Blurry Still Photos in PE 9 (Windows XP –SP3)

Question

When I take sharp still photos, at any resolution and in any format (tif, jpg, psd), they look sharp on a standard def. TV from a burned DVD with a Project Setting of NTSC-DV – Standard (4:3) ONLY.  Using NTSC-DV – Wide Screen or NTSC – Hard Disk, Flash Memory Camcorder Standard or Wide-Screen, the stills are slightly, but definitely, blurry.  Not a problem if I just want a DVD of stills, but a problem combining video (my camcorder is memory card, std. def., wide-screen) with stills.  The video looks nice and sharp.  Any suggestions? Thank you

Answer 1

Hi all.  I want to thank each of you for taking the time to continue to help me.  I really appreciate your efforts.
To minimize duplicate responses, I am pointing each of you to this response.  I hope I address all of your comments.
First, I am viewing the photos on a 2 NTSC TV’s.  One is a traditional CRT picture tube, the other is a rear projection from individual color CRT’s.  I will be checking them out on a state-of-the-art LED-LCD in a few days.  Simply, when I set the Project Setting to NTSC-DV Standard Definition 4:3 (meaning full screen 640x480) the stills look quite good.
The problem occurs when I use the Project Settings listed as NTSC-Hard Drive Camcorder, etc. (meaning mpg coming into PE9 like via a card based camcorder (mine is std def)) Wide-Screen 16:9 with input set by PE9 as 720x480. The still photos are recomposed with black bands on each side (either by me manually in PS9 or by PE9 automatically – no difference in image projection).  I want to use this setting since I want to combine widescreen video with 3:2 still images in the same project.  These are distinctly blurry, but not horrendously so. (I know, not a very scientific/objective description)
And, while I agree with comments made regarding down-rezing, my actual tests showed the best results from a large 3000+ x 2000+ pixel tif file than from any other size and format (I have tried many combinations).  In fact, 480 pixel (height) jpg looked to me just slightly better than 480 (height) psd, which made no sense given that psd is supposed to be lossless and jpg is lossy (although I used the least compression available).
Re. interlacing, I did freeze frame and there was a slightly better image displayed, but not as good as the full screen not frozen.  I have not yet tried what I would normally consider excessive sharpening to compensate for the still image problem.  However, this is still troubling given that full screen looked good.
I am gong to continue to test as time permits, but I wonder if there are 2 compounding problems.  First, NTSC TV has 1440 lines of scan, exactly, 3 times 480 pixels, whereas, based on my calculations, 16:9 widescreen letterbox does not yield the number of scan lines an integral multiple of 480.  Second, PE9 lists widescreen as 720x480, yet if I take a pixel height of 480, 16:9 should yield a width of 853.  While I understand CRT TV’s cut off part of the picture, that oversized width from 720 seems a bit high.  (I also know that some number of scan lines are not used in the image, but don’t remember whether these are within the 1440 or in addition to.)
Ted, you mentioned that the stills should be multiples of 640x480 up to 1920x1440.  Why not 1920x1080 which gives the 16:9 widescreen format?  I have not tried these numbers yet, but will when I get back home.
One last complication is that a project setting of NTSC-Hard Drive, full screen 4:3, was also blurry.  I would be willing to believe there is a problem with PE9’s resizing calculations or an issue with using the “right” pixel resolution for widescreen if all full screen settings looked good and only wide screen looked poor.
I know that’s a lot to digest, but better more info than less.  And, again, thank you very much for your help.