resolution of slideshow...
 

Ever since I started using Sony Screenblast 3.0 and now Vegas Movie Studio 4.0 the resolution of my pictures in preview, as an .avi, vcd or even when I save it to DVD is not the best of quality. I work a long time importing pics, editing music and squeezing in transitions and it is just disappointing ending up with a bad result. So my question is a what am I doing wrong? I am using the default settings. Is there a trick to getting crisp pics in my slideshow?

I know my question is very general, but all I want to do is import pics on the timeline, add some text, credits, transitions and music.

thanks to anyone that can help.

scott

I guess my first question would be what are you using to capture your images with? Hardware for scanning and software.

Also check what dpi are you importing them in at. 72 dpi is not the best, I would recomend at leat 150 dpi and up. Most designers I know go with at leat 300, yet that I think should be the max you should use.

Are you getting a morie effect? (lots of artifacting and sometimes ghost type tracking). I usually import with Photoshop CS and tweak if need be. Also there are several good pan and zoom scripts that will cut this effect out for you, although I think they only work with the full version of Vegas.

What are your render settings? Video set to highest setting?

Last question, how do the images look in just a normal viewer before you bring them into edit? Are they junk to begin with, mabye it is a scanning issue.

My images are coming from my compact flash card (Nikon D70) copied to my hard drive. then I capture them into vegas.

The effect I am getting is what looks like when you zoom in on a picture way past its allowed resolution (sorry I don't know the proper wording).

I will have to check on the render settings.

Last answer, my images look fine with a normal viewer.

I don't have Movie Studio but in Vegas you will get what you describe if you zoom using Track Motion. You will get the full resolution of the image if you use Pan/Crop. I don't know what's available in Movie Studio but if it has Pan/Crop, try it instead.

One thing to remember is that NTSC video is 720x480 resolution (that’s 0.3 megapixel) The Nikon D70 is 6 megapixel camera (3,008 x 2,000 pixels)! The images from that camera are way, way, way too large to drop on ANY video editor timeline. Even if you are panning and zooming into the images, all you need is twice the output resolution 1440x960 (unless you are doing extreme zooming).

I would convert the images to 1440x960 with Photoshop, or Paint Shop Pro, or any other quality image editor, before you use them in Vegas Movie Studio and I think you’ll see the output improve.

~jr

Thank you both I will try your suggestions hopefully with better improvements.

scott

Scott, You will not believe the amount of experience with Vegas the last two respondents have; unbelievable sometimes the quality of help available here!

Mr. Troxel and/or Mr. Rofrano, would the Vegas "Resample" capability add anything to a still photo that has been zoomed or pan&scanned? I know it is primarily for use in events that have been stretched, but wouldn't it do the same thing for zoomed photos?

Resample should only come into play when the speed of the event is changed. It should not affect panning or scanning.

Resampling video is just like resampling audio. It only comes into play when the sample rate changes. For video this means when the frame rate changes by slowing it down or speeding it up from its original rate. Like Edward said, it should not affect Pan/Zoom which is motion within a frame.

~jr