Pixalated stills

2me2u wrote on 3/25/2002, 8:32 PM
I am making a picture show with high res. stills. The problem is this, when I play it back on the computer or DVD player, all the pictures are pixalated horribly. I have tried everything I can think of, to know avail. The template is a standard NTSC, and I set the rendering for best quality. I don't know where to go from here, other then returning the program. I have used the same pictures for a slide show with Ulead picture show. Res. was not a problem, but as you may know there are no transitions in Ulead. Ideas, thoughts, suggestions?

Comments

swarrine wrote on 3/26/2002, 12:26 AM
Please be more specific. What size are your pictures, how are you trying to output, what are your settings... I have had very good luck with stills and VV3. I would consider it one of the stregnths of the program.
2me2u wrote on 3/26/2002, 12:44 AM
Some of the picture sizes vary from 2280x1512,2016x3040. most are in that nieghborhood. I have even tried shrinking them down, no help, inreased and decreased dpi, no help. I am outputting to a standard VCD 352x240. One of the biggest problems is this, the pictures look good in the photo editor. They look best in a 1;3 zoom. but i can't figure out how to lock that zoom, so they all look like that. As I stated the pictures look good in the preview, but when you full screen them they look nasty. I am really at a loss..
Chienworks wrote on 3/26/2002, 6:26 AM
Consider the fact that when you create the 352x240 VCD file, your pictures now have a resolution of 352x240. If you blow that up to full screen you are going to see the pixels. VCD is intended for playback on televisions that have very poor resolution anyway. It's going to look nasty on your computer screen.
Cheesehole wrote on 3/26/2002, 2:33 PM
Chienworks is right. VCD will look nasty at full screen no matter what software you use. the reason you aren't seeing the same thing with Ulead is you aren't encoding to video. you are using a special feature of VCD that lets you display one high-res still after another. if you don't want any motion or transitions but just want to show pictures (the boring way... like the old 'okay everyone let's watch the slides from our vacation' days), then stick with your Ulead method. go to this website if you want to read more about this method. scroll all the way to the bottom and it explains about using stills and how you get a higher resolution than video.
http://www.vcdhelp.com/burnmpg.htm

if you want to do something more creative and interesting, then you'll have to encode to video. Vegas is great for making these slide shows really interesting, so give it a shot. I've had the best luck with DVD. VCD is simply too low of a resolution for these photo movies. I haven't messed with SVCD, but that has a decent resolution.

if you want to see the best smoothest example of what your slideshow will look like, then render to NTSC DV.

- ben
2me2u wrote on 3/28/2002, 12:12 AM
The thing is I have been encodeing them to mpg1, and it really looks horrible. I am mainly going to be playing this on a high quality lap-top. So which format do you think would be best. I don't have a dvd burner so that is out of the question. When encoding it to avi. or mpg2 be better?
Cheesehole wrote on 3/28/2002, 3:56 AM
if you want the best quality and space isn't too much of an issue, then render to NTSC DV PROGRESSIVE (not interlaced).

if you really need to save space, then MPEG-2 is a good choice, or Windows Media 8.

try testing each format to see how well they play back on your laptop. Windows Media Player should play the DV file and the WMV file at full screen with perfect smoothness. for the MPEG-2 you will have better quality with a software DVD player like Cyberlink PowerDVD.

- ben (cheesehole!)