Poor Quality Stills

Forgive this old favourite. I've gone through lots of past threads and still would like some help please.
I am making a 04'00" film in FCP from jpeg stills alone. Some are in boxes, other have motion effects, all have lots of layers of text / text boxes on them. In short it's a real fiddle and render nightmare compared to good old DV!
Anyway, a couple of questions. My final delivery format is DVD to play on a flatscreen LCD or Plasma screen, so should I be proofing the quality of the image on my cathoid ray tube monitor or on the LCD monitor of my iMac? Does the final TV platform make a difference to workflow?
So far, following back thread advice, I have changed the Field Dominance button to None and dropped the Whites level to 90% which made the image on the LCD timeline fantastic (it had been aliasing massively before) but it still aliases on my CRT.
Also, when I export the rendered film as a Current Settings QT and then encode via Compressor and put it into DVD Studio Pro, the picture quality again looks fantastic on DVD Studio Pro Simulate but once encoded onto the final DVD, the shots with movement added are very poor, with lots of aliasing.
Forgive the long intro, but has anyone got a workflow I could try to reliably turn moving jpegs (big ones c12Megapixels) of houses (ie lots of straight lines which tend to flicker when moving) into a DVD to be played on LCD or Plasma in which the straight lines look straight and there is no aliasing or flicker on the pan /scans?
Thank you in advance.
Hamish
iMac 2Ghz intelduo FCP 5.5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Over sizing your images beyond what you will use does nothing good and creates issues with how FCP dithers/downscales them.
As a format - get rid of JPEGs. It is a lossy format created to transmit crappy images over the internet on web pages. Use TIFF or PSD which are lossless formats.
The flickering is an artifact of the interlaced nature of video. It is a result of very thin (often horizontal) elements that exist on one scanline as is common in text or titling. This can also be the case in scanned images with a great deal of detail in high contrast. (Note: It does no good to import images hugely larger than the pixel dimensions of the video sequence. All it does is force FCP to work harder at interpolation.)
As the alternate fields play, the flashing element is essentially being turned on/off. The basic strategy is to get the element to exist over two scanlines so it is refreshed every time the field plays or to reduce the amount of contrast so the difference between ON and OFF is not noticeable.
Things to try (In increasing order of image degradation)
- (in FCP) field order>none
- (in FCP or Photoshop) reduce whites by 10% - reduces overly bright areas
- (in FCP) flicker filter - minimum
- (in Photoshop) motion blur>vertical> .2 - .5 pixels - blurs vertically only
- (In FCP or Photoshop) Gaussian blur> .2 - .5 pixels -blurs both horizontally as well as vertically
- (in FCP or Photoshop) deinterlace - throws away half the image and is generally not appropriate on scanned images
Remember: Unless you are viewing your work in the appropriate external NTSC/PAL monitor, you are playing blind. The computer monitor only shows you a proxy image.
good luck.
x

Similar Messages

Poor quality still frames

Does anyone know why still frames are such poor quality?
I'm constructing a movie using stills, and if a Ken Burns effect is used, the picture changing to the next photo as soon as the effect finishes can be a little jarring on the eye.
To counteract this, I've been adding a still frame of 1-2 seconds either side of the main Ken Burns adjusted photo to act as a 'cushion' (like you can in Photo to Movie). You can see the difference in quaity in iMovie, so it does of course remain when you have exported to Quicktime.
Is there a better method of doing this than still frames? I notice that the overlap transition helps by hanging on to the end of the previous frame, but it's not ideal.
Any suggestions?
Quicksilver G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6) Programmes in regular use are Freehand, Photoshop, Freeway, Keynote, iMovie, iDV

Karl, I swear you live inside everyone's browser, with a manual the like of which the rest of us have never seen!
As usual, among the quickest to answer on these forums, and absolutely correct.
It worked like a dream - another major headache removed. Many thanks indeed.

