Small still image

tvgirl wrote on 8/6/2006, 3:51 PM
I am working with some still images in pan and crop. I have some nice high resolution photos, but a few are small -- i.e. 860 x 562. I can't do any animation such as zoom in on the shot since the image does not fill up the screen. I don't have anything like Photoshop to resize it or do other effects and was wondering if anybody knew of a way to make this work with animation.

Thanks.

Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 8/6/2006, 4:00 PM
You could rotate, a little or a lot.

Add a background that fits in, either a simple gray for example or a blurred desaturated version of the image itself, or some part of it that fits.

Many more possibilities...
tvgirl wrote on 8/6/2006, 4:03 PM
Thanks.
Coursedesign wrote on 8/6/2006, 4:11 PM
Just to clarify the last part: you can blow up the image in Vegas and use the result as a large background if it is de-emphasized with for example reduced saturation, a color curves tweak, etc.
Serena wrote on 8/6/2006, 5:01 PM
First thing is to set format matching output. Click pan/crop as you did previously, right click and select "match output format". This will make the image fill the screen, and you can pan it to get the bit you want on screen. Otherwise enlarging is just cropping.
jrazz wrote on 8/6/2006, 5:05 PM
...how do I blow up the image, create a background and reduce saturation? I'm lost in the manual and a bit on deadline.

Blow up the image- use pan and crop or track motion.

Create a background- go into paint and open a 720x480 image (do a frame grab from Vegas and open that) and then paste your image over top and stretch it or do what you want and then reimport it back into Vegas. (Also, you can download GIMP for free and it is an image editing program that is open source).

Reduce Saturation- Click on the Video FX tab at the bottom of your Vegas screen and choose Saturation Adjust or any effect that you like and add and tweak as you want it to be.

j razz
tvgirl wrote on 8/6/2006, 5:45 PM
On size -- pan and crop is where I'm having trouble. The image won't fit the screen. I'm having the same trouble even with my high resolution photos. No matter what I do, the photos never fit.
jrazz wrote on 8/6/2006, 5:51 PM
Under Pan/Crop on the left hand side, make sure you have under "Source", under "Stretch to fill Frame" with Yes next to it.

j razz
Serena wrote on 8/6/2006, 6:06 PM
jrazz -- no, that's not the best way to do it because you can only fill the frame if you accept a change in aspect ratio. The correct way is as I said above: right click, match output format, pan to required portion of image (and crop if wanted).
jrazz wrote on 8/6/2006, 6:10 PM
Noted. Your way is better.

j razz
tvgirl wrote on 8/6/2006, 6:15 PM
Hey, thanks to both of you. The match output thing helps. (Still limited in what I can do with animation in some of the images, but it makes a difference.)
Chienworks wrote on 8/6/2006, 6:25 PM
"I don't have anything like Photoshop to resize it"

Please note that this would make no difference. You'd just end up with a larger version of 860x562 and it would look the same or even blurrier and worse on the screen. You wouldn't gain anything by resizing it larger.

And yes, you do have a program to resize with if you need to ... it's called Vegas. You could probably zoom in to 2x before the image started getting noticeably horrid, especially if playback is on a TV screen.
Serena wrote on 8/6/2006, 8:38 PM
One hesitates to ask whether you have the Vegas manual, but then I'm very aware that it isn't always a lot of help. The thing that matters is number of pixels in your image. Basically DV NTSC is 720 x 480 pixels (or 708 x 480 -- see recent discussion) and if your still is larger than that then you'll get as good a definition as DV will give. Unfortunately DV doesn't do well when you zoom in on the image for even a small enlargement knocks resolution down quite noticeably. Using your computer screen as your monitor is quite satisfactory at this stage of your learning. You have to render out to NTSC video stream, use "good" for DV. Are you using DVDA or other to burn to DVD? Or where are you going with your output?
Chienworks wrote on 8/6/2006, 8:51 PM
1 - Do your images show a "combing" effect when you play back your video? In other words, you you see thin, one-pixel horizontal lines around the edges when there is movement? This is because video for televisions is interlaced but your computer screen plays back a non-interlaced image. Lots of discussion on that already in this forum if you do a search for "interlaced".

2 - When rendering, click the Custom button. The first panel that comes up is the Project tab. There are settings for rendering quality there. Normally "Good" is perfectly fine for video. However, when having Vegas resize photos using "Best" can smooth things out some.

If you are rendering to DV .avi then you'll be using the SONY DV codec by default. This is one of the best ones available and it's better than the Panasonic codec.

3 - DPI is utterly meaningless in video. Ignore it completely. You'll only confuse yourself unnecessarily if you try to consider it when doing video.
tvgirl wrote on 8/6/2006, 9:39 PM
Thanks.

Yeah, I'm seeing some distortion.

As for rendering, do I need some kind of filter since I have the images in the project? I did this once before in Avid, and there were about six filters one could choose from. Some of the images were quite pixelated there, too.

When I try to render, only a few seconds of the actual project ends up on my hard drive.

I do have the manual, but I've been lost in it for hours. I'm not very technical -- yet -- and It helps to have a real person explain things from time to time.

jrazz wrote on 8/6/2006, 10:02 PM
only a portion of the footage ends up on the hard drive

Make sure you uncheck "render loop region only" when you click on "render as" under "file".

j razz
tvgirl wrote on 8/6/2006, 10:54 PM
Got it.