I created 4 or 5 slideshow with pans and zooms and rendered in 25mpbs blue ray quality as well as 20mbps mp4 and did not see any jerky/jittery as I saw on your vimeo link. I did not do a photo collage like you did but I do not see why that should matter.

A quick question since I am a newbie to video editing. I assumed you did create a high resolution collage of the photos(with each individual picture being greater than 1920x1080 resolution), place it on the timeline, and used pans and zooms. If you did it that way, wouldn't the resolution of each individual picture inside the collage be much lower than 1920x1080(assuming you used 1920x1080 as the setting in your project).

I am not sure of how Vegas handle the resolution of the photos in a slideshow but I am guessing that if I am making a 1920x1080 sideshow consisting of photos that are 5 megapixels, every time I zoom in on a picture, that zoomed portion is no longer 1920x1080.

Hi, thanks for offering to help. I haven't had much time but will try to upload the actual video soon. Is youtube fine?

No. Processed by Youtube is not the actual rendered video, is it?

No, I suppose it's not. As far as rendering settings, I have been using the Sony AVC Format with the Internet 1920 X 1080-30P Template - which should give me the best render possible to upload to Youtube (which is the video's intended purpose).

Is this format fine to post to mediafire, or would you like a different format?

"Is this format fine to post to mediafire, or would you like a different format?"

If you don't understand what is meant by "actual rendered video," then maybe someone else will be better suited to help you. Sorry I wasn't able to make my request clear.

Okay, maybe I'm a bit of a newb, but I'm not a retard. If I'm misinterpreting what actual rendered video means, maybe you could quickly clarify it.

In Vegas, I can click - Project - Render As - (choose settings)

Is this not what you want me to do?

aquaholik,

If you use the Pan/Crop feature then Vegas retains as much resolution as possible. Your 5MP images are probably something like 2644x1983 pixels. That means you can zoom in about 1.4x and still retain native resolution, filling your 1920x1080 frame with 1920x1080 pixels from the original image. Zooming in past that requires that Vegas resample the pixels larger and therefore lose resolution. In any case, Vegas saves the resampling till the last step, performing it only once.

Do not crop/zoom in with track motion. Track motion resamples the original image to the project size first, then crops, then resamples back to project size. You'll lose a lot that way. Track motion is really only good for zooming out to make the image smaller.

cactuseskimo, that's exactly right. of course, to keep the file size small you should select a loop region of just a few seconds that illustrate the problem. There's no need to render the entire file.

The point that musicvid is making is that we need to get that exact file that you render. Sites like YouTube re-encode your video into a new file, much more compressed, with different properties. This makes it impossible to see what your actual rendered output file is really like.

Thank-you for the clarification. Now, is there a preferred setting/format that I should render out as?

cactuseskimo, two questions...

1) What are the project properties?
2) What resolution are your jpegs?

Ok, another one... If using keyframes in your pan/zoom, what are the each of the keyframe properties set to? Smooth?

Hi Msmart. Thanks for the help.

The project properties are:

HD 1080-60i (1920X1080) 29.970 fps Template
Field Order: Upper Field First
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0000 Square
Full Res Rendering Quality: Good
De-interlace Method: Blend Fields
(I've fooled around with most of the stuff above. It doesn't seem to make much difference)

The jpegs are 1200X675, 300 ppi

All the keyframes are just set to linear.

Thank you Chienworks for clearing that up, and sorry for sidetracking your thread cactus eskimo. That does explain why the slideshow looks fabulous even when panning and zooming. I am actually starting with a 3264x1840 pixels shot by my Canon Vixia HFS 10. I did not use track motion, just random pan and zoom when making slideshow.

I will do a simple experiment to confirm what you said, two still of the same picture, one with the original 3264x1840 and another one that has been resized to 1920x1080, I will then pan and zoom both of them and render them and play them back on the big screen.

Thanks again.

BTW, if you haven't already done so, you should select your photo(s), right-click and, from the Switch options, select Flicker Removal.

I do this as standard procedure whenever I work with photos.

Rather than rendering to Sony AVC, you may want to try Main Concept. Read through this:

http://eugenia.queru.com/2007/11/09/exporting-with-vegas-for-vimeo-hd/

Now may be a good time to explain with a little more detail exactly what you mean by jerky/jittery/jumpy.

