Preview(Full) better than Best(Full)

Paul Fierlinger wrote on 2/15/2006, 2:04 PM
Why is that? I am a 2D animator and export my files from my video paint application (Mirage) as QT Photo JPEG, best quality. The resulting QT file is as crisp and as faithfull to the original source as I would like.

But once loaded into Vegas everything becomes blurry as soon as I set my preview quality to Good or Best. The apprearance I get from Preview (Full) both on my Vegas preview window and my external monitor is just what I would like to see, alas it is an illusion, because once I render out (QT Photo JPEG, best quality, the result is the burry version I see in preview Best(Full).

What can I do to improve my lot?

Comments

farss wrote on 2/15/2006, 2:30 PM
Have you tried rendering to something other than QT?
I think from memory the defaults in the Vegas QT templates are not too flash, you might need to fiddle with them.
Bob.
Paul Fierlinger wrote on 2/15/2006, 3:19 PM
I've been fiddling with them for 4 days now.and there was no MPEG 2 codec in my new Vegas 6 until moments ago -- how strange? This is promising... can you, or anyone else please help me with some recommendations for the best parameters to encode from QT to MPEG?

Paul
farss wrote on 2/15/2006, 3:37 PM
Well first off QT what?
QT is the same as avi, just a wrapper.
I assume it's standard DV inside?
If so be carefull, I've had no end of grief with QT somehow having the field order flagged wrongly. If you have that problem you'll know soon enough once you view your rendered output on a CRT.

But the times I've worked with QT files, just encode to mpeg-2 using the DVDA PAL/NSTC templates and adjust the bitrates as required. Typically if your video is under around 60 minutes you can use CBR 8Mb/sec.

Bob.
Paul Fierlinger wrote on 2/15/2006, 4:30 PM
I've always had best results with QT Photo JPEG. Mind you, my work is very flat graphics; Wacom hand drawn 2D animation. I tried your suggestion and it's still coming out blurry. Is it normat to get a blurry preview with Best(Full)? I know that the preview image is just that, a temp preview, yet... why blurry? What goes in is razor sharp. What comes out after rendering looks like the blurry preview image.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that my QTs are always Progressive. I have no use for fielding.
lwx wrote on 3/6/2006, 11:30 AM
Just as a little background, as you likely know 2D animator's generally work on progressive frames and 'animate twos.' Quite commonly the target framerate is 24fps, though there are many alternatives. So basically you draw at 12 fps, double to 24, then do a 3:2 pulldown either on the way out of Mirage or within Vegas to get to 29.97 (NTSC). The pulldown, as imperfect as it is as a process, can nevertheless can often provide a nice, Disney-esque 'filmic' quality.

Quicktime is certainly one alternative for transport between Mirage and Vegas, but it wouldn't likely be my first choice. If I did use it, I think I would go for a lossless format (uncompressed) as opposed to either DV (shudder!) or any of compressed variants.

However, since both Mirage and Vegas can handle image sequences, I would lean in that direction myself. Targas would serve nicely, for example, and can optionally include an alpha channel ... which might be useful if you wish to retain the ability to do some comping outside of Mirage.

If you're heading for MPEG2 and DVD, you're obviously going to be losing some quality at the end ... so hanging onto every last shred of it as far into the process as you can is a good idea.

p.s. - I know you know all of this already Paul, just thinking of other readers.
rmack350 wrote on 3/6/2006, 6:29 PM
This really sounds like an upper field/lower field problem. Photo JPEG is normaly a really good looking quicktime format.

I'm not reproducing your process here, but if I render footage out from Vegas as Photojpeg and then put it on the timeline, it looks good if I render it with fields and not good if I render it progressive. This is true even if I change the project field order to progressive - a progressive photojpeg looks soft, even in a progressive project.

Don't know why but that's what's happening.

Rob Mack