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External Monitor Preview Looks AWFUL (Pixellated and Blocky)
Using Vegas 10.0e, both 32 and 64-bit. I have tried various preview settings including “Best (full)”. I have tried designating both a secondary VGA monitor as well as my primary VGA monitor for fullscreen playback. Both monitors have the exact same problem.
My video card is a GTX 580. I have the latest drivers. My OS is Windows 7 64-bit.
Here is a screenshot of what the video looks like when played back fullscreen:
If you look closely, you can see both horizontal and vertical artifacts. Strangely enough, if I drag the Video Preview window to the secondary monitor and stretch it to fit, the video looks as smooth as can be:
Both images are unedited and taken from an 800×600 resolution. I get the same issues in any other resolution as well. My CPU is an i7, so I don’t get any slowdown or choppiness; the poor image quality is the only playback problem. If anyone can help, it will save me a lot of frustration.
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21 Replies
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Try: Right click in the preview window and make sure that
adjust size and quality for optimal playback is not selected.Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Maker
Filmex Creative Media.
1-876-832-4956
https://filmex-creative-media.blogspot.com/ -
Unfortunately, I get the same results whether or not “Adjust size and quality for optimal playback” is selected.
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Perhaps these enlargements will better illustrate the problem.
Fullscreen preview:
Windowed preview:
Look closely at the silver balls in the middle of Guyver’s head. Notice the grid in the second image? And the jagged edges of what would otherwise be curves within his helmet? It’s the result of the pixellation and artifacting that I’m talking about. Trust me, the images are not the same, and the problem is even more obvious in full-motion video.
If you play a video full-screen in something like Windows Media Player, it stretches it out with something akin to a bilinear filter which results in a smooth image. Premiere pro’s external preview does this as well. It’s as if Vegas previews the video with no filter at all, merely stretching the pixels resulting in a blocky image even at the highest quality settings. Up until now I had used a television monitor to preview video in Vegas but now that I’m using a VGA monitor, I can see the difference and it’s very distracting. I don’t know if this is an issue new to Vegas 10 or not.
If someone else is using a digital external monitor and does not see this blockiness, please let me know. Screenshots might help.
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Are both these shots from the same monitor screen? If so, then you are simply looking at the resizing of the frame to fit the window dimensions. In other words, you are recompressing already compressed images.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Are both these shots from the same monitor screen? If so, then you are simply looking at the resizing of the frame to fit the window dimensions.
Yes they are, but you’re wrong; the artifacts are the result of Vegas stretching the image with a mechanism entirely different than the one it uses to stretch it in a window. If you’ve ever used Photoshop to resize an image, think “bilinear” vs “nearest neighbor.”
If I were to take a screenshot of this same scene in Adobe Premiere, you would not see the same artifacting.
I really wish I were getting help with this problem instead of having to prove that this issue exists. I’ve uninstalled Vegas for the time being, but if it makes you happy I can post a comparison screenshot between the two programs tomorrow and hopefully you will see what I’m talking about.
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Forgive me for starting to sound irate. This is a frustrating problem to have in the first place and is proving even more difficult to explain.
Open the following images in two seperate tabs and then switch between them. Examine them closely. The first is what a fullscreen preview screenshot looks like in Premiere CS5. The second is from Vegas.
I hope that you can see the difference in quality. Premiere, like Windows Media Player, smooths the image as it enlarges it for the preview. Vegas does this as well, but only in a window and not in fullscreen mode.
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what is your source footage? SD or HD? from your project settings, you have 720×480 resolution, your monitor probably can handle 1920×1080 or more…
try other HD project template. ex. HD 1080
hope this helps
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I don’t know if I would call it a problem. It’s called a PREview for a reason. It’s probably been there all along but no one I know expects theater-quality output on a preview screen. Most people are happy to get 29.97 FPS preview during transitions and really don’t notice or care that the preview image is slightly pixellated.
How does the final product look?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
By your logic, the “PREview” window in Vegas would also be relegated to producing a shoddy picture, but it isn’t.
I really don’t care what other people are happy to get; it doesn’t change what’s happening here. It doesn’t change the fact that Premiere is clearly capable of rendering a superior image in fullscreen; it doesn’t change the fact that Vegas would be as well if it were using the same method that it uses to draw in a window.
If it’s a problem for me, then it’s a problem. Please stop trying to talk me out of the fact that I have one. 😛
Thank you for trying to help, but I think you may be wasting your time… I’m not interested in changing my perspective by settling for less, I’m keen only to figure out why Vegas renders a windowed preview differently than it renders a fullscreen one and whether or not this is normal behavior for the program.
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