Poor Quality Stills on DVD

Forgive this old favourite. I've gone through lots of past threads and still would like some help please. I've also posted the same question on the FCP forum as I am not sure in which application the solution lies.
I am making a 04'00" film in FCP from jpeg stills alone. Some are in boxes, other have motion effects, all have lots of layers of text / text boxes on them. In short it's a real fiddle and render nightmare compared to good old DV!
Anyway, a couple of questions. My final delivery format is DVD to play on a flatscreen LCD or Plasma screen, so should I be proofing the quality of the image on my cathoid ray tube monitor or on the LCD monitor of my iMac? Does the final TV platform make a difference to workflow?
So far, following back thread advice, I have changed the Field Dominance button to None and dropped the Whites level to 90% which made the image on the LCD timeline fantastic (it had been aliasing massively before) but it still aliases on my CRT.
Also, when I export the rendered film as a Current Settings QT and then encode via Compressor and put it into DVD Studio Pro, the picture quality again looks fantastic on DVD Studio Pro Simulate but once encoded onto the final DVD, the shots with movement added are very poor, with lots of aliasing.
Forgive the long intro, but has anyone got a workflow I could try to reliably turn moving jpegs (big ones c12Megapixels) of houses (ie lots of straight lines which tend to flicker when moving) into a DVD to be played on LCD or Plasma in which the straight lines look straight and there is no aliasing or flicker on the pan /scans?
Thank you in advance.
Hamish
iMac 2Ghz intelduo FCP 5.5

Well, its obviously best to test your output on a source closet to your final display medium. You won't see the flickering of the thin lines on your monitor for several technical reasons, notwithstanding the fact hat simulator is not overly accurate (they even say that in the manual). Your monitor is not a substitute for how an image will look on an NTSC monitor, regardless of if its plasma, lcd, etc. Thin lines are usually killers, and taking time to thicken them in photoshop may not be your cup of tea. Jpegs are lesser quality picture format to begin with, but if thats the only way you have them, so be it. You usually run into a similar flicker problem when screen capturing websites to put on DVD. Webdesigners like to use thin, straight lines which flicker like crazy. Darkening and thickening can help, but again I don't know how much of a rush you are in.

Poor quality "still" photo

I'm using Premiere Elements 12. When I'm choose "Tools", "Movie Menu", Then choose from a "Menu Theme", I am given the option of inserting a still photo. However, the quality of the photo in my final product is reproduced with VERY POOR resolution. Is there a solution to this problem? Does Premiere Elements 13 correct this problem?
Joe Nunes
Turlock,CA

britt142012
Thanks for the follow up.
Have we ruled out whether or not the issue exists with and without the antivirus and firewall(s) disabled?
Back to the now....
When did you get the Error 16 - after naming just the SLStore Folder to SLStoreOLD? Or did you do the renaming of both the SLCache as well as SLStore Folders to get the Error 16? You should be able to convert back to the original by deleting the newly created SLStore or SLCache Folders and removing OLD from the renamed ones. Is Error 16 gone then?
After that, try just the renaming of the SLStore Folder again.
Before we give up on renaming SLStore and SLCache Folders, check the permissions for each so that they are set for write/read for Everyone.
Then the classical generic ways....
1. Delete the Adobe Premiere Elements Prefs file and, if that does not work, delete the whole 12.0 Folder in which the Adobe Premiere Elements Prefs file exists.
Local Disk C
Users
Owner
AppData
Roaming
Adobe
Premiere Elements
12.0
and in the 12.0 Folder is the Adobe Premiere Elements Prefs file that you delete. If that does not work, then you delete the whole 12.0 Folder in which the Adobe Premiere Elements Prefs file exists. Be sure to be working with Folder Option Show Hidden Files, Folders, and Drives active so that you can see the complete path cited.
2. If that does not work....
a. uninstall the usual Control Panel way
b. do a free ccleaner run through (regular clearner and registry cleaner parts) to get rid of any leftovers from incomplete uninstalls reinstalls
CCleaner - PC Optimization and Cleaning - Free Download
c. reinstall with antivirus and firewall(s) disabled.
We will be watching for the new developments.
Thank you.
ATR

