Keeping original avi crispness in rendered file

niles wrote on 12/23/2007, 4:56 PM
I created a screen capture avi file in Camtasia. I then edited on VMS. When rendering, I have chosen both output in avi and wmv. wmv looks the best, but I can't seem to get the original crispness of my edited output file. I have played and reset all possible permutations on the output rendered settings. What else can I do?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/23/2007, 5:32 PM
What resolution is the original file? What resolution did you use for the output? I'm gonna guess that the original may have been something like 1024x768 or even higher. If you used the standard DV .avi output then you'll end up with 720x480 for the output. Reducing the image size will lose detail. DV also suffers from lower color resolution, so reds will actually be only 360x240. If you use default (uncompressed) instead of DV you cah pick whatever frame size you want and match the original size. You can then select one of several codecs to get a smaller output file size.
niles wrote on 12/23/2007, 7:50 PM
Thanks. I was wondering about that earlier and was trying to actually determine the original resolution, but I'm not sure how to get at that information. The VMS project window says for the project it is 720 x 480. I tried uncompressed as well, but still ended up with a lack of sharpness. I had thought that somehow I wasn't matching up the output file with the same specs as the input file--otherwise they should be the same, I would imagine.
Eugenia wrote on 12/23/2007, 10:42 PM
it is not possible to lose quality with uncompressed if you didnt use filters. i think what you see there and you dont like it is the resample at 30p.
MSmart wrote on 12/23/2007, 10:46 PM
What version of Camtasia do you have?

See if this Better Quality video tutorial thread on the TechSmith forum helps.
Chienworks wrote on 12/24/2007, 5:04 AM
It's very possible to lose a LOT of quality with uncompressed if rendering to a smaller frame size, especially if the original had a lot of fine detail that is common in screen captures.
niles wrote on 12/24/2007, 9:10 AM
The free version 3.
Eugenia wrote on 12/24/2007, 9:36 AM
of course and i am talking about the sa e frame size chienworks, lets not get silly here. there is no point to do uncompressed otherwise. however, frame rate is something not kept by default to 60i.
Chienworks wrote on 12/24/2007, 10:38 AM
Vegas doesn't automatically preserve frame size either. Vegas does automatically resize the input to match the output. So unless you know the input size and manually create a rendering template to match it, Vegas will probably be resizing.