Home video help request

OpChiasm wrote on 3/23/2003, 6:06 PM

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.

I'm in the process of making a DVD for my son's high school graduation. Part of the project is going to be scanned documents - preschool art work, first report card, etc - of stuff my wife has saved. I've done a couple of practice runs on DVD+RW and have run across a couple of problems.

I'm planning on making an NTSC DVD, so I have been scanning at 720x480 at 400 dpi. When the document is longer than it is wide, I've been using a vertical limit of 480 and letting the horizontal size be whatever it comes out to. The documents are still playing with the tops and bottoms cut off. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

The second problem is that text documents display with an aweful "flicker" of the text.

Thanks very much for any help.

Comments

Tyler.Durden wrote on 3/23/2003, 6:56 PM

Hi Bill,

>>>>I'm planning on making an NTSC DVD, so I have been scanning at 720x480 at 400 dpi. When the document is longer than it is wide, I've been using a vertical limit of 480 and letting the horizontal size be whatever it comes out to. The documents are still playing with the tops and bottoms cut off. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?<<<<<<

In Pan /Crop ensure that "Stretch to fit frame" is checked..? Vegas should scale to fit the whole image in the frame, evn tho it it much taller than 480.

>>The second problem is that text documents display with an aweful "flicker" of the text.<<<

Fine lines may "twitter" due to interlacing... you might try the "reduce interlace flicker" checkbox in the event properties.

HTH, MPH

Tips:
http://www.martyhedler.com/homepage/Vegas_Tutorials.html

Jsnkc wrote on 3/23/2003, 7:06 PM

Another thing you can do is have a background so that when the pictures are not quite the right size there will be saomething there besides just black, there are some good files on the Vision sampler that came with Vegas.

OpChiasm wrote on 3/23/2003, 7:48 PM

Thanks very, very much.

wcoxe1 wrote on 3/23/2003, 8:33 PM

You might consider this. For technical reasons, things that are scanned need a different ratio than the DV tape to look right once imported. The tape is 720 x 480, but scanned items need to be based on a ratio of 655 by 480. If they don't fit that ratio they will be distorted or you will have black edges where you don't want them. Backgrounds can be put behind the black areas if you want.

OpChiasm wrote on 3/24/2003, 5:11 AM

Jsnkc,

Did you get the boxed version? I got the Vegas+DVDA download before the boxed versions were available. Were the samples on a separate CD?

Thanks.

OpChiasm wrote on 3/24/2003, 5:19 AM

wcoxe1,

I was wondering if you'd mind answering a very specific question. I want to scan an 8.5 x 11 document to use in Vegas4 as part of a slideshow that will ultimately be part of an NTSC DVD. I do a prescan and then outline the document in my scanner software. I've set the output to be 400 dpi. What should the vertical output (the part that corresponds to the 11 inches) size be? Should it be a max of 480?

Thanks for any additional help.

OpChiasm wrote on 3/24/2003, 6:57 AM

Jsnkc,

Never mind. I remembered I got the CD in the mail.

Sorry.

Jsnkc wrote on 3/24/2003, 11:03 AM

Not a problem, you can also check out my website, am I working on producing a line of royalty-free video production loops, I only have one volume done so far, and I have almost completed the second volume. I am seeling them for $55 each, with 40 10 second clips on each DVD, and I made all of them with Vegas 4. Check them out at www.jcmediaservices.com/production

biggles wrote on 3/24/2003, 6:57 PM

You might also try these free texture loops:

http://www.mainconcept.com/texture_loops.shtml

OpChiasm wrote on 3/24/2003, 7:02 PM

Thanks, biggles and Jsnkc.

riredale wrote on 3/24/2003, 7:18 PM

OpChiasm:
You can bring in a scanned document of pretty much any size, and Vegas will re-size it to fit. If you bring it in at 655 (h) by 480 (v), then the DV frame will be filled without any black bars. If you scan an 8.5x11 document, then of course the document will have wide black bars on the sides unless you zoom in.

When I import text from my scanner I find I always need to soften the edges a bit in Paint Shop Pro (my graphics editor) in order to avoid "twitter," the official British term for interlace flicker. I find I need to do the same for my menus in DVDs--interlaced TV just hates sharp horizontal edges.

Paul_Holmes wrote on 3/24/2003, 7:38 PM

Wow! Great tip, Riredale. I just tested some title pngs for DVD in Vegas and applying a slight blur really does get rid of the "twitters." Means I might have to adjust the color and size of text occasionally, but it looks so much better now.