Okay, I've rendered an HD WMV version, and a SONY AVC HD version (the main concept AVC seemed much lower in quality)

Here's the download link for the MP4:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/7fbmmm1uadsdlo0/Let%20Me%20Fall.mp4

Here's the download link for the WMV:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/6s8f8nn6ql5le7o/Let%20Me%20Fall.wmv

I've tried to pinpoint the places where I definitely see the stutter/jitter, and MAYBE it is just my computer because once in a while I'm not sure I see it in the same places . . . but it seems the majority of times I do.

Some examples of where I see it in the WMV file are at (roughly): 5, 11, 22, 38, 41 seconds. The 22 sec one is always apparent to me.

In the SONY AVC format, it seems even a little more pronounced, but it is definitely happening in the same places timewise.

Hope this helps solve this problem.

I think your renders may be at too high a bitrate for you computer/Mediaplayer to keep up with.

I used Handbrake to re-encode your mp4 to an avg bitrate of 2Mbps (from 16Mbps). You can download it here

Give this a try and see if it doesn't play more smoothly with very little degraded quality.

Good Luck!
...Jerry

Edit btw, the original files you posted played fine on my laptop with no stutter, but I've got an i7 CPU.

C2D 2.66 GHz, Vista 32, 4 GB RAM.

I see the stutter at least at 5, 38 and 41. I only had a look at the mp4. It almost looks like you an extra keyframe there. I would suggest zooming in to the timeline so that you can see individual frames and see if you have any extra keyframes.

Hmmm . . . this may actually be the case. I don't think I really appreciated how huge these files are. I just downloaded the video to my older amd 3800+ and these things barely even play. Actually, your Handbrake version won't barely play either. I will try it on my other computer when I get home and see how it goes. Thanks for the help!

Well, I hoped that was the issue. But, nope, your handbrake re-encoded version stutters in the exact same places. I uploaded a version to youtube and while it's a little harder to tell (as youtube is just a little shaky in general), the stutter still seems to be in the same places.

I've also looked for extra keyframes, or maybe places where I accidentally split the jpeg up, but no, it all looks pretty standard.

To see the stutter in it's most obvious place (in my mind), at 22 seconds in, focus on the face of the guy walking. I see it everytime.

I am on the verge of declaring this a bug, as this stutter is present is my project, renders, hand-brake re-renders, and youtube uploads. Also, it seems two other people have had very similar problems. I've contacted them both, and they said they never got it figured out and moved on to different products. Here are the threads:

http://www.videoforums.co.uk/sony-vegas-media-studio/31958-still-image-pan-keyframes-jerky.html

http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/920699

I really do love this software, and I just want this to work so I can go to bed at night and stop thinking about it!

I still don't think the problem lies with Vegas. Here's why (maybe others can confirm my tests??).

On my Dell Studio 15 i7 Q720 laptop, Win7 x64 with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 545v display adapter:

1) Using Windows Media Player, your original Let_Me_Fall.mp4 plays silky smooth throughout the whole clip.
2) Using VLC, I see a very, very slight stutter at the 22 sec mark. Although I never would have noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out.
3) Using Quicktime player, the entire clip stutters - not recommended.

Is it an acceptable alternative to render this to 1280x720 ? Also, I'd set the project settings to match the output (i.e. 1280x720 29.97fps progressive) & set the Render Quality to "Best".

Good Luck!
...Jerry

cactuseskimo, you've never said what your PC specs are. It could be part of your issue. Fill out the system specs in your profile.

I mention it because if you're running a 64-bit OS, you may benefit from this fix (even if you're not experiencing crashes):

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=697122

Well, I've been playing with this and thought I could solve the problem, but I think I'm stumped. I thought by re-encoding your source, changing some params (bitrate, resolution, encoder, &/or mediaplayer) we could get to a combo that provides for a smooth playback. You can see my test HERE

Alas, none of my test cases results in a nice, smooth playback. What really confuses me is that I get silky smooth playback with your original, high bitrate h.264 file when playing locally on my laptop with WMP.

...Jerry (the stumped)