the main video stays 4:3 in the center of the 16:9 space. It is also slightly inset from top and bottom edges and has a frame around it.

the blur of the dup @ 16:9 is just filling in the bg

What are you blurring in the background? Why not just leave it black?

this topic is about how to achieve a smooth blur - the same look I have in Vegas - but when rendered.

the same look I have in Vegas - but when rendered. I think what you are really asking for is what we used to call WYSIWYG back when I was in the desktop publishing business: you want the blur on the final render to match what you see on the screen in Vegas. This is a little different than wanting it to look "better."

If you are not getting a match, I can think of three things that might cause this. First, make sure that your preview is set to Best-->Full. That will get you the best fidelity that you can get in Vegas on the computer monitor. Any other preview setting will definitely affect the fidelity between preview and final render, especially for blur effects.

The second thing is to make sure that your project properties are set to match the format of your final render. Normally you want this to match your source footage in order to get the smoothest, fastest timeline playback. However, this will not get you the best fidelity to how the video will look when rendered. So, change the Project Properties playback resolution and interlace settings to match those of the final render.

Finally, if you can, use an external monitor to view the timeline playback. If this is set up correctly, this should further improve the WYSIWYG experience.

For critical Previews, make a Prerender or Render to New Track and there is always RAM Builds too.

Grazie

Thanks for the tips folks. I think in this case singe I am first stretching the BG then blurring so there are artifacts. Still...it looks great in vegas but not on render. I am not rendering to the source becasue the source is 4:3 and I am rendering 16:9

to make my renders look just like preview, I always DISABLE RESAMPLE on the clips properties. It defaults to "SMART" and ALWAYS makes a mess of renders for reasons I don't care to bother pondering anymore.
maybe that will help

Another thing that can definitely affect how the blur looks in the final render is what used to be called the "pre/post" toggle. This is now defined by dragging either the pan/crop (events) button in the fX dialog before or after the fX, or if you do it on the Track level, it is the Composite button. The blur will definitely work differently if you apply it before or after any change in resolution (and a stretch definitely counts as a change in resolution).

Resizing + blur will change depending on the order you do them If you're using Pan/Crop to "stretch" your image, don't forget you can put the pan crop after the blur if you want. In the Pan/Crop window (or the event fx window) you can just drag Pan/Crop to the right of your Gaussian Blur. If you happen to be using Track Motion to resize your background, that can cause issues because of the inferior way it resizes.

You can also take a look at Defocus instead of Blur. I think it has a more organic look, but you'll probably want to set Bloom Threshold to Max and Bloom Strength (if I remember the name right) to Min. The Radius control gives you the blur amount.

Edit: 2 pts. to johnmeyer for faster response.

Edit: 2 pts. to johnmeyer for faster response. But 2 pts. to you for a better response. The note about re-sizing with track motion rather than pan/crop could definitely make a difference in this case, depending on exactly what he is doing. Track motion will always produce an inferior result to pan/crop when the source media is higher resolution than the render resolution. The differences are not subtle at all, and the track motion version can be absolutely awful.

Track motion will always produce an inferior result to pan/crop when the source media is higher resolution than the render resolution.

John, unless I am misunderstanding I think you mean when the source media is lower resolution than the render resolution - which would be the case when you enlarge 4/3 for a blurred 16/9 background.

Also, what I've done for 16:9 backgrounds for 4:3 footage. Basically the background becomes a darker, dreamy looking background that lets the 4:3 footage stand out.

Track 1: 4:3 footage
Track 2: Enlarged 4:3 footage to fill 16:9 frame with following FX's:
- Sony Levels, darken to taste
- Sony Black and White @ .882
- Sony Gaussian Blur @ .01 H and .01 V

/jerry

As always this forum is the best...I will try a couple of these ideas....

John, unless I am misunderstanding I think you mean when the source media is lower resolution than the render resolution - which would be the case when you enlarge 4/3 for a blurred 16/9 background.Well, you got me thinking, and I've re-read what I wrote a few times, but I think I got it right.

