves come out slightly soft. They are soft in the slide-show preview as well. But if I open any individual image on my computer screen it's vividly sharp. At first I thought the problem was related to the limitations of the DVD format, but after abandoning the idea of making a DVD, I tried making a avchd file, an ipod/ipad compatible file, and a "same as project settings" mpeg. The best one I have gotten is the ipod/ipad compatible .mp4, but it's not as sharp as the originals. I can play an auto-slide-show on my computer that looks better than the one I authored.
I had terrible troubles editing mpg2 movies with an earlier version, VideoStudio 11, and it wasn't until I found a workflow on this board that I fixed the problem, which had to do with VS11 re-encoding an image that didn't need it, thereby lowering the quality. I'm only saying this because I am SURE that I'm doing something wrong, because I can't believe that all the people who use this program would keep on using it if the quality of the images got so much worse during slide-show creation. I have given up on the idea of creating a beautiful slideshow for my son's teacher, but I would love to fix this problem for the future.
