Trouble with Stills

Jim H wrote on 8/15/2010, 8:44 PM
I've made plenty of photo montage videos but never have I had the trouble I'm having with my last project. At 4:50 into this video I have to switch from live video to a few stills. The quality of the images are horrible. I've tried changing from large to small jpgs to pngs, deleted the movement, killed the effects in the prior event, but nothing seems to correct the degradation of the images. This last version which I posted was the best I could do and the quality of the images gets progressively better but still are not good. Prior attempts were much much worse. I even cranked up the bitrate. Any ideas on what could be causing this?

http://vimeo.com/14163478

Comments

ushere wrote on 8/15/2010, 8:57 PM
hi jim,

unfortunately can't jump to the area, and i haven't got time to sit through / download the clip.

which ver vegas?

musicvid10 wrote on 8/15/2010, 9:04 PM
Project Properties?
Still Media Properties?
Render Properties?

Can't determine much without knowing these (be thorough).
willqen wrote on 8/15/2010, 9:17 PM
Please post your specs: Video type,project properties,what type of still you settled on, etc.,

I found the video (at least on my monitor, I use an LCD TV) to be soft and it appeared as if you were using interlaced video with the "Blend" setting in your properties selected.

Should be "Interpolated".If that's the case you have too much action and it's making your video soft & fuzzy. I am just speculating.

We need your specs to give you an accurate evaluation. Especially project settings and video - still types - codecs

You were right about the first 3 or 4 stills, they don't look good, but the last two are quite a bit better looking. At least on my monitor.
Jim H wrote on 8/15/2010, 9:27 PM
The images started out as 4256x2832 jpgs but I also tried dropping them to 2000 pixels wide. I also tried converting them to 2000 wide png files.

Render settings are as recommended by Vimeo:
.mp4 h.264 MainConcept encoder
1280x720
Progressive
variable bitrate: max 5,000,000, ave 4,500.000 (I've tried higher as well)

Not sure what other data is important. I render lots of videos with stills using these settings. I thought perhaps the TV simulator static in the prior event might be causing a bit rate issue for the following scene... but I tried removing the prior event and still had the issue. Very strange. I guess I could try rendering to full 1080P M2T file to see if that has the problem.

Regarding the soft video. the source footage was shot on a few different cameras. The woods scene at the beginning is a Sony HD hard drive camera, the shot moving down the dirt road was some point and shoot SD cam mounted on the bike, the bulk of the runners over the dam was shot on a Cannon 3chip SD camera and some shots were on a Sony HD1 cam. You take what you can get when you rely on volunteers and their equipment - and you make do with a lot of "why didn't you hold that shot longer" and "what were you thinking?" sort of stuff. If the video was the main event I would shoot it myself, but I like to run instead and leave the rest to the support of my friends. The runners are just happy to see something.