Hi David. I have edited, rendered and burnt to DVD. When I play it back on my TV, the still shots aren't great. The problem is, I have used a lot of images of people and in many of them, faces are a bit distorted. If they were landscape images, I wouldn't have a problem but because they are wedding guests you tend to pay more attention and obviously focus on people's faces. I have a hi-def tv but my dvd player isn't great and does not have upscaling. Before I even burnt the film to DVD I previewed it in DVD Architect Studio 4.5 and I could see there was an issue with the quality of the stills. The images I am using are JPEGs 4368 x 2912 and are 2.92MB. Any ideas?

A couple of points...
The resolution of the original pictures automatically is "dumbed down" to NTSC or PAL standards. A measly 720x480 for NTSC DVDs. So your pictures will not look as sharp as what you see on the computer screen. Did you try playing back the .mpg file in Windows Media Player?

What settings did you use for rendering (file type etc...)- interlaced or progressive?

In addition to Markk655's points....

I have a couple new questions. You mentioned that your video has many still photos in it. Does it also have any video footage in it (did you shoot anything with a camcorder in addition to the still photos shot with your digital SLR)? If so, how is the quality of that part of your final video? (I'm trying to determine whether everything in your final video has the same problem, or just certain parts.)

Also, you mentioned that your still photos, in your video, are distorted. By distortion, do you mean that the shapes of things are not right? For example, do people look wider or narrower than they really are? Or did you mean something else?

You mentioned that when you previewed your video in DVD Architect Studio there was an issue with the quality. What did/do you observe when you preview your video in Vegas Movie Studio? To get the best idea of what your finished video will look like while you are still in Vegas editing it, set your preview window (probably in the upper right of your screen) to display using Best (Full), like this:
http://s961.photobucket.com/albums/ae98/david_f_knight/?action=view&current=Vegas_BestFull.png
You may have to resize the preview window to see the entire image, but this should give you a good idea of the quality Vegas is working with before you render your video, though it won't tell us anything about what happens due to the set of rendering options used.

What are the project properties you used in Vegas? The project properties are found by clicking Project in the menu bar in the upper left corner of the window, then clicking Properties... from the menu that drops down. That should have caused a dialog window to pop up; click on the Video tab (near the top) and tell us what is there for template, field order, pixel aspect ratio, full-resolution rendering quality, and deinterlace method.

The next question is how did you render your video? What were the steps/choices you made?

The final questions: the aspect ratio (shape of the rectangle) of your still photos is 1.5 to 1, but your TV has a different aspect ratio (if you are displaying your video in full screen mode). Have you cropped your photos in Vegas Movie Studio to change their aspect ratio? Are there black bars either above and below, or to the left and right, of your photos in the Vegas preview window? When you play your DVD on your TV, is the video filling the entire screen or are there black bars either above and below, or on the left and right?

I know this is a lot of questions. Hopefully, the answers will really narrow things down.

Hi David

Yes, the film is mainly video footage but with a couple of montages done with still shots. The quality of the video footage is fine.

Distorted is probably the wrong choice of word. I have mainted the aspect ration of the images so they are not stretched or squashed. The detail is lost when viewed on TV, like when you try to enlarge a low res image. It is most noticeable on people's faces but also on things like the radiator grill on the wedding car. Perhaps my expectations were too high and I didn't realise that the images would be 'dumbed down' as per your last entry.

Thanks for the tip about the preview window. I had it set to 'best Auto' which I found so frustrating as the window was tiny. I assumed 'best auto' was the biggest setting but I have just changed it to 'Best Full' and it is so much better.

Settings are...
Template: DV (720x576, 25.000 fps)
Field order: lower field first
Pixel aspect ratio: 1.0926 (PAL DV)
Full-resolution rendering quality: Good
deinterlace method: blend fields

I can't remember exactly which steps I followed to render but I think I selected 'Make Movie' - 'Burn it to a DVD...' - 'DVD' .

I selected 'use widescreen DVD format' and 'save project markers in media file'

Once it had redndered I sent it to 'DVD Architect Studio'

Look forward to hearing from you soon and thanks for your efforts thus far.

It sounds like you are letting Vegas resize your images. Don't. It is not a photo program and it is not the best at resizing images. The best way to go is to resize them using a photo program like Photoshop or the free Irfanview. If you are not zooming or moving the images, make them as close to the final video resolution as you can. If you are zooming, normally making them twice the final resolution works well.

Dave T2

thanks Dave, I'll give it a try.

Also, make sure fill resolution render quality is set to "best".

First, since only certain parts of your video have problems, that lets us rule out everything but Vegas as the cause. If it was something downstream from Vegas then everything in your video would exhibit the same problems.

As DaveT2 wrote, Vegas doesn't use the highest quality algorithm to resize images. However, it does provide a choice of two different algorithms for doing so. When the Project Properties Full-resolution rendering quality is set to "Good," as it is set it in your project (that's the default setting), Vegas uses the lower quality (but faster) resizing algorithm. You need to change the Full-resolution rendering quality to "Best" to make Vegas use the better of the two resizing algorithms it provides.

Some while ago, I made a video with Vegas consisting of many 3 megapixel still photos. Initially, I did as DaveT2 suggested, using a photo editing program to resize my photos so I would get the highest quality possible. But, that quickly proved to be far too tedious and restrictive, so I let Vegas do all the resizing and the quality I obtained was perfectly acceptable. So, you probably shouldn't have to resize your photos outside Vegas, but do go ahead and experiment both ways if you like. (Your photos are nearly 13 megapixels in size, which is huge. I haven't used such large photos in Vegas so I can't comment specifically about them, though, so maybe you will need to use DaveT2's suggestion for good results.)

Because you have such high-resolution photos and you are producing interlaced video output, I think you probably also need to set the "Reduce interlace flicker" flag on your photos. To do that, right click on a photo in your Vegas timeline. Click Properties... on the menu that pops up. Click the Video Event tab of the window that pops up. Click the box next to "Reduce interlace flicker" so the check mark is showing, to set that flag. You will need to do this for each photo in your video.

As Markk655 wrote earlier, you do need to have proper expectations. DVDs have much lower resolution than your photos from your digital camera. However, that does not mean that the quality should be poor on your DVD. You should expect the sharpness of your photos, on your DVD video, to have the same quality as the very best DVD you have ever seen played on your DVD player and TV (assuming your photos are sharp, themselves). Vegas is perfectly capable of producing a video of photos with that level of quality.

Let us know how it goes.

Thanks everybody, I really appreciate your help. I've already experimented with resizing images as DAVE T2 suggested and it made a big difference, for the better. It will be a tedious task resizing them all and substituting them in my project so I will try out your other suggestions too and see how I get on. Thanks!