Poor quality stills

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 5:15 pm

If this is any help to you viewing the dvd slideshow on
a Progressive Scan TV should help you to figure the problem out.

Progressive Scan Tv's are the new HDTV's out today or HDTV ready.
Progressive scanning should remove the shimmering effect that
occurs on interlaced Tv's.

Another method would be to put the jpg files onto a CD in the DCIM
directory format and view them on your TV using a dvd player that is
capable of showing pictures.

MD

LGO · Post by **LGO** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 5:51 pm

Just my $0.02 . . .

I just made a DVD slide show of about 65 JPG files. They were all 1600x1200. My first time through the images didn't look very good when played on a stand alone DVD player hooked up to TV.

I then took the time to crop and/or resize the images to NTSC DVD size, 720x480. Made a new DVD and it was HUGE improvement in quality when played on stand alone DVD player.

LGO

jbowen28 · Post by **jbowen28** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 11:44 pm

LGO,

I tried reducing my stills to 720x480pixels and it did not make any difference. The only problem with reducing the photos to 720x480pixels is that you loose a lot of resolution if you use the zoom feature of VS to zoom in on the stills.

Rez,

Since VS uses the MPEG2 codec supplied by the Microsoft Operating System, maybe you could copy the MPEG2 codec from your old computer to your new computer and get the same results you got with your old computer. I am personally interested in which Microsoft Operating System you have on your old computer and what version of the MPEG2 codec your old computer is using. You might have to contact Ulead to find out what the file name is of the MPEG2 codec that they are using.

LGO · Post by **LGO** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 1:54 am

jbowen28 wrote:

The only problem with reducing the photos to 720x480pixels is that you loose a lot of resolution if you use the zoom feature of VS to zoom in on the stills.

Zooming in loses resolution, too.

I guess I didn't explain what I did very well. In your case your images are 1500x1000. Crop the image to include only what you want the viewer to see. You'll be left with an image between 1500x1000 and 720x480.

For example, if the subject of the photo is three people, crop around them and then reduce the resulting image to 720x480. Since you're cropping it, the reduction won't be much. You'll be left with a good resolution image and it will look like it was taken closer than it was - sort of "zooming in." You can still pan across the image if you want.

LGO

jbowen28 · Post by **jbowen28** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 2:38 pm

I took my test slide show to Fry's Electronics to see how it would play on other interlace TV and DVD players. The results were similar to what I was getting on my stand alone interlace TV and DVD player. One exception was an interlace TV with a built-in DVD player. This combination had the best results with quite a lot less ghosting and interlace artifacts (e.g. running barber pole effect on vertical lines). The slight blur and the flickering in areas with a lot of edges were still there though. So maybe I need better shielded cables between my DVD and TV.

I also noticed that my images were clipped about 12% on all sides when played on my interlace TV. I set the VS preferences to non-square pixel rendering and "keep aspect ratio". I used the preview window in the pan and zoom dialog box to set the window to include all the sides but I still got the clipping. I thought the display mode set by my DVD player was the problem so I changed it from 4:3 letter box to 4:3 pan/scan but it made no difference. The whole image is displayed correctly when I playback the DVD on my PC. So the only fix that I can think of is to set the aspect ratio preference to "keep same as project" or put a black border of 12% around my pictures with an imaging editing program.

LGO · Post by **LGO** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 3:46 pm

I also noticed that my images were clipped about 12% on all sides when played on my interlace TV.

So the only fix that I can think of is to set the aspect ratio preference to "keep same as project" or put a black border of 12% around my pictures with an imaging editing program.

This 12% clipping you're seeing is called "overscan." Search the forums, as well as the web, for why it happens and how it works.

When you put a title into a project in VS you see a box over the image. It's called the "title safe area." That's the area that's safe from the overscan problem.

Overscan will vary from tv set to tv set - on my tv it crops off the bottom of the video, and on a friend's it crops off the top.

daniel · Post by **daniel** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 10:44 am

Regarding the overscan: if it really wipes out something interesting (but you should better shoot pictures/footage with that in mind and leave a border around your subject):
You can use the Attributes/Distort clip function to resize it smaller, no external program is needed.

LGO · Post by **LGO** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 1:56 pm

(but you should better shoot pictures/footage with that in mind and leave a border around your subject)

BINGO! That's the key.

There are all sorts of methods to deal with the overscan issue during editing, but taking overscan into consideration during photo/video composition is the one where the most work can be saved later.

LGO