Comments

Chienworks wrote on 5/14/2002, 6:27 AM
There's no need to have a final image larger than the size of the video frame. If you're planning on zooming in 2x, then you need 12mm to fill 480 lines (assuming NTSC). That is 40 dots per mm, or 1016 dots per inch. Scanning at 1200dpi would be quite sufficient.

Personally, i prefer JPEG at a moderately low compression setting (5 or 10 out of 100). I find the files to be nearly indistinguishable from an uncompressed image. To get a PNG file that looks as good results in a much larger file.
johnmeyer wrote on 5/14/2002, 11:08 AM
Chienworks recommendations seem right to me. Just one point of clarification: When he says "moderately low compression setting (5 or 10 out of 100)," remember that some software programs use HIGH numbers for low compression. This is because the numbers in these programs represent quality, not compression. In my photo program, 100 is the BEST quality setting (i.e., creates the largest files), whereas in Chienworks program 0 is the best setting.

Just remember to use whichever setting in your particular program that produces the best quality, largest file size.
Chienworks wrote on 5/14/2002, 11:43 AM
Thanks John! I guess i left my thinking cap on the bedpost this morning ;)

Oh, and "best" in the software i use (Micrografx Picture Publisher) is 1, not 0.
the_ripper wrote on 5/15/2002, 1:26 PM
So far, i dragged about 25 images into a VF movie, added a mp3 clip, wrote to mpeg1 (VCD)...My results, poor! Music broke up, and the images looked over compressed looking. I am thinking I used too high resolution, and the software couldnt handle it? The images came from a 3.1 megapixal camera, and were compressed tifs I believe. I will knock them to jpgs and try again. are mp3 files ok or should I be using a higher format than mp3 at 128 kbs???? the_ripper
Anders wrote on 5/15/2002, 2:15 PM
I did a "slide show" project involving 80 slides and a 7 minute WAV "narration" using VW5. First I scanned in actual slides at 720 dpi (1-3 MB file), then cropped, adjusted and saved as JPG (75-150 kb). The original WAV was 120 MB so I knocked it down to mono 8-bit to get a 7MB sound file. Once I had all the slides I adjusted each slide time to sequence to the sound track (yes this was quite a project). Once I had everything setup just right I produced a 640x480 AVI file (30 fps, 24 bit color) which resulted in a 18MB file which burns nicely on a CD for distribution. I tried MPG1 (awful), MPG2 (doesn't work on older computers). The 30fps seemed to do the trick of making the resulting file look good on a computer.
Chienworks wrote on 5/15/2002, 2:51 PM
the_ripper, It's been reported that having .mp3 files on the timeline can cause problems with the video being unsteady. Try converting them to .wav files and then placing these .wav files on the timeline.
Chienworks wrote on 5/15/2002, 3:16 PM
Anders, there really isn't any reason for you to chop the .wav file down like that. In fact, you risk losing a lot of sound quality that way. The sound parameters of the final output file will be determined by the settings you use while rendering, not by the parameters of the source file.