NEED HELP! Poor quality stills and text

I'm finishing up a corporate video with lots of still pictures and text. Unfortunately, It's so bad I can't show it to the customer. As always, the video footage looks great but the still photos and the text looks very, very bad when played on a DVD. I compressed the MOV file with Compressor using the Apple-Best Quality DVD settings. I'm beginning to think stills and text will always look bad on TV. Is there a way to improve this? Is Compressor the best tool to compress my file?

Getting still images to look good at DV resolution and color depth can be a struggle.
A couple of tips.
1.Do not use images with more pixels than you absolutely need. If you are in the US (NTSC) and the images don't have any pan/zoom moves, size them to 720x480 (DV pixel ratio) in Photoshop before importing them into FCP. FCP is not a very elegant scaler.
2. Make sure the contrast in the images is under control. Keep the whites below 90.
3. It the images have a lot of high contract detail (think leaves in bright sunlight), sometimes a slight vertical gaussian blur of .3-.5 pixels can help.
4. If the total running time of the material is under 60 minutes, use a Constant Bit Rate of 6.5 or so in the Compressor settings.
If all of these don't really do it for you, and if the material is all stills, you might try to do the slide show in Fotomagico or Motion then output it as a video file for import into FCP.
Good luck,
x

HELP! Video in canvas is tiny and poor quality

Help me! Im about to break something out of frustration and lack of knowledge.
I started a project in FCP . Im not exactly the most knowledgeable when it comes to final cut so I didnt bother to change any of the sequence setting etc. I had a group of files, shot on a 5D mkII, which I had converted to ProRes. Looking at the files themselves in Finder, the quality was perfect. I imported the prores files into final cut and began editing my video. The files were good quality in the viewer but awful quality in the canvas. I stupidly soldiered on, thinking it was because it was just a preview. However, when i came to export it, the final result was equally as bad as in the canvas.
I tried to find out what was wrong by looking around online and found I should have adjusted the sequence settings. I changed them to 1280x1080. However, now the video is still terrible quality and also much smaller in the canvas. Strangely enough, now that I have changed the sequence settings, everytime I drag one of the prores files onto my timeline, it appears full size and good quality on the canvas. All the stuff before it on the timeline is small and poor quality still. also, dragging prores files onto the timeline, it is now needing to render them before they will play.
Is there someway I can get everything I have edited up to full quality? Or am I going to have to start again?
Im not great at explaining myself i know. Any help would be massively appreciated

If this helps, this is a screenshot. You can see the clip in the viewer is full size but the canvas is showing a smaller, poorer quality clip.

Poor quality of still frames

Hello, I have mpeg4 films from which I hope to extract some good quality still photos. Although I am able to create still frames and save them as jpegs the stills are a poorer quality than the film. How can I make the still frame quality as good as the film? Grateful for any help.

Hi Karsten,
Many thanks for your reply. The resolution (dimension?) of one of the mp4 videos is 1280 x 720. I have done several tests and have another at 724 x 576.
You say "screen res is much higher than video res". I'm expecting to get a still photo which is as good in quality as the full screen version - is this not possible? Taking a closer look at the video I now see it's not great quality. With this in mind, if I single out an individual frame - pixelation shows. I suppose when playing the video this pixelation is blurred by movement and the fps. Also I should mention this video has been through a video converter before I could use it in iMovies and the resulting mp4s are nearly the same quality as the original. Thanks for helping a iMovie novice!

