*** Still photo (screen capture) resolution

I have a project I'm working on that will be filmed and edited in HDV, but delivered in SD on DVD.
I will be incorporating still images that are supplied to me into the production. I'm being asked if a 72 dpi jpg file is okay or if it needs to be at least 300 dpi. Should I be asking for something like at least 300 dpi in order for them to look correct in the production?
Thanks in advance!

Again - DPI doesn't matter at your end, although it may at their end if they are scanning the images (see below). DPI determines the print size of a picture, not its size or resolution on the video screen. A 1500x1200 image will behave the same in FCP whether it's 72, 300 or any DPI.
If you're doing pan and zooms, you will need to ensure that you can always fill the frame without having to scale the picture past 100%. So if you plan to start close on a detail and zoom out wide, you could end up needing a very large pixel dimension in your images (i.e. twice, three or four times the square pixel equivalent of your HD frame size).
So just tell the graphics people the pixel dimension you need. If they are scanning these images from photos, they can do the math and scan at the appropriate DPI rate (which is where DPI DOES come into the equation, I believe. For instance an 10x8 photo scanned at 300dpi will end up as 3000x2400, which will probably be fine for most purposes, whereas if they scan it at 72dpi you'll only have 720x576 pixels to play with, which won't be enough for full frame.
Hope this helps.
EDIT - post crossed with Studio X's above, so ignore the repetition!

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Please help! Screen Capture resolution for Flash

Hi,
When I screen capture [using RoBo ScreenCapture] either web
pages off the Net, or dialog boxes of programs [I'm using Flash for
a presentation instead of PP] the images are pixelated or fuzzy or
well, not good enough.
Let me explain In using RoBo, I make the capture at the
highest Jpeg resolution possible. When I bring the jpeg into Flash
[import directly into Library] and bring on the stage, I have to
resize the image because it is too big for the stage [being
800X600]. The projector I will be using for the presentation is
800X600.so I set the stage for that.
When I publish the file and review it [setting my monitor to
800X600] the images look terrible.
Maybe I should explain that when I do the screen captures at
first, my monitor is set at 1600X1200.
Should I set it at 800X600 when doing the captures first? I
mean, does this affect the final output of the resolution of the
jpg's when they are placed in Flash after the capture and import
into the Library?
I have had to make captures of web pages, so I have my
monitor set at 1600X1200 normally so I can get the most real estate
on the screen as possible. I make the screen captures using that
monitor setting. But I have my Flash movie stage set at 800X600.
My questions are:
1. Should I do the captures with the monitor set at 800X600
if the Flash stage is 800X600? If so, why?
2. If the projector resolution is 800X600, can I set my Flash
stage at a higher size [resolution], say 1024X768? Will that
actually affect the resolution when the Flash movie is projected on
a projector with an 800X600 resolution if the Flash movie stage is
larger?
3. What affects the final resolution output of the BMP images
[jpeg's] in Flash for a presentation like I am doing?
4. What size should I capture the images at so I don't have
to resize them in Flash?
WHAH! I just want this presentation to be successful. It's a
training session on educating folks on computer virus
prevention/protection from and ID theft, something this world is in
dire need of!
Thanks in advance form anyone who can help me,
Ellen

> Maybe I should explain that when I do the screen
captures at first, my
> monitor
> is set at 1600X1200.
> Should I set it at 800X600 when doing the captures
first?
A screen capture captures whatever number of pixels you are
grabbing. If
your monitor is 1600x1200 and you capture the entire screen,
then the
resolution you have captures is 1600x1200.
Then two things are happening:
1) you are making it a JPG, which is lossy compresion
2) you are shrinking it to 800 x 600.
To shrink it, Flash has to 'throw away' 75% of the pixels of
the original.
So, no matter what, you are ending up with a lower resolution
image than
what you started with.
> 1. Should I do the captures with the monitor set at
800X600 if the Flash
> stage
> is 800X600? If so, why?
That would make sense. Why? You can only show 800x600 pixels
in your final
presentation. What's the point of capturing more than that?
> 2. If the projector resolution is 800X600, can I set my
Flash stage at a
> higher size [resolution], say 1024X768? Will that
actually affect the
> resolution when the Flash movie is projected on a
projector with an
> 800X600
> resolution if the Flash movie stage is larger?
If the images are that resolution, then yes, if you increase
the size of the
flash file, you should be able to see all of the pixels at
that particular
resolution.
> 3. What affects the final resolution output of the BMP
images [jpeg's] in
> Flash for a presentation like I am doing?
As long as you bring the images in at 100%, the available
resolution of the
images shouldn't change at all.
> 4. What size should I capture the images at so I don't
have to resize them
> in
> Flash?
'Actual' size.
> WHAH! I just want this presentation to be successful.
It's a training
> session
> on educating folks on computer virus
prevention/protection from and ID
> theft,
> something this world is in dire need of!
I'm not sure what RoBo is, but have you considered using a
product like
RoboDemo for this type of thing? That should handle
everything for you.
-Darrel

