-
fuzzy image
I’m using the latest and greatest but still get a fuzzy image. I recently bought a Sony z5u hi def camera, and record in 1080i. I capture using Vegas 9 Pro to m2t files. When I drop clips on the timeline, my image in the previewer looks fuzzy. Of course, when I play the clip, it looks horrible because of file size and lag time. But when stopped on a frame, it looks fuzzy. If I render to .avi in 720X480 it looks like crap. If I render in 1440 lines of resolution (or whatever) it creates gigabyte .avi files that can’t play back they’re so huge. Even if I simply put a clip on the timeline and render, it looks fuzzy. I apply color corrector, sharpen, and chromakey filters for my greenscreen effect, and the resultant image just looks slightly muddy.
I’ve seen some stuff on Macs that look amazing in the past and wonder why I can never achieve that on my system.
Any ideas on ideal settings for the best image quality?
-
3 Replies
-
Well… preview is just a preview. What does it look like when you set the preview window to Good Full or Best Full quality? This should look exactly as your original footage does. Are you previewing on a secondary monitor at full screen? This is the only way to really see what you are getting.
Set your project properties to HDV 1080-60i (1440×1080, 29.970 fps) and set the preview window to Good Full and you should see the same quality as the original footage.
Vegas Pro 9.0 has a new switch which may be affecting you. Right-click on the preview window and uncheck Adjust Size and Quality for Optimal Playback. This will show you the quality you set in the preview window regardless of your PC’s ability to play it back.
Of course, this all assumes that your PC can handle HD. You said that it played back “laggy” which is shocking with Vegas Pro 9.0 because HDV plays back very smooth on any modern QuadCore PC with Vegas Pro 9.0. This leaves me to believe that your PC might be underpowered for HD editing.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
As John said, don’t look too closely at the preview. My preview is usually set to “preview(auto)”. I have to remember that the somewhat poor resolution that I see will not show up in the final render. Vegas is simply trying to give me a reasonably fast playback for editing purposes. If rendered at best quality, I will see a high quality image.
However, you may also want to look at your camera and how it is set up. I have some material from two camera shoots where a Canon XL-1S was used with a Canon GL-2. THe XL-1S video looks very soft particularly when compared to the GL-2. The XL-1S simply did not have the resolution that more contemporary cameras have. Close attention must be paid to getting a sharp focus and good resolution from the camera.
As a sidelight, the XL-1S has about the same resolution as the video delivered by current Nikon DSLRs. That may be worth mulling over a bit even though it is widely off this subject.
-
John,
What kind of hardware are you running? Whether it’s Mac or not shouldn’t affect quality at all. I can get the exact same quality in Vegas as I can on my Mac Pro without any extra effort. The laggy playback might mean that your compy is struggling to keep up with HD as stated earlier, but that shouldn’t actually harm the overall quality of the footage. It would just hurt your ability to see an accurate preview, and annoy the heck out of you.
Check your project settings to match your input media, have a look at your media in full quality preview, and let us know if that helps.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up