Pics still poor quality in iMovie HD

Hi, Trying to help a photographer to make a still image slideshow in iMovie 4, I discovered the images were of such poor quality as to be unuseable. I upgraded to iLife thinking that iMovie HD might use better quality. It doesn't appear so. The photographer doesn't think the Ken Burns effect does anything to improve the visual degradation of his images. Is this simply the case, or is there any way around it?

iMovie doesn't preview well, you really need to go all the way through the process of creating what appears to be a crap DVD to discover that.
To make sure you're not misunderstanding...
The problem isn't just that iMovie HD doesn't display the image as well as it might. The poor-quality image on the DVD is a real problem, which occurs when the slideshow is handled in a way that allows iMovie to add "jaggies" to the image on the way out the door to iDVD. Search for "jaggies".
Here's one:
Karl Petersen, "iMovie- Pictures become blurry after import" #32, 11:37am Apr 25, 2005 CDT
Done correctly, you should get excellent results.
Karl

Extreme poor quality in full screen preview and exported movie

I have spend evenings and evenings to create the content of a project.
After dealing with error -108 and extreme poor quality in full screen preview and in exported movies (extreme stuttering) I decided to install my iMac new again.
The error -108 disappeared, but the extreme stuttering still remained in full screen preview and in exported movies.
If I make the preview screen in the iMovie browser as big as possible there is nothing to see of any stuttering.
Now I am getting pretty annoyed and have no clue what to do anymore (how to solve this problem) .....
Anyone any suggestion ?
The orginal video was recorded with a Panasonic HD camcorder.
I do have a mid 2011 iMac with 16GB ram and 256GB SSD and 1TB HD with a complete clean installation
of OS X Lion and iLife. This configuration should be enough to create a proper movie :-(

mantralightroom wrote:
why is it this option disabled? do the generate monitor sized previews increase a lot the cache a lot!
Potentially, yes. The standard Preview is 1024 pixels, longest size. Some people (like Omke) have displays 2560 pixels longest side, potentially increasing file size by over 500%.

DVD poor quality

I just created a DVD but the video quality is too poor to use. I get 'ghosting' or flicker with motion, which is 99% of the content.
A client gave me 14 home-made DVDs containing video of high school basketball games and asked me to create a highlight video. I edited the VOB files in Premiere CS4 (4.1.0) to pull highlights and compile them into a single highlight DVD.
I exported the video to Adobe Media Encoder (4.0.0.374) to create a F4V file to be used on websites. I used the standard preset. The quality of the F4V video is good.
I then used Adobe Dynamic Link to export to Encore CS4 (4.0.0.258). I burned a DVD and the result was a DVD with poor quality.
There is a brief clip in the highlight video that I recorded myself of the athlete providing a short introduction of himself. That clip and the still titles I made look good on the DVD, but the highlight clips from the client's DVDs are very poor.
From some of the discussions I've already read in this forum, I assume I need to change a field option or the Anti-flicker value under Effect Controls or something similar, but haven't figured out what yet. Also, when I make changes to values, do I have to burn a DVD to see the result of the change or is there a better way to preview?
Thanks for your help!
Dan

A client gave me 14 home-made DVDs containing video of high school basketball games and asked me to create a highlight video. I edited the VOB files in Premiere CS4 (4.1.0) to pull highlights and compile them into a single highlight DVD.
It is very likely that the double MPEG-2 encoding is degrading the material too much. Is it possible to get back to the client's original tapes? That would save one MPEG-2 compression. Otherwise, what you have is probably as good as it will get.
Good luck,
Hunt

