How to export a short film made with still images without loosing quality?

Question

Hi,
I have been trying everything to make a short film, which is made with still images, to look decent once exported however it is a real challenge. Here are the steps I have undertaken:
1- I prepare the photographs and give them the aspect ration of 720p and whatever height as I try not to crop them too much at 300dpi. They look great in photoshop or capture one. I then save them as.tiff. All the images are RGB.
2- I start a new project in premiere pro cs4 and make it DV Pal 25fps.
3-I import the images and place them on the timeline. If they are a bit too big I rescale them. The images seem to look ok on the timeline although I seem to have lost the deepness of the colours.
4-I render the work area
5-I export it as quicktime, dv pal, quality 100.
My dilemna is that although exporting with quicktime, dv pal, quality 100 seems to give me the best quality compared to using quicktime animation, mpeg2, cinemak, avi..., the images are still not as sharp as in Photoshop and the colours look a lot paler and washed out. Also, when looking close to the screens you can see tiny squares on the images although from distance it's not too bad. When I view it from the exported file using Nero it's not too bad although definitely not perfect, as soon as I try to make a DVD and import it in Adobe Encore CS4 or send it by Dynamic Link, the quality looks horrible with images that look soft if not blurred and completely washed out.
I have now tried about t bu15 versions to see what 's the best I still have not reached the optimum quality and since these will be shown on big tvs or projected onto screens I need to nail it.
Would anybody have any advice please please please?
Many Thanks

Answer 1

My overall advice is to do that kind of work in an application that is designed for that.  Give Photodex Proshow Producer trial a crack at it.  I do a lot of work with stills, and that IMO PSP is the best approach.  If you are intermixing the odd still, Pr may get you by.  If you plan on doing a lot of that, try proshow, where the workflow and extensive features are designed for making high quality videos from stills that can be output to a wide number of formats and destinations, including color management with many of them( including avi).  And, no need to resize.  I know this won't solve your present problem.
Obviously, your attempt in Pr has not worked out as you had hoped. Maybe a bit more info would help. How are you rescaling them in Pr? That might well account for some quality loss. What is the original format and size of the images? What color management are you using in PS? Are you using any color correction or effects in Pr? Is your project interlaced or progressive?
From your description,  you are not even getting the quality you should be getting from Pr IMO, though as Jim says, it is video and it will never look as pristine as it does in PS, but it still seems to me that something you are doing has degraded the work more than normally would be expected.