still picture becomes distorted

kdkcprod wrote on 5/16/2008, 9:54 AM
I imported still pictures (jpgs) into the timeline, and a couple of them look distorted or slightly pixelated. When I pull up the pictures in photoshop they're clear and have a good resolution. It's not with all the pictures only happens to a coupleof them. I only noticed it after I burned the dvd and watched it on tv. Then when I checked it in the timeline I saw it. I did take the picture out of the timeline and tried re-entering in the time line but nothing changed. Any ideas what may be causing this? Thanks for your help!
Dan

Comments

Former user wrote on 5/16/2008, 9:57 AM
What was the original resolution of the photos?

Dave T2
kdkcprod wrote on 5/16/2008, 10:15 AM
The size was 2.5mb, and I believe the resolution was 300.
jrazz wrote on 5/16/2008, 10:17 AM
I think he is asking for the dimensions. The dpi does not mean anything of importance when it comes to this.

j razz
Former user wrote on 5/16/2008, 10:19 AM
300 is probably the DPI. That does not mean anything in video. What is important is the actual pixel x pixel size.

Dave T2
kdkcprod wrote on 5/16/2008, 10:28 AM
I'll have to check that later today when I get back hm. But the other photos in the timeline which are fine were taken from the same camera and at the same time, the pictures are in sequential order. Even photos after are fine.
johnmeyer wrote on 5/16/2008, 11:22 AM
1. Do NOT use track motion to re-size photos. You MUST use Pan/Crop for each event to do this. If you use track motion, the photo is first re-sampled to project resolution and THEN any zoom you use is applied. Result? You end up with fewer pixels than your project resolution. When you use pan/crop, the zoom (and other moves) are applied to the full picture resolution. Only during render is the result of this down-sampled to project resolution.

2. Use "Best" in the Render As (custom button) dialog whenever you have still photos on the timeline.

3. Your photos must have higher resolution than the project resolution. Project resolution is 720x480 (NTSC DV) or 1440x1080 (HDV) or some similar number. Most still photos these days (taken on digital cameras) are usually at least this many pixels. However, since you used dpi (dots per inch) to describe your photos, it sounds like they were scanned (because scanners use dpi -- which is a measurement used only when printing and scanning). If so, read my old post on this subject to understand what is going on:

Scanner questions (for photographs) (very complete thread with lots of scanner/photo info)

kdkcprod wrote on 5/16/2008, 12:48 PM
John,
Thank you for all the advice. It might be suggestions #2. Where do I find the custome button again? Sorry for ignorance, I'm new to the program.

I didn't scan the images they all came from a digital camera. But I'll make sure they have a high res.
Thanks again,
Dan
johnmeyer wrote on 5/16/2008, 2:22 PM
Where do I find the custom button again?

When it is time to render your project (i.e., create the MPEG-2 video and AC-3 audio files that will form the basis for your DVD), click on

File -> Render As

In the Render As dialog, change the Save As Type setting to MainConcept MPEG-2, and change the Template to DVD Architect NTSC video stream (if you live in the US and want 4:3 output -- use a different DVD Architect template if that doesn't apply). Then, click on the Custom button in this dialog. The first tab (Project) has a Video Rendering Quality setting that is normally set to Good. When your project contains only video and that video is the same resolution as your final project (e.g., you are shooting DV at 720x480 and making a standard 720x480 DVD), then there is no reason to change this to Best (Best takes a lot longer). However, any time you change resolution (as when you are starting with still photos that are higher resolution than normal video) you want to use Best, because it has additional algorithms that do a MUCH better job knowing how to throw out the "extra" pixels in your high res pictures without making a mess of things.

While you are at it, you can go to the video tab and change the Average bitrate from the default 6,000,000 to something higher or lower, depending on the total amount of time of your entire DVD. For anything under 70 minutes, you can set this to something between 7,500,000 and 8,000,000. Don't ever go higher than 8,000,000. Leave the min and max bitrate settings alone.

For longer projects, use a Bitrate Calculator to determine what bitrate you must set in order to make the video fit. The only thing that determines how large a video file will be is the bitrate. With a lower bitrate, you can fit more video on a single DVD, but at some point the video starts to look bad (pixelates).