Rotate makes image slightly soft, fuzzy

johnmeyer wrote on 8/27/2003, 5:39 PM
I used a fixed tripod behind the minister. I was late, in a hurry, and didn't get the tripod level. I'm using rotate in the Track Pan/Crop to correct my error.

However, the resulting video seems soft and slightly out of focus.

Things I've tried:

1. I have set all events on this tack to "Force Resample."
2. I tried rotation without also enlarging (to get rid of the black edges you get when you rotate.
3. I tried setting Supersampling to 2.

Does anyone have other ideas of things I might try? This is not a huge deal because I'm using this fixed camera mostly as a cutaway to cover my mistakes on the other two cameras.

BTW, if you haven't used Vegas to edit events shot with multiple cameras, you should definitely try it. It is amazingly easy to do and you can do all sorts of tricks. One trick I invented on this shoot, was how to overcome the fidelity limitations of a cheap wireless microphone. I was using an Azden wireless (about $150 retail). It has no high end at all. I used the audio EQ to provide a little peaking around 5kHz and that helped a little. However, what helped a lot was to mix the wireless mic sound with the sound from my main camcorder. The main camcorder was at the back of the church, so it picked up echoes etc. However, the microphone on the camcorder has a reasonable frequency response. I synced up the audio tracks (easy to do), and then blended some of the camcorder audio with the wireless mic. The result was audio that had a reasonably close-mic'd sound, but with some of the fidelity added back, and enough ambience to make it sound natural.

Good as this trick is, however, next time I'm using a decent wireless mic.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 8/27/2003, 6:57 PM
Rotating will soften the image. You're forcing the pixels to be resampled into new locations and they don't line up with the new locations exactly. This means that the original pixels will be spread across several new pixels and each new pixel will contain information from several original pixels. This effectively blurs the image slightly. No way around this; it's just a physical fact. You can try adding a small amount of the sharpness filter to try correcting for it. Don't add too much or you'll start over-exaggerating edges.
taliesin wrote on 8/27/2003, 7:52 PM
What I found out: Rotating using Pan/Crop softs most, using Track Motion less, using PluginPac 3D LE almost none. But on PAL projects PluginPac 3D LE switches the field order.

Marco
johnmeyer wrote on 8/27/2003, 10:49 PM
taliesin: Hadn't though of using Satish's PluginPac. I'll try that.

Chienworks: I did what you suggestetd and it worked pretty well. Actually, I did three things:

1. Used a VirtualDub filter to eliminate almost all random pixel noise (there is almost no movement -- bride/groom at alter -- so I was pretty aggressive with these filters).
2. Used Curves to brighten the highlights. Had to be careful because of white dress, but this helped a lot on the edges.
3. Use light sharpening.

The result is better in some ways than what I started with. The lack of almost any noise combined with the slight edge enhancement due to the Curves and Sharpen filter seems to have visually offset the softening.

Thanks to both of you.
Grazie wrote on 8/28/2003, 4:40 AM
JM! This is gonna be kept - excellent solution . . .phew . . . got it back eh? Yeah, NLERs do it in post . . .

Grazie
wcoxe1 wrote on 8/30/2003, 4:25 PM
The main problem I find with rotation is the occasional break up into jaggies of moving objects. As long as everything is static, I can put up with the softness, but if someone walks across the line of the shot, they break up. The more rotation, the worse the fracturing.

Decrease Interlace flicker helps a little. Sharpen seems to make it MUCH worse. Just wish they would put Decrease Interlace Flicker in an easier spot to get to. I have to use it so often that I get tired of so many mouse movements. I would REALLY like it if it had a one key shortcut.