Poor slideshow quality - how to fix?

nolonemo wrote on 9/16/2002, 3:36 PM
I was fooling around with slideshow programs this weekend (using jpegs from a 4MP digicam). I got the best image quality from Ulead's DVD Pictureshow. But I didn't like the fact that the program didn't tell you the total program length which makes it hard to match audio to the show length.

So I thought I'd try it out in VV. Imported all the pix with auto crossfades, matched up the audio, rendered to NTSC DVD spec at 8000 CBR, burned to DVD-R. I didn't mess with any other settings.

To my surprise, the images from the VV3 show were much softer/fuzzier than those from the cheap Ulead product. Anyone know why that would be (I had just assumed that what was burned to the disk from both programs would be basically the same format) & if there's some setting in VV3 can tweak to get better quality?

Thanks,

Alan

Comments

shaunn wrote on 9/16/2002, 4:39 PM
Not sure about Ulead's product - what kind of slide show does it produce anyway? can you zoom in/out and pan crop it? add motion to it? transitions?

I have created SVCD photo CDs before with Nero and it's actually not a video clip that is rendered but a copy of the images into a specific folder in the Cdrom. So the quality is perfect because it is not a rendered file and this is not what VV3 does (photo CD or DVD)

Did you try to look at the quality settings in the MPEG2 template ? is the slider at 31?

I have produced several slide shows with this setting and they look very good IMHO.

nolonemo wrote on 9/16/2002, 5:19 PM
Thanks, yup, slider at 31.

All I really know about DVD slideshow is that it will make slideshows on either CDR or DVD-R with equal quality, because, according to the help file, the VCD 2.0 standard supports still images at DVD res of NTSC 720 x480. Since the Ulead program seemed to be creating DVDs or VCDs, I thought the quality would be the same coming out of VV3. Having said that, however, the image quality and "look" is about the same as what you get burning a VCD photo album with Nero or WinOnCD, so maybe we have apples and oranges. The one thing I haven't done is to put either disk in my computer drive and see what's on the disk, file-wise. All I've done is to play them in my set-top player.

Thanks for replying.

Alan
Chienworks wrote on 9/17/2002, 1:32 PM
Your 4MP camera is probably taking images in the 2400x1800 pixel range, and the output resolution of the rendered MPEG file is 640x480. This means the images have to be reduced to about 1/4 the size. Vegas' resizing algorithm tends toward the soft & fuzzy, especially when rendering at good or best quality, and the more the image is reduced the fuzzier it will be. You might try resizing the images in a photo editing program first and getting them to the desired sharpness at a 655x480 size before putting them on the timeline. You can also try using the preview or draft quality when rendering as this will tend to soften the image less when resizing.
nolonemo wrote on 9/17/2002, 4:04 PM
Mr. (Ms.) Chien - another great answer. Thanks so much - I can do a batch resize in Photoshop, which has an excellent resizing algorithm. I'll have to try it out next weekend! If I render to the size of the imported images on the timeline, will I still see a difference if I render at draft or preview quality? (Sounds like its time to go back to the manual).
Chienworks wrote on 9/17/2002, 4:50 PM
Mr. would be suitable ;)

If the only thing you have in your slideshow is images at the output size, then it probably won't make any difference what render settings you use. On the other hand, if you have some images slightly different sizes, or are zooming/cropping at all, or have crossfades, titles, etc., then you will probably get a better result using good or best.

My suggestion is to highlight a short section of your slideshow as a loop, then try rendering just that section with different settings to compare them.