-
PowerPoint and Premiere Pro
I could use some help from the community.
In my shop we often use images that are exported PowerPoint slides in video timelines. We export high quality TIFF images from the .ppt file.
When the images are interspersed with the video, the fonts smear horribly. The exported/encoded product is nearly unuseable. My thought is that the problem is conflict between the square pixels of the slide images and the rectangular pixels of the video timeline.
However, I’ve tried every combination of square and rectangular pixels I can think of and I still get the smeared text. It’s really bad once the video is encoded for streaming to the desktop.
Anyone have a solution for this? There has to be a best practice. The video sequence is DV and the slides are exported to 720X480 images.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
-
14 Replies
-
After import, make sure they are interpreted as square pixels.
As long as the native images look fine (not always the case with PPT export) then they should look fine in Premiere. Don’t look at the preview window by the way (unless it’s set to 100%, and even then it may still look bad), look at your export instead.
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
Hmmm…
this maybe the first time I’ve ever had a different opinion than Vince…
The reason the font looks horrible is that the slides are interpreted as square. If there isn’t anything in the images that is so precise that it can’t scale slightly, you want the images to interpret to .91 just like the video (assuming you’re 4×3).
The other alternative I’ve used for integrating PPT, computer interface grabs and video footage is to create a square pixel project setting (custom) at the size of the computer screen grabs…then i lay in the video inside a graphic ‘bezel’ if you will… But that’s for interface sized out put (1024×768 or 800×600, etc.), if you need to get back to video…I think since your framesize is identical to your project setting, your PAR needs to be as well…
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions, -
eh eh, first time for everything Tim…
I guess, we might be talking about the same thing really. As I understand it, the slides he exported from PPT were exported as square pixels, so you would want Premiere to interpret them that way to keep the original aspect ratio and not create pixelation.
At least that the way I do it.
I’ll even post an example to illustrate my “Power” point:-)
BTW, neither looks great because that’s the way PPT processes exports, some fonts do better than others.
.9 Interpretation:
Square interpretation:
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
I should add that you could use a screen capture app instead of exporting to TIFF, that way to get the same anti-aliased quality you see on screen, more time consuming, but better result…
I think it’s Screenprint that allows you to set a single key stroke for continuous full screen, which would also allow you to capture build up animation, which Tiff export won’t do.
Vista also has it’s own, just not as practical.
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
Vince’s latest post is very revealing. That’s exactly the issue I’m having…and neither looks acceptable to me. Take it one more step by encoding the slides and video into an encoded output video at 300k and you’ve got mush. Our standard font is arial and that’s the one that looks so bad.
Have any experience with one