Right click.
Switches>Reduce Interlace Flicker

You might consider adding a chroma blur
You might consider adding .001 gaussian blur
You might try Unsharp Mask

All depending on the contrast/contents of your images.

High resolution screws up video, because it's being dumbed down to effectively 72 dpi for video. Rarely should you want to scan larger than 1440 x 960.

I use the chromablur and supersampling, plus Reducing Interlace Flicker.
It's on the VASST dvds.

yeah, I should have mentioned Supersampling. Particularly on Track Motion/PIP you'll find it useful too. Don't set it too high, or your renders will take eons.
I just did a couple DVD backgrounds last night for a client, and even though they are only 30 second loops, they each took 4.3 hours to render! Motion Blur, Super Sample, and 3D composites combine for long renders.

I am surprised no one mentioned rendering using the "Best" option. Still photos is what this option is for. When you click on "Render As," click on the "Custom" button, and on the first tab of the dialog you should see a setting for render quality. It will get set to "Good." Change it to "Best." Your render will be slower, but most of the artifacts will be gone.

Do not think that setting this to Best is going to give you better renders for everything. The setting really should be labeled "Render for still photos." It doesn't hurt video, but it doesn't help it either.

The other suggestions will help as well, but try rendering a 15 second portion of the project using Best and then view on a monitor to see if that is all that it takes to cure the problem.

Gee, that's the first time I have heard that scanning to high a DPI will cause the horizontal flickers in the stills. It doesn't seem to be the case when rendering HDV as I used 2275 x 2275 on the scans. Perhaps we need a more in depth detailed explanation.

JJK

Here's how I deal with this situation: I scan at high resolution so that I can capture the dot pattern of the printed photo in Photoshop. I view a small section around the eye of a subject at actual size zoom so that I can see the dot pattern of the scanned printout. I use the photoshop gaussian blur filter to blur the dot pattern until it just barely becomes a smooth wash of colors between pixels. I resize the photo down to about 150 to 300 dpi, depending on how close I want to zoom and move it into the Vegas timeline. A fine blure like this isn't even visable and looks a million times better than applying a blur in Vegas.

Another thing I do often:

Sometimes, especially with cheap camera shots, the background is as in focus as the forground. Because of this, fine background detail like leaves and fences flicker like crazy when you move the picture on the Vegas timeline. I find that I can separate the subject from the background into separate Photoshop layers and blur the background layer. This accomplishes two things: first, even disposable camera shots look pretty professional on the limited 740 x 480 DV screen. Second, because of the blur, all that background motion madness disappears.

It just looks so much better than adding a blur to the Vegas timeline that there's really no comparison.

"I find that I can separate the subject from the background into separate Photoshop layers and blur the background layer."

Can be done in Vegas with bezier masking too.

mike

(good thread, this!)

John Meyer,
Often I will have both stills and video in a project. Would it make sense (along with your advise above) to render the stills parts separately and then add them as avi files to the timeline? The idea being to render the whole thing with the "good" setting afterwards.
Tor

Maybe not exactly what you're asking, but my HP scanner software has an option for de-screening printed materials, can't remember the exact name but it's in the menu. I've scanned pictures from magazines and it looks really good.

Often I will have both stills and video in a project. Would it make sense (along with your advise above) to render the stills parts separately and then add them as avi files to the timeline?

Any project can be rendered in parts, to separate AVI files, and then "stitched" together on the timeline for rendering to MPEG-2 or printing to tape. Whether these extra steps are worth it depends on the balance of what you have in the project. If you have ten seconds of stills in a one hour project, then definitely I would render the ten seconds, using best, to an AVI file and then import this back into the project and do the remaining render at best.

Rendering at best quality won't hurt your video (i.e., won't make it look bad), but it WILL take a lot longer.

Sometimes the descreening option looks great and sometimes you can do a better job blurring the dots on a high res scan. It's certainly a lot quicker to just scan with the descreening option turned on. A bit of photo motion turns up errors in the scan you would never see just looking at the photo.

Here I go again. I thought I licked the problem with stills last year but I'm also having problems with jitter. The specific still is a scanned copy of a birth certificate. I have tried .jpg and .bmp formats and have used the "reduced interlace flicker" switch. I render using the DVD NTSC template and use the "best" quailty setting. Now this image is all black and white with a lot of lines in it. When rendered it is jumping all over the place. I have tried 3 field orders when rendering and the progressive scan gives the lease amount of jitter.

Also noticed that every time I take the MPG file to DVDA, I get a message that it has to recompress the video file. I'm not sure why it would have to be recompressed.

Is there anything else I can try. I even tried the gaussian blur with no help.

TomG

A while back in this forum a lot of people used to recommend saving images as .png (portable network graphics) which seemed more stable than jpgs. I have used .png and .tga with good results. Might be worth a try.

Don't mess around with field order. That will screw up everything. If you use DV, keep the render at bottom field first.

I solved my problem by applying Gaussian Blur to the entire track. I went from a 45 min render to a 4.5 hour render. Unfortunaately, the "crispness" of all the stills was reduced. So now I am going to just apply the Fx to the stills that were giving me problems to begin with which means more rendering, taking note if which stills to apply the Fx, modify the timiline, and render again..

I sure wish there was a way to predict which stills will give you problems.. It has taken longer to render and create the DVD than it took to edit the entire production!!!

TomG