Best screen capture resolution for FCP

I'm making some tutorials of various computer software.
I'm going to edit them with FCP.
I'm using the MAC built in SHIFT-COMMAND - 3 or 4
in order to snap stills off my screen, and then
import into Final Cut Pro to edit the tutorials with.
The stills, once in the timeline, look pretty fuzzy and
unuseable.
What have others used in terms of resolution, format and such in order to end up with captures off your screen that you'll bring into FCP that end up looking good if you're
going to end up going to video or DVD?
I also have SNAP PRO X to work with, but I still haven't
found the right format or resolution to get around this problem.
Any input would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Without going into DPI (which is really meaningless in FCP land...as has been argued again and again and again...although if you MUST apply a value just stick in 72, but really it has no effect) the pixel dimensions of stills to import for FCP FULL FRAME are 720x534. Because stills have square pixels and FCP uses rectangular ones. If you want to do any movement on the stills, just increase the dimensions PROPORTIONALLY. 2x would be 1440 x 1064.
Oh, and as for the blurry issue:
#2 Playback is blurry
Shane's Stock Answer #2:
ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL NTSC MONITOR, OR AT LEAST A TV.
1. Disable overlays on the canvas
2. Make sure you've rendered everything (no green bars at the top of the timeline
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24787
DV footage requires large amounts of data and many computations. In order to maintain frame rate and be viewable at a normal size, only about one-fourth of the DV data is used in displaying the movie to the screen. However, the DV footage is still at full quality, and is best viewed thru a TV or NTSC monitor routed thru your camera or deck.
For this, and other exciting stock answers visit www.proapptips.com

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

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

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.

Premier Elements. Rcommendation for still photo resolution/size

I have a Panasonic composite camera. It shoots HVCHD lite. It also takes 16:9 (3968*2232 9Meg) still photos. I wish to produce a composite DVD in Pal format suitable for a wide screen TV. What resolution and size is recommended for the still shots? I am using Windows XP with Powertoy image resizer. Or is it more convenient to use the Oraganizer in Elements to resize the photos? Tony

For my thoughts on still images, you might want to see this THREAD. In your case, you'd substitute my 720x480 PAR 0.9 for your HD Project's framesize. If you need to do any panning on images that will be fully zoomed out, I'd not go any larger than you will need to accomplish this. Some Projects require that I use several different Actions in Photoshop, if I will do much panning on the zoomed out images. Since I do not do any automatic pan/zoom Effects, but create each by hand, as each image is unique, I can tailor the resizing to exactly what I will need. If you let your program do these Effects automatically, then just give a bit more wiggle room and your good to go. Having overly large stills in your Project costs you, both in processing power and also quality - PS's resizing algorithms are better than Premiere's and doing this outside of the NLE is much more efficient.
Good luck,
Hunt

Does still photo resolution determine maximum movie quality?

I am making a movie combining relatively low quality jpegs and dv footage.
It seems that I read somewhere that if you are going to combine still photos and dv footage that you have to import the video first or else the resolution of the photos will set the maximum resolution of the whole movie. Is this true?
Thanks,
Artlover13060

Artlover,
Never heard that one before, but what do I know? The following may be totally wrong, but I feel like taking a stab at this, so if I'm wrong, I'm sure I will be quickly pounced on. I believe that iMovie sets a maximum resolution on imported photos, your low quality ones will be used as is, I imagine. They have to be converted to a video format anyway. The video clips will be used as is, but sized as 720X480 to fit your TV screen. Am I right folks?
Forest

