Hi to the new webboard! Pulsating pixels on rendered stills

[david reece]

carried on from last web board.

i can create perfect slideshows in VS8 but it doesnt play back in DVDws 1&2 or VS8 perfect. ie it jitters. if i create an individual movie of the pan and scan no problem no pulsating.

however if i create a slide show or add an image to the timeline without pan and scan it still gets this pulsating effect 3/4 of the way into the movie.

this never happened before. i am using the newest patch and wonder if this is the cause?? i could get the old patch to work no problems.

as some of us discovered the DST bug appeared in the newst october patch despite being fixed!

also any ideas as to Service Pack 2 casing problems? i am letting teh update go through as normal instead of using the disc.

my card as a ATI radeon. any reported problems with this?

My pc is a HP t690.

any ideas?!?!?

[Maxi]

There is an 'apply anti-flickering filter' check box in the Preferences menu box in the Creat Disc function which is supposed to reduce the flickering that occurs when using a television (interlaced display) to view DVD menu pages. Should also do the same for still photos though. According to the manual, this filter will not help when viewing on progressive scan devices such as a computer monitor.

[david reece]

I have tried with and without no luck!

However i managed to get hold of a Pinnacle (am i allowed to say that?) disc of Studio 9 plus.

i created a slideshow in that application. Strange no pulsating on the images! however the images are not as sharp as they could be. also some strange anomolies (ie you have a timeline and your pics are in order but do not play in the same order as the timeline!)

when i say pulsulting i mean some (loads of them actually) move about around objects giving a pixelated effect. i can only describe it as pulsating as that is the effect.

it isnt a field order problem for cert as it replicates on all of them.

I am not advising people to go with Pinnacle but if that piece of software doesnt have problems how comes VideoStudio does!

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi David

I think I must be fortunate, I use to get the pulsating pixels but no more.
I cannot say that I have done anything to correct it, other than stick to the recommended procedures.
I use VS 8 with the following settings.

PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 Bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Lower Field First
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: 8000 kbps CBR
Audio data rate: 224 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 48 KHz, Stereo

At what point do you notice the problem.
In the project window?
After creating video file ?
Or
After burning to dvd?

I have all patches installed as far as I know!
With the exception of the burner engine, which I don’t seem to need.

I haven't made a slide show for a while, but will be doing one shortly, will let you know.

[david reece]

i have the same template so nothing wrong there.

i tend to notice it more in the last quarter of the Movie on my hard drive.

This also copies thorough onto the DVD and is totaly unwatchable on TV as well as monitor.

I have spoken to Ulead today and what a load of use they were. they blamed me for the problem. i explained i have vs7 then vs8 upgrade to a virgin system! there response was dont expect ulead to fix it if you pay £30 for a piece of software (by the way i am sure i paid more than this originally!) ulead doesnt have to offer to fix it let alone do a patch nor even test it. if i wanted a piece of software that works pay £1000 for it! i wonder if this was an official Ulead response!!

Anyway spoke to HP re my pc and they just happened mention that you need to disable windows updater to stop service pack 2 going on when on line. it is most possible that sp2 is causinng the problem!

[jchunter_2]

David,
Have you tried pre-scaling the image to a different aspect ratio prior to inserting into the timeline?

My digital images are 2048 x 1536 (4:3) right out of the camera. In my case, VS converts them to 720 x 480 (3:2) perfectly. But in PAL country VS has to convert them to 720 x 576 (5:4). Mabe there is a bug in that conversion...

[david reece]

i scanned clips in using Photo express 8 and converted as follows:

yuv 4:4:4 baseline
jpg high quality
aspect ratio 4:3.

so my pics were in the correct aspect ratio.

in vs8 i select keep aspect ratio.

in the intial preview everything is perfect.

after converting to MPG it goes pearshaped!

I am discussing this with the guys at ulead at present and they are looking at my clip i sent them and the original JPG.

All i can think is that Photo Express isnt quite correct (one it keeps on bombing out on me if a pic has ~ in the externsion) when it converts pictures.

SP2 is the problem (i only have the mini updates coming through.

the other possiblity which HP has pointed me to is a new driver which is 60 mb big!! dont they catrer for non broadband people anymore!

I will update once ulead/ATI/HP have come back with an answer.

[jchunter_2]

David,
Just for reference, my digital still properties are:
JPEG (YUV Color Model)
YCbCr(YUV)
Baseline
YUV 4:2:2

I would suspect the scanner as the source of the problem...

[david reece]

digitial stills from my camera also do the same.

my scanner was, 2 yrs ago quite expensive. it is a cannon and high quality spec even now.

I will look at your method to see if it changes anything.

it is strange that the same problem doesnt manifest itself in Pinnacle. Not in any way endorsing it as it hasnt got a clue about what order a slide show is in even if you tell it!

[mas985]

Converting to DV-AVI first seems to help a bit. I read it on a previous board but I am not sure why this helps.

