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Getting to Understanding Resolution…
So far in my elementary exploration of home video making, I’ve discovered that, for me, understanding RESOLUTION is the most confusing part of the work. Before saying anymore, my main question is, “is there anywhere on this site (an archive?), or some other site that can help me figure all this out?
I’m trying to create a 20 minute slide/movie presentation and most of the pictures I’ve taken are at a very high resolution. But even at this stage, I start to get confused.
I understand that the quality of these pictures is better than low resolution one but couldn’t entirely tell you why. Is it because its dimensions are larger? Or because there are more dots per inch?
And if I understood this better, could I trim them down so that when Vegas is trying to access them on my hard drive it doesn’t slow the computer down so much? And so that when I finally burn the DVD or post it to the web that the files are not too big.
It seems as though there are endless questions that I have about all this. One final one is, “Are there any batch converters that can convert the resolution of multiple images at once so they are all the same size? I know that Photoshop has a feature that allows this converting, but from what I understand, it only does it one at a time manually.
Please feel free to send me in the right direction toward info that will help me get grounded in this info.
Thank you!
Jonathan -
6 Replies
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“Is it because its dimensions are larger? Or because there are more dots per inch?”
It’s a combination of a whole bunch of things. If you ever shot footage with a VHS camcorder, you may have wondered why the movies you rented looked much better than anything you shot yourself, even though the TV was the same. It really boils down to the old expression GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Not to say that your camcorder is garbage. It’s just that, in comparison to a Panavison film camera with a highly experienced crew,it will look substantially better.
“Are there any batch converters that can convert the resolution of multiple images at once so they are all the same size?”
IrfanView (it’s free) does a great job of doing this.
You mentioned in another forum that your images were 2592 x 1944. Considering that standard (NTSC) video is 720 x 480, the only reason to stay with an image that large is if you planned to zoom in A LOT on an image. -
It seems like this software should be really easy to use, however when I converted my first batch of images, I set the dimensions to 720 x 480, and ended up with files that were 640 x 480. Why did this happen?
And for the images that were taken vertically, is there a dimension that I should set for those? Once converted using the standard 720 x 480, they came out as 360 x 480. Will that work?
Jonathan Stein
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Don’t bother converting to a fixed size. Use the percentage option instead. By changing this, you’ll be able to see exactly what you’ll end up with before you do it. For example, shrinking your 2592 x 1944 image to 30% of original gives you 778 x 583 which is close enough. This way, you still have some room to zoom in to crop if you want to.
Keep in mind that images shot vertically will either have large black borders on each side or will have to cropped to fill the frame.
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If I remember correctly, Vegas likes 755 x 480 for stills. I’ll have to check my sheet but right now I can’t find it. Try that size and I think you’ll see the correct size on your screen.
AllenASX Media Productions
https://www.asxvideo.com -
I believe it’s 655 x 480 but I always do them a bit larger than normal anyway just in case I want to do a slight zoom or some minor cropping.
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You’re right Mike 655 X 480. I stand corrected. Haven’t done stills in a while.
Allen
ASX Media Productions
https://www.asxvideo.com
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