Lower Clip Quality

Jazzman54 wrote on 5/12/2008, 1:07 AM

I have finished a DVD production for a client with a 5 separate clips. All clips, except one, are combined montages of video and stills. The video is captured form VHS tapes, the stills were scanned into .PNG files and are on average 2000x2000 pixels. All 5 vega projects were set to the same target rendering settings out to Pal DVD wide screen. All videos are rendered in ‘Best’ quality.

The one exception is purley stills, being panned and zoomed and faded, etc. This project renders fine and looks good previewed on the pc and tv monitors, but, when I generate a DVD (with DVD architect 4.5), this particular video appears to be a lower quality then the rest. The biggest give away is that the title text is pixeleated. All other videos seem perfect with very clean titles and good quality video.

I have tried all sorts of settings to remove this problem, but it still remains seemingly lower quality. I have a deadline for this project and will probably leave it as it is, as I doubt that my client will notice the quality difference.

However, I would like to establish what may be wrong in my work flow, and why should this project, containing stills only, be different from the others?

Any pointers please?
Thanks
Ian A

Comments

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 5/12/2008, 3:33 AM

Hi,

Probably something wrong with the render resolution...

Independent of this, if you want razor sharp text, you should generate it - at double the project frame size. In my opinion, this should actually be the default setting, but is not...

In your case set it to 1440 x 1152 (double the PAL resolution of 720 x 576) for the text clip. This makes the text look crispier, and if you still see jaggies, then there is something wrong with the rendering...

Christian

Rory Cooper wrote on 5/12/2008, 4:36 AM

What text editor are you using?

rs170a wrote on 5/12/2008, 6:03 AM

Make sure to stay away from any fancy fonts and illegal colours.
Great Titles with the DV Codec is an excellent article on issues to avoid when creating text.

Mike

Jazzman54 wrote on 5/12/2008, 6:12 AM

Sorry to not make myself clear.
I am using the 'standard' title generator' to give me a single stationary Arial title. I admit that I am using the default colour which may be white, but this does not appear to be the problem.

My issue is that 4 out of five projects give me perfect results. The fifth project, the only one that only has stills, is giving me less than perfect video, most noticeable on the titles. This is with all projects seemingly set up the same way.

The title generator probably defaults to standard PAL dimensions, but all the photos are scanned at sizes between 2000 and 3000 pixels. I will experiment with the title size, but this was not an issue with the other clips.

Thanks
Ian A.

Rory Cooper wrote on 5/12/2008, 6:51 AM

Well what the problem might be if you have a std frame size and use std frame size for your text 720 x 576 the pix size match so every thing is cool now you add 2000 x 2000 size pix in your next project
But you keep your text panel at 720 the text will be pixelated so match your text panel size to pics panel size

johnmeyer wrote on 5/12/2008, 9:31 AM

Did you create the motion on your stills using pan/crop, or by using track motion?

If you used track motion, then that is your problem. You MUST use pan/crop when doing motion for still photos.

If the title text is actually generated with the text generator, make sure that the text event resolution is at least as large as your project resolution. You will find the "Frame Size" setting at the top of the Video Event fX for each text event.

Jazzman54 wrote on 5/12/2008, 10:55 AM

Thanks All,

John, I always use pan/crop to animate stills and also to 'scroll' video when necessary, so I do not think this is the issue.

WTFX, I will try this, but it does not explain why the other clips in this production all rendered perfectly, with a mix of still panning and video tracks, and at default PAL settings.

I will re-visit this in the background and by a process of elimination, try and find the cuplrit. I will report back any news.

Thanks again All.