Acceptable File Size and Resolution for Still Photos in Keyframe Motion

Hello Hello
I know that FCE HD (as other Video Editors), will automatically fit a still photo's size to it's default capability of 720 x 480 Correct?
Well, in regard to making the best possible ZOOMS, and Pans from Still Photos, is it neccessary to re-size all your photos (from an external editor like photoshop), to a specfic size?
According to an older book for FCE, it sez that actually photos re-sized to 720x534 with a resolution of 72 are best. *The proper proportion for NTSC.
And I noticed that when I inserted larger JPG still sizes (like about a meg), on the FCE timline, and when applying Panning, or Zooms, some of the rendered images with motion didn't pan or zoom smoothly.
Is that because those file sizes were TOO large?
Well I have soooo many stills that need to be imported into this particular project that it would be a lot easier for me to just generally reduce these stills (by percentage).
And is the magic resolution amount supposed to be 72?
Because if that's the case I can re-size all my photos to 72, and try to keep the file sizes down to say 300 KB's or so.
Sound like a plan?

Thank you guys
"basically, you should try to make your images large enough so they never have to be scaled beyond 100% in the motion tab in fcp."
Actually as I mentioned some of these file sizes are very large. About 800-900 KB's - and what as a result, what I've noticed is that I actually had to DECREASE the viewing area in both the Browser Window, and the Canvas Winbow just to be able to see the whole image.
Ok - so the 72 DPI is not as important as the dimensions of the photo. But as I said I have soooooo many of these that it would take me forever to manually re-size them all not to mention the fact that re-sizing some of them (odd shapes),would throw the images out of balance.
So again I ask - if there is NO motion applied to the photo, file sizes of about 200 to 350 KB's appear just beautifully ....
BUT
If I need to PAN or ZOOM, is it ok to laod a 1 MEG sized JPG onto the timeline and start working with Keyframe?????
In fact in some cases I'm actually using these larger file JPS's (1 meg or more), so that they TOTALLLY fit the canvas window (cropping them by enlargment)
*With some clipping of the original image of course ...
Why do I do this?
So that you don't see the usual border with horizontal images, or vertical images - know what I mean?
Thanx

How to make a high resolution screen capture?

Hye,
I'm trying to make high resolution screen captures in Maverics.
On earlier systems, one could use Quartz Debug which had a slider that could alter resolution of the capture app.
Now on Mavericks this option is gone, it only allows Retina-like screen resolution for non-retina macs, but on my 27" imac, images look really blurry...
So any way to get the job done?

Hye,
I'm trying to make high resolution screen captures in Maverics.
On earlier systems, one could use Quartz Debug which had a slider that could alter resolution of the capture app.
Now on Mavericks this option is gone, it only allows Retina-like screen resolution for non-retina macs, but on my 27" imac, images look really blurry...
So any way to get the job done?

Acceptable and Quality Still Photo Resolution for HDV Documentary

I've scanned through several pages of posts on photo resolution here, but I haven't actually found a simple answer to a beginner's question. Two, actually:
1. If someone is supplying you with still photo prints for scanning and use in a documentary (shot in HDV, edited on FCP5), is there a particular size print that you should ask for? Does the broadcast venue (theatrical, TV, etc.) have any relevance?
2. If someone is scanning photos and sending you a CD with them, what are the specs (size, resolution, etc.) you should ask for? And are there "minimum acceptable" specs and "preferred, high quality" specs?
Thanks.
Paul S.
Power Mac G5 [email protected]; 4GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.4) FCP 5 (FC Studio), Logic Express, Presonus Firebox

Having worked on several long-form historical docos with hundreds of source photo scans, I'd highly recommend getting the originals in as high a resolution as you can (at least 300 DPI), and getting the entire photo scanned. You just never know when you need to apply pans or zooms or crop into a particular area to improve the edit, and there are many simple ways to prep the selected photos for import.
The simplest is just to do the scaling & cropping in FCP. It will do a fine job of this, but if it turns out most of the photos will be static, you can waste computer resources by importing unnecessarily-large images. As mooblie pointed out, you strictly only need enough resolution to prevent scaling up past 100%, as this will create pixelated lower quality output.
The most common way to prep scans is in Photoshop, where you can scale the image to a desired pixel size very easily. I'd still leave the image at its natural frame size (as scanned), so you have the most creative choice when you are framing it in the timeline using FCPs cropping & motion tabs tools.
If you've got lots of photos and lots of pans & zooms, consider using one of the third-party tools that will help with this, such as Photo to Movie from LQ Graphics, Moving Picture from StageTools, or even the plugin for FCP I wrote to help with the docos I mentioned above. It's called Pan Zoom Pro and you can see about it and download a demo here: http://www.lyric.com/fcp-plugins/index.htm#pzp .
Cheers,
John
Lyric Media