The usual place this bites people is when they are doing the "Ken Burns" effect using still photos. In almost all cases, even when you are doing an HD project, the still photos will be higher resolution than the 1920x1080 HD resolution. When you re-size these using pan/crop, the re-sizing is done first, and then the result of this operation is fed to the rendering engine. However, when the re-sizing is done at the track level, the image is first re-sized to the rendering resolution and after that it is re-sized. It has to be done this way because the track may contain video and still images that have different resolutions.

As a result of this, if you start out with a photo (or 4K video, etc.) that is, 4,000x3,000 pixels, if you zoom in so each dimension is cut in half, you now have an image that is 2,000x1,500. This is still higher than the render resolution, so everything will look great when that 2,000x1,500 image is re-sized during the render operation to 1,920x1,080. However, if that same re-size is done using track motion, the image is first re-sized to 1920x1080, and then that resolution is cut in half in each dimension (960x540), and then the result will be scaled back to 1920x1080 during the render. As I said in my last post, the differences can be huge, and the results doing it the wrong way can be awful.

> the image is first re-sized to the rendering resolution and after that it is re-sized.

Good explanation John and you are correct as far as I know, with one possible exception. I thought Vegas could use up to project resolution as a starting point for track re-sizing. I could very well be wrong on this and when I get a chance I will test and report back.

None the less, my general rule of thumb is never scale up with track motion. Scaling down has always worked fine for me. The lone exception for me is for the scenario more directly related to the OP's request where I laid out my specific steps a couple of posts ago, scaling up from 4:3 to a 16:9 crop worked ok. I think this was because of the other steps I outlined which masked the effects of upscaling. Or it is quite possible I am not as discriminating as others here ;-).

/jerry

I thought Vegas could use up to project resolution as a starting point for track re-sizing. We may or may not be saying the same thing. However, just to make sure, I just did a test. I put a high res (3008x2000) still image on the timeline. I set the project properties to HD (1920x1080).

I then enlarged the image by using track motion. I did this by simply multiplying the HD project property numbers by four (7,680x4,320). I rendered this using the NTSC DV template. I then repeated this exact same test, but first set the project properties to DV (720x480) resolution. The two rendered results were identical.

Just to complete the test, I did the same enlargement by dividing the pan/crop number by four. I got the exact same image size, but when I rendered, the results were clear and sharp (the track motion enlargement was quite blurry).

So it looks to me as though the project property settings don't matter. In fact, I'm pretty sure that, when looking at all the settings in the Project Properties dialog, only the deinterlace properties matter during rendering. I wish the user interface was constructed better in order to avoid this confusion.

I don't think you said what you are viewing the NTSC DV file with? VLC or other PC players that may shift colors? Burn to DVD then view? What are the properties of your "black"? 16-235 or 0-255?

Definitely don't go much higher than DV size for stills. Using Blend on high velocity footage?

Basically, do you have more info on what type of footage is in your timeline and what are you outputting to?

>We may or may not be saying the same thing. However, just to make sure, I just did a test. I put a high res (3008x2000) still image on the timeline. I set the project properties to HD (1920x1080).

John, here's more what I was thinking:

1. Set project properties at 3008x2000.
2. Put a high res 3008x2000 image on the timeline in Track 1.
3. Put same image on timeline Track 2
4. Using track motion, zoom the track 1 image approximately 3:1.
5. Using pan/crop, zoom the track 2 image approximately 3:1.
6, Render to 1920x1080.

I ran the test using a really sharp image of a butterfly. You can see the little hairs (technical term) on the legs. Both rendered images seem equally sharp to me.

Of course normally I use pan/crop for zooms. A project where I would find the above useful:

Create a 4000x4000 "cork board" in Photoshop and use that as the background for photos and/or video "thumb tacked" to the corkboard. Use track motion to fly around the corkboard, dropping low to examine the various media at their full resolution.

/jerry

I don't believe its been mentioned yet, but this may be one of those cases where there will also be a noticeable difference between "Good" and "Best" in the Full Resolution Render settings in Project properties. Different resizing algorithms happening here too.