New and Need some tips

sjlocke wrote on 8/21/2004, 2:15 PM
Hey there,

Trying out v5. Here's my situation.

I have still images that were 3d rendered. They are 854x480. The plan is to end up with a 16:9 widescreen at the end.

I import my images. The were rendered with a pixel aspect of 1.00. So the properties of the clip is that the aspect is 1.0, not what I eventually want to view them at, right?

Ok. They are really dark. Yes, there's a lot of black in the bg. They are space scenes. But while the titles look beautiful and bright in photoshop, the same frame in vegas looks dull, and has lost all detail. What am I doing wrong here? It looks bad in the preview at "best", and looks just as bad in an avi or mpeg render at best.

Ok. The properties of the pixel aspect ration for the project are NTSC DV Widescreen, right? Since I want to end up widescreen. And then for the render, I again pick NTSC DV Widescreen? Is this correct? Anything special I need to set when doing the dvd?

Thanks. Sorry for all the questions.

sj

Comments

tygrus wrote on 8/21/2004, 3:57 PM
What do you mean stills that are 3D rendered?

if you are talking about still image slide shows, your project can benefit from a few tweaks but it can't over come the original still quality.

- set project settings to best all around, deinterlace by blend fields
- set switches to reduce flicker, force resample and uncheck maintain aspect ratio to have the final output in widescreen..
- in your render, keep bit rate at 9800, progressive only output

Thats about all there is for stills. Procoder gives a little better results than mainconcept.
sjlocke wrote on 8/21/2004, 4:12 PM
Hi,

I mean they are renders out of a 3d package. These are crystal clear, but when they come into Vegas, they are losing brightness and clarity.

Should I post a screen grab?

sjlocke
tygrus wrote on 8/21/2004, 6:01 PM
If you can post a screen shot, it might help.

I assume that your images are 100% computer generated then?
sjlocke wrote on 8/21/2004, 6:11 PM
Hey,

yep. I'll try to post in a little bit.

sjlocke
sjlocke wrote on 8/22/2004, 9:33 AM
Hi,

Check out this image. See, the lost blue vibrancy and highlights? The lost purple clouds that in the bg. Some stars are lost. This is straight in vegas, one opened in photoshop, one in vegas.

http://www.digitalplanetdesign.com/media/preShow/example.jpg

sjlocke
tygrus wrote on 8/22/2004, 10:17 AM
I am looking at your jpg and it is strange so much detail is lost through a vegas render. I have rendered from a similar app - Particle Illiusion - and things came out very fine.

You are sure all of your settings are at best quality, including the project settings and render output?? DO you have the switches set like I mentioned in one of my emails above. These can have a big impact on stills.

The only other thing I can think of is the compression. Are you using jpg images into VV? If so, the double compression of jpg to mpeg is hurting you. Save your files out of your 3D rendering app as .PNG or .TIF which are lossless formats.
sjlocke wrote on 8/22/2004, 3:21 PM
Hey,

Everyone here said to use jpeg, as they load quicker, but I would have thought that just in the preview, it wouldn't have lost so much detail. That shot isn't from the mpeg2 render out, althought that render looks the same as the capture from within vegas.

sjlocke
BillyBoy wrote on 8/22/2004, 4:44 PM
I captured your image off your web site. Not only did I get all the detail I greatly improved on the hidden detail bringing out the dust clouds and more stars. I used Vegas Color Curves and Color Corrector.

Try boosting gain on Color Correct to about 1.085 and Gamma to1.320
Then apply Color Curves. Try boosting both ends of the curve about a third of way up drag the envelope about a 1/8 inch from its default so the curve is a arc up and left of the default.



sjlocke wrote on 8/22/2004, 6:35 PM
Hi,

I'll have to figure out how to do all that, but why should I? Shouldn't I be able to view what I have the way I have it? Is there some built in gamma thing that I have to fight against?

sjlocke
tygrus wrote on 8/22/2004, 6:44 PM
Billyboy, are those color correction and gamma recommendations generic for most still slide show projects or just in the case of these 3D space stills?

What would you recommend for just everyday stills, like landscapes and such.
thx
BillyBoy wrote on 8/22/2004, 7:12 PM
Every video is different. In fact what I did for the star field is rather extreme. But it sometimes pays to play with the values just to see what happens. You still need to stay in bounds so check with scopes.

I'll put up a quicke web page to illustrate what I mean and just leave it there for a day or two.

http://www.wideopenwest.com/%7Ewvg/star.htm

The top image is the original poster's "better" image, the bottom is that image after applying color curves, gamma and gain. In fact if I would have gone a tad more the star field dust become more apparant.
sjlocke wrote on 8/22/2004, 7:25 PM
Hey,

Wow! I'll try it out.

sjlocke
sjlocke wrote on 8/22/2004, 7:30 PM
Hey again,

That worked great. Thanks for the heads up.

sjlocke