Fast Video Resizing. Hope this helps everyone

Ralph413 wrote on 1/30/2004, 9:47 AM

Just wanted to pass on a quick message to everyone still learning (like me).
I usually edit (.vf file) Render to .avi for a Mini-DV copy to keep on file then render to Mpeg-2 for DVD. My DVD copies were sloppy. (VHS type quality)
I found that when I go to MAKE MOVIE and turn OFF the
FAST VIDEO RESIZING, the quality is TEN-FOLD!!! However plan on rendering overnight.(It takes a long long time). I have only tried this on the .avi files. Although I tried it on mpeg-2 it was already fast since I was rendering from the avi to mpg2 so all the hard work was done already.

I hope this helps and thanks to everyone out there who have helped me in the past.

Ralph Bruno

Comments

Electromen wrote on 1/30/2004, 5:28 PM

Thanks, It made a definite difference, worth the extra time.

Ralph413 wrote on 1/31/2004, 8:32 AM

Thanks

I hope a few more people see this. I been shooting weddings for 3 yrs but just got into the editing (probably upgrade to vegas soon). There's no way I could give a bride the finished product before. It looked like I was using a cheap camera.

Ralph

allyn wrote on 1/31/2004, 6:49 PM

i'm still unclear on what this improves. does it make moving videos better, still shots, pan/crop of still shots, or everything?

ADinelt wrote on 1/31/2004, 7:31 PM

I've been working on putting my parent's photos into a DVD presentation. The first two small clips were done with fast resizing turned on and I was quite pleased with the results when viewed on the TV.

Then I read this post and thought I would try the next clip without the fast resizing. Granted it took longer, but the results were pretty amazing. So I went back and have re-rendered the first two clips again, only this time without fast resizing. All I can say is WOW!! The images are so much more crisp and clear, the colors are more vibrant. The difference is absolutely night and day.

I am looking forward to see what the improvement will be when I do my next video transfer.

What I will probably do is do use the fast resizing as I am working on the project, like a draft mode. When ready to burn the final project, I will re-render again without fast resizing. I have a PIII - 650 and it takes around 24-30 hours to render a 1.45 hour video with fast resizing, so my final rendering will probably start on Friday evenings and run through the weekend.

I guess it makes sense really, you have to give up something for the speed, in this case a bit of quality. Thanks for the great tip!!

Al

IanG wrote on 2/1/2004, 12:45 AM

I've just tried rerendering a wedding project in PAL with fast video resizing turned off - it made little or no difference to either *quality or rendering time! Is this something that works best with NTSC?

* I didn't have any problem with quality to start with.

Ian G.

csantelman wrote on 2/1/2004, 9:41 AM

I tested on a small project (NTSC) generating MPEG-2 files - took longer, didn't see much difference...

allyn wrote on 2/1/2004, 11:04 AM

i didn't see much difference either. could it be that people with slow processors see a bigger difference? i have an athlon 1900.

Chienworks wrote on 2/1/2004, 12:25 PM

It really only makes a difference when you're resizing media during the render. If your project is made up of DV video files and you're rendering to DV or MPEG 2 then you aren't resizing anything. On the other hand, if you're making a slide show from still images then chances are that the stills are all sorts of sizes and you will have lots of resizing going on.

ADinelt wrote on 2/1/2004, 1:10 PM

The pictures that I am working with were scanned way before I started working with video. They range anywhere in size from 2" x 2" up to 8.5" x 11" in both landscape and portrait formats. I initially scanned the photos to preserve them. My DC10plus capture card will capture up to 640 x 480. So, just about anything I do needs to be resized to 720 x 480 (NTSC).

One thing I have noticed with the pictures, is fast resizing left small black bars at the top and bottom of the TV screen with a lot of the landscape pictures. With fast resizing turned off, the black bars were gone and the picture took up the whole screen.

Al

Chienworks wrote on 2/1/2004, 2:15 PM

Al, you must have changed something else, such as "stretch to fill frame". The fast resizing switch should not affect that at all.

ADinelt wrote on 2/1/2004, 3:05 PM

I always have 'Stretch video to fill output frame' checked in my projects. The only thing different was unchecking 'Fast video sizing'.

Is this a bad thing to have the 'Stretch video to fill output frame' checked?

Al

Chienworks wrote on 2/1/2004, 4:19 PM

It's not a bad thing at all ... if you want to have your video stretched to fill the output frame. It makes sure the frame is completely filled, but it may distort the images if they're not the same shape as the output frame.

allyn wrote on 2/1/2004, 4:26 PM

that explains why i didn't see any difference. i was carefully checking dv video frame captures!

mbryant wrote on 2/2/2004, 9:29 AM

Chienworks,

Thanks - now this makes sense. I have only worked in DV (either creating DV avi files or MPEG2), and had not seen quality problems. But the people reporting quality problems were making slide shows. Now I know what is meant by "resizing".

Mark

Ralph413 wrote on 2/3/2004, 9:12 AM

I haven't tried this with dv tape yet. I'll try it tonight but my video's are sloppy and grainy. I know it's not the camera and I'm using firewire, any other sugestions?