[david reece]

Ok this is what i did last night.

I converted my pics as per the other guy (sorry cant remember your name) using Ulead photo express 8. Still bombs out on me though!

Ok i can report on the one clip i did this for it worked. ie the worst JPG of the lot!.

i them copied the same clip so i had 5 mins worth of movie with transitions etc... to replicate a movie od that length to see if it has the same problem at the 3/4 mark. did not evidence itself.

This worked, but has worked if you do each as an individual move and make an MPG afterwards as posteed on the old website.

However where the transitions where jitters and jolts not smooth at all. The pulsatiing now only appears on the joins using crossfade ( i actually may have used disolved by mistake come to think of it) did the pulsating reappear but on at the joins.

I will re-try the project as YUV 4:2:2 in DV.AVI mode again. I did this the first time but most of this info is on the old webboard.

Also Ulead Taiwan has contacted me to say they are investigating. I assume another patch!

[ggrussell]

Does this happen on ALL JPGs or just a few? The only time I've ever had a problem is with close vertical lines like in a fence around my sister's pool. I have read many forums and places like www.videohelp.com. One suggestion that seems to work for more people is adding a one pixel gaussian blur. Granted a work-around that may work for a few JPGs, but not too feasible if you have hundreds.

Personally, I haven't run into this problem that it was so bad I couldn't watch it. I wonder if this is more a problem created by the old technology (regular TV) and if this phenomeon would still occur on a HDTV using progessive scan.

[david reece]

ok my one clip i tried as a movie worked perfect even when i copied it 20 times.

so i convert my pic as per the above.

recreate the movie as DV.AVi. no pulsating at all.

convert to MPG2 guess what the same clip which worked originally now pulsates again!

It has nothing to do with old technology. I believe it is the MPG2 codec at fault. Again the problem doesnt appear till about 3/4 of the way through.

However using the 4.2.2 seems to improve things in DVDWS2 ie no jitters.

[juliosoto]

David I agree with your conclusion and believe this is definatly a software problem.

Hey, it doesnt seem right that you or anyone else who used V7 and did many dvd's would suddly get these problems in version 8.

What happened to the days of doing a normal project and rendering it without the jitters in the still images.

I was extremly frustrated with this version as I had to re do it in V7, the same exact way as I did in 8 and had no problems. I re-duplicated the project in 8 and found that only in this version does the jitter happen.

For Big project ( and Important ones) I am using the old version as I don't have the time to continously troubleshoot something as simple as a jpg picture starting to jitter or pulsate..yes, pulsating seems to describe it perfectly.

I know that now there are ANti-flicker options on projects and DVD's, but I am surprised that even with those, I still have had the pulsating jpg. pics.

I still have my doubts about this version, although it has some very nice features, like the album, which I can't seem to get to work if the project is too detailed. Well, I suppose they still need to fix the mpg2 codec because it is really absurd for a user to have absolutly no problems using Version 7, and all of the sudden experience this issue with version 8.

Well I have read a few suggestions here, and probably would try them.

Adding a on pixel gaussian blur..hummm I suppose that could be something I should try.

But the summarize, I am reading you last post correctly, you are doing the following for improvments?

1. Create a Normal Project
2. Creating a video file as a DV (I use NTSC -- so NTSC DV)
3. Using the DV version when creating a DVD (when adding videos in creating the dvd disk)
4. Letting the program convert the files over to a dvd version and burning it.

Seems ok, makes me wonder then why the CREATE as a NTSC DVD in rendering the project would be the problem, unless the codec is faulty there. Saves a bit of time when burning a cd as I dont have to wait forever for it to be converted over to a DVD version first, but if this is what must be done, then I suppose that Is what I will do, as I still like the new text animations and Audio features and other new things in Version 8.

[david reece]

ok i tried the guassian blur in Photshop Elements 2.

I was going to try this anyway not trying to take this away from the guy who mentioned. i am glad he said it as it prompted mto to go ahead an do it.

By chance it worked.

I am wondering if the Pinnacle Software adds a blur filter in to it by default?? hence earlier in the post i mentioned that the Pinnacle slideshow was slightly blurred but didnt pulsate.

I have had a response back from Ulead re VS8.

here is a snippet:

I'll let you know if I got any result.

Regards,

Tommy

-----Original Message-----
From: David
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 6:02 PM
To:
Subject:
Tommy,

so does this means that Ulead will not be making any adjustments to VS8?

David

-----Original Message-----
From: Tomm
Sent: 20 December 2004 10:01
To:
Subject:
David Reece UK


Dear David,

Thanks for that information; I believe our RD will improve this in the next
version. I'll pass your comments to our PM and RD, hopefully we can improve
it in the current project that we are working on it (UVS9).

Thanks for your effort and all the best to you,|

Tommy

I dont think we will ever see this software fixed!

I for one will not be buying the next version when it comes out but leave it till the price drops and they have a patch that works properly.