Poor quality text in PDF

I am using Acrobat pro X to produce an online brochure. I started producing the brochure in Corel draw using A4 paper size in landscape mode. When I created the PDF by the print command the general quality was very poor, both graphics and text. I experimented with various settings increasing the quality settings for images but it didn't seem to have any significant effect. I then tried placing some of the elements in a Word document and creating a PDF from this document, and again I found that the results were unsatisfactory, a bit better than from Corel but not very good. I have converted many Word documents to PDF in the past without problems. I started a new Word document and this time copied a template for a landscape brochure from Microsoft. This was already populated with some Text-and-Graphics. When I created a PDF from this it was quite good. It was not clear to me what the difference between my basic word document and this new one was. I went through the documents’ settings with a fine tooth comb and the only one I could find was different was the paper size and orientation. I then copied some of my graphics and text to the word brochure document, and this to converted nicely to PDF. I took a note of what appeared to be a somewhat unusual paper size and copied this to the Corel document. When I created a PDF it was now significantly better all the paper size was wrong. I went back from scratch with both the word document and the Corel draw document (those which produce bad PDF files) and carefully made sure that the paper size and orientation in the document matched the PDF settings. But the result was still poor in this case. It is not clear to me what is causing the problem although it does seem to be mainly text, the graphics are often okay. The text however is extremely patchy looking and very poor quality.
In the Acrobat settings I started with "high quality print" default setting and edited this. When I selected the fonts section there were no fonts selected for embedding. This surprised me as I would have thought high-quality print would automatically embedded all fonts. I selected the fonts in my document and embedded them and saved the settings, but when I went out of this dialogue box and straight back in it showed up with no embedded fonts. What's happening here? Is it for getting about my font selection? Or does this dialogue box when you re-enter it not reflect the current settings? Furthermore when I completed my modifications to the "high-quality print" default settings it asked me to save them as a new job options file which I did, but when I go to print a second time it never gives me the option of selecting these saved settings.
I have tried almost every permutation and combination of settings page sizes et cetera and I now tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to simply get a reasonable quality PDF file. Any assistance on these matters would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Michael
I am using Corel V 13 and Windows 7. The issue is not confined to Corel as I am also getting poor results often with Word as described. I also need to know about the font embedding as described above. Is it the case that if the fonts are embedded this
guarantees they fonts display sharply in the PDF? i.e. do the scatty fonts in the PDF prove I am not getting embedded fonts?
Corel does have a printer driver compatibility setting where you can set the target printer, but the PDF virtual printer is not available in the list.
Thanks
Murray

Saving a Project In Pages, Images Poor Quality in PDF

I have just purchased IWork 09, i am new to pages and so far find the software very handy and easy to use to make very attractive documents.
i have one dilemma though.
i save a (e.g.) poster in pages, but when i go to open it in PDF Preview, the images that i have inputted into the document are distorted or of a poor quality, when i open them in pages they are fine?.... also when i go 2 open the saved document in Adobe Reader 9, it wont open? i tried taking frames and shadows etc out just in case they are not supported, like in MS Word but still no luck. i have to send flyers for advertizment via e-mail to clients who are more than likely using Windows Xp or Vista.
if some one could help with
1. Getting my images to stay good quality
2. opening it in adobe 9
it would be very much appreciated
jimbest

You can not see which programs have been involved in each compression, but as far as I know, at least some programs store information about both themselves (last edited by) and the compression level in the exif/iptc data.
The right way to work is to get as much data as possible off the colour capture in high bit and do the exposure correction getting into a normalised colour space either still in high bit or in scaled down 8 bit to save space.
The pixels should be left alone from this phase and out. It is not necessary to change a single source pixel either in matching to the display, the printer or the press. All of this is done on the fly in memory and not be changing the pixels in the disk-based image document.
As interchange file format for corrected colour captures stored in the normalised colour space, either use a linearised RGB space or high-bit CIELab. The file format should be lossless TIFF and not lossy JPEG (the way JPEG works internally is lossy by definition).
Live Picture and Apple Aperture are alike in the way they work. Rather than taking the pixels into memory for correction, which is they way Photoshop worked, they construct a colour managed proxy for manipulation and then provide for a rendering that is non-destructive.
Live Picture required ColorSync 2 and Apple Aperture is unable to work without colour management for the same set of reasons. Apple Pages is unable to work without colour management for the same set of reasons, although there are additional reasons for Apple Pages.
Just my ten cents,
/hh

