Stumped on resolution problem

[PAPatFan]

Hi all,

Hoping someone can give me ahand because this one has me baffled. Using PE4 and adding stills to a project timeline with a resolution of 3264 x 2448.

Here's the thing, the pictures look great using windows photo gallery and they event look great in the PE4 preview window (enlarged). The problem is as soon as I add them to the timeline the pictures become very pixelated as does the resulting DVD output burn.

The pictures seem of great quality in all applications up until I add them to the time line. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Frank

[George Tyndall]

Hi all,

Hoping someone can give me ahand because this one has me baffled. Using PE4 and adding stills to a project timeline with a resolution of 3264 x 2448.

Here's the thing, the pictures look great using windows photo gallery and they event look great in the PE4 preview window (enlarged). The problem is as soon as I add them to the timeline the pictures become very pixelated as does the resulting DVD output burn.

The pictures seem of great quality in all applications up until I add them to the time line. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Frank

For a SD project, Steve recommends 1000x750 stills; for HD, 2200x1235. I easily get away with over one hundred 2288x1520 (3:2) stills with the equipment in my signature, but yours are huge in comparison and that is likely your problem.

[Chuck Engels]

You can also right click on the images and uncheck the 'Scale to Framesize' option.
And have you rendered the timeline?

[PAPatFan]

Thanks for the reply George and Chuck.

I thought about the large size being the problem as this wasn't my camera and had never encountered this issue before. I thought Steve's recommendations in reducing resolution were to help in the rendering process/time and had no real effect on the actual quality of the output. I always like to keep the highest original resolution to allow for deep zooms should the project require it.

Chuck, I had rendered the timeline as I thought that might be the issue as well.

I will try and lower the original source file resolutions. If that does help I am curious as to why PE4 does such a poor job at down converting given that it is a relatively simple operation/algorithm.

I will post the results.

Frank

[PAPatFan]

No luck.

The quality is the same - really poor on both the timeline and the output with the lowered resoultions using Photoshop Elements batch process.

I am still puzzled though, becuase the originals as well as the PE4 preview windows look great. Really strange.

Any other thoughts? Thanks in advance for the help.

Frank

[Chuck Engels]

Have you right clicked on the images and made sure the 'Scale To Framesize' is not selected?
Also, what format are the images?

[PAPatFan]

Chuck,

Thanks for the help. Sorry for the delay but I did some testing. I output the project to DVD and it looks fine, every bit as good as all my other projects.

The probelm seems to be in the preview and export (even though I have rendered it and there are not a lot of effects where my system can generally keep up). Even more puzzling is the DVI export has the quality issue as well even though the DVD looks fine as mentioned above.

More info:
The images are standard .jpg as far as I can tell. Unclicking the 'Scale To Framesize' doesn't appear to make any difference. The image gets larger and then I resize it to fit the frame and it still looks pretty bad when compared to viewing the pictures in other apps. (like PS Elements).

Could I have possibly messed up some settings interal to PE4?


Frank

[Chuck Engels]

Have you changed the resolution on your monitor or changed the setting for the preview in Premiere Elements?
The preview window has options of Fit, 100%, 50%, ... it is best on Fit. If that setting is too high you will get strange results like you are seeing. Also, if your monitor resolution is too high or too low, based on the project setting, you may notice this type of behavior also.