I’m working at the moment on Training videos.
Some times I have to include still pictures into the movie.
The result is always very jittery. If I include a picture like say” a spreadsheet “, the result would be unreadable.
Does anyone know a way around?

Thanks in advance
Stephan

Stephan,

Let me see if I read you right.

1. You've placed a training video on a video track.

2. You've inserted a video track above the training video. You've then found a jpeg of your "spreadsheet" (which appears clear if you just double-click the jpeg, right?). You added the jpeg to the media pool and then clicked and dragged the jpeg to the video track above the training video.

3. When you play the video and the "spreadsheet" comes into view, it isn't clear.

You shouldn't have to resample. I dunno.

What are you delivering on? DVD, VHS?
What quality is the foto(s)?
Did you try deinterlacing the foto?

Are you trying to display a screenshot or something?
You might be showing too high a resolution and when it's resized for dv you simply don't have enough pixels to make it readable.
It might also be flickering when output to an interlace monitor. This could be because parts of the image (horizontal lines, parts of text, etc) are present in one field but not the other.

Try making a spreadsheet specifically for the video with thicker lines, larger font, bold text and see how that goes.

Cheers.

Thank you for the great response.

I’m really stuck. The customer provides the photos I use. They come on CD in jpeg or tiff format. Resolution is standard 72 dpi.
I clean them up in PS CS and put them into Vegas. The same with spread sheets. From excel in PS and into Vegas.

Is there anything I should do with the picture resolution? I use 72 dpi.

The finished product goes on DVD.

I really like to get best quality possible (with in reason).
So what do you suggest?

It was mention to deinterlace. What is this? How do I do this?

As Kyle stated, the problem is worse on a monitor or television.
I’m using a Sony PVN-14L and it looks bad.
The film parts are great but the stills look awful

Thank you for you help
Stephan

I wouldn't use tiff it it can be helped. I usually use jpeg. I have good luck using 150 dpi but if you don't zoom 72 dpi should be OK.

How big are the jpegs after you finish them in photoshop? A size around 1 mb would be reasonable.

There really shouldn't be a problem unless the original pictures are poor. Do the photos look OK on your monitor?

I’ve tried and deinterlaced the stills. It is a bit better.
150dpi are ok.

Now here is the thing.
If I play the dvd on my computer screen ( Flat screen TFT ) the result is great.
The result on the TV is mixed. The stills flicker inside the picture. Not all of it just some areas. The moving picture is great.

Any ideas ?

Bring the JPEGs into Photshop and SAVE AS a PNG-it will deinterlace when it saves. That should take care of it but there are just some things that won't stop jiggling no matter what so heres another way but its a pain and a little more work.

Put the stills on the timeline, move the cursor to the most stable spot switch your preview to BEST FULL and capture another still in Vegas-as a PNG then put that on the timeline and if THAT doesn't do it, then I'm not sure what you'd have to do.

HTH,
Don

Thanks Don

I never thought of PNG. I use It all day for my net stuff.

Stephan

If you right click on a still and choose properties, you can check the box for reduce interlace flicker and the radio button for force resample. This seems to help reduce some of the "flickering" inside some pictures. The attributes can be copies to the rest of the stills.

Some people suggest to add just a touch of Glausian blur (0.001) in the vertical direction to help prevent flicker.

You can also try this:

Add unsharp mask
Set amount to -0.500 (-1.000 to -0.500 will affect strength of this affect)
Set radius to 0.005
Threshold = 0.1 or so is fine.

This should blur out high contrast lines slightly. You will a small bit of resolution on vertical lines, so other methods may be better.

Thanks all for your help

Got it sorted. What a relieve. Thanks again.Your tips worked a tread.

Stephan

Stephan,

One more post please? Can you post exactly what you did to make it work for you? What finally achieved success? There were many ideas in this thread, what did you finally use?

I used Steve suggestion and set the tick box to " reduce interlaced Flicker."
The stills been fine.
I also had a spreadsheet in the presentation. This was fine in the preview but messed up after export to DVD.
Locking at the source file. The spreadsheet had fine hairlines so it was not ideal to use anyway. I didn’t have much time to try the blur option since the dead line was approaching fast.
But I give it a try.
I may set-up a test Video on the net to discuss this issue further.
If anyone what’s to join me this would be great.
I could post the file on my web server in order to share it, and we all could have a try to solve the problem.
Please let me know if there is any interest to do so.
I like to thank everyone for the quick response and sharing your knowledge.

Kind regards
Stephan Mayer

I also did a bunch of training videos which included Ken Burns-ish pan-and-scan photographs. I did a very subtle "quick" blur, and turned on subpixel rendering for those segments which had photos. Works great -- extremely smooth.

Be warned: rendering is REALLY SLOW. If a project normally renders at 5 frames per second, expect it to drop to a frame every 5 seconds on the parts with subpixel rendering.