L5780: first page or 2 print fine then poor quality print

The first few pages of print will be fine but then towards the end of the 3rd page there are horizontal streaks, the next page will be full of them getting worse as the page progresses. I can wait a while (1/2 hour or so) get a good page but then back to the horizontal streaks.
I replaced my print heads in August last year and had some issues with the black and yellow one which HP replaced (both of them went from green status to yellow status fairly quickly). The new print head solved the issue for a while but now for months I've been dealing with this problem.
I have cleaned, aligned and calibrated and now after a 2nd cleaning the yellow print is a very poor quality. I have HP, print heads, HP ink and HP paper. I have the proper paper settings. From what I have read it appears that it could be the black and yellow print head again, but that just seems odd that a 3rd one would go bad in this short time (the first ones I replace in August did not indicate they were bad and were still in a yellow status) . I don't do a great deal of printing and this August was the first time I've replaced the print heads since I got the printer about 4 years ago.
I print most of my items from Micro Soft Word or Micro Soft Digital Image Suite 2006 Editor.

See my answers below:
a) The size of the pages of PDF which you are printing. LETTER
b) Does all pages of the PDF are of same size? YES
c) What is the page size set in the Printer and what is the actual size of the paper which you have put in the tray? LETTER
d) Does this problem also happens on the virtual printer which you might have on your system (Try either Microsoft MPS Document writer or Adobe PDF Printer) No VIRTUAL PRINTERS
Thank you for attempting to help me with this... we have tried everything and haven't been able to resolve the problem.
Sherri

Poor quality image with doing videos with photos/images HELP!

Hello,
I bought Adobe Premiere Element to make videos with pictures. When I do the video, the quality of my photos is good. When I save the video on my computer or I download it on youtube (example) the quality of my photos is extremely poor. Why? Does anyone can help me? Thank you!

What Project Preset did you choose at New Project? In the case of Video, composed of Still Images ONLY, you would set that to your desired delivery specs. Not so, if you are also using Video. I tried several types of parameters. Some parameters give poor quality when I upload it to Youtube (for example) and others in the design of video and upload to YouTube. So which settings should I use for photos only ?
This sounds like you are talking about the Export/Share settings for output to YouTube.
What I was asking is what did you start off with, when you were at New Project?
If you are doing an SD Project, you will have either 720 x 480 (NTSC), or 720 x 576 (PAL) pixels in the Project's Frame Size. If that is what you want, then I would Scale your camera original Stills to 640 x 480 (for NTSC), as you have Square Pixels, and the Project will have either 0.9 for NTSC Standard, or 1.21 for NTSC Widescreen).
PrE can Scale the Still Images, but the Scaling algorithms in Photoshop are much better, and offer more control.
Now, if you wish to do an HD Project, just choose that as your Preset, and then use the Images in about their original size. Note, there will be some black borders, as the screen-caps most likely have a different Aspect Ratio, than a Video Project, which for HD will be 16:9. Especially with screen-caps, that are pretty low resolution to begin with, I would NOT do any Scaling, and would live with the letterboxing, or pillar boxing, rather than Scale and effectively Crop.
Also, when Scaling in Photoshop, I do not Save_As JPEG, as it introduces compression, but only as either PSD (Photoshop's native format), or PNG.
Good luck,
Hunt

Apple TV 2 Mirroring Poor Quality.........

When my iPad 2 mirrors to my Apple TV 2, it goes to a very poor quality.
Help!!
I have tried changing the default resultion on the Apple TV (Menu & Up for 6 seconds), still to no avail

Ok... this is by no means meant to be any exhaustive test but this is what I found out.
I started iTunes Wifi sync with the iphone 4s so it was busy transfering data.
I then started chopper 2, via Airplay with ATV. I immediately noticed the picture quality was poorer. There was noticable video compression artifacts on the screen. The picture seemed much softer.
I then stopped the itunes Wifi sync ..
I restarted chopper 2, and noticed a massive improvement in picture quality.
My take away from this is, you need decent wifi bandwith to get the best possible picture from mirroring, so a Wifi-N router maybe desirable.

Poor Quality Stills

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