Resolution for Still Photos for film

Greetings,
I have a full length Digital Video film and want to add still photos to it. I have been using Photo to Movie software to add a Ken Burns effect to the photo, then exporting it under the movie format- DV(NTSC) 720x480, then importing that to the final cut time line. My question is what is the best resolution in the first place for the still photo before I do this process or is it okay to use the final render size from the Photo to Movie export? Or do you have a better idea.

I would suggest you to check your export preferences but it is my understanding that if you render the movie file, and then export, it you should be able to set the QT option for NTSC DV.

Pb G4 1.67Ghz running OS 10.4, right side of the screen 2, pixel wide vertical lines, a few days later colors posterized on pics and vid. Vertical lines don't show screen capture, but pics still posterized. Hardware test from disk shows ok.

Right side of screen started showing 2, pixel wide vertical lines. A few day later colors in pics and vid posterized. Vertical lines don't show in screen capture but pics still bad. Ran hardware test from disk, ok, adjusted color in sys prefs, new profiles a bit better but still bad, mpeg worse, jpeg bad. No better in new user account. Now a month later, right side has 8 vert lines and occasionally a slightly darker area in bottom corners for a few seconds. Reset pram, battery plugged into adaptor 99%. I can notice, for a slit second, when the screen saver is on, when I move cursor to get back to desktop, true color of image can be seen for a flash of a second.

sorry, was in a rush, any suggestions to fix or ideas of what has gone wrong

Still Photo Resolution

The resolution of my still photos looks terrible, even though I imported large jpeg files and scaled them down, not up. I'm doing a project that is only stills and audio, no video and the orginals were quite large. They looked horrible in the program panel, but I figured they would look fine on export, but no. I tried exporting my project about six different ways, maximum render, etc.

There was a post on this site a couple of years ago by Jeff Belune (as I recall) that provided a work flow for this. I fiound it to be effective. Most of the people who post here recommend that you do the scaling in Photoshop and then import the *.PSD file. The pixel dimensions W x H must match the scenario preset pixel dimensions (the DPI and/or image dimensions in inches, have no meaning). If your scenario is 1920 x 1080, then that's what the image size needs to be.
I only remember some of the steps Jeff laid out, but, it was to open the image in Photoshop, set the GENERAL preference to best for reduction, Change the image to 16 bit. Make color, exposure changes as desired, use unsharp mask set to 198, 0.6, 2, set the crop tool to your desired pixel dimensions, and crop the image to the desired size, if desired change the mode back to 8 bit, and save the file under a new name (never mess with your original. I created a photoshop action to speed the process.

How do I capture a still photo off of a dvd. I am on a MacBook OX6.

How do I capture a still photo from a DVD? I am on a MacBook OX6. I have tried downloading DVD Snap2 and VLC but I am not sure what to do with that once I have it. Trying to put together a scrapbook for my son and I only have DVD of an occassion.

Pause the playback and take a screenshot.

How do I capture a still photo from my video footage??

Probably easy I know, but just wondering how to capture a still photo from my video footage. I pulled a particular clip into my viewer window and have found the still shot I want, what next??
Thanks in advance for any help.
Cheers,
Bill
Boulder

Put the playhead over the frame in the timeline and choose Modify>Make Freeze Frame. It will appear in the Viewer window. Drag it into the timeline.
If you want a photo for iPhoto etc. put the playhead over the frame and select File>Export>Using QuickTime Conversion.
In the window that opens change the "Format" setting to Still Image from the dropdown menu.

Resolution of still photo

What size files are best to import still photos into Imovie from Iphoto. I work from raw in Photoshop, import to Iphoto and then Imovie. When I go to play the still photos the images look like ****, as opposed to the images in Iphoto. These photos come from a large file size so why do they look like a pixel puzzle when they are fine in Iphoto slide show?

Welcome to the forum, Stanley.
There are lots of factors that can affect image quality. Including the possibility is that the quality is fine but iMovie doesn't let you see it.
You might find some ideas here:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?128@@.68abff87
Karl

*** Still photo (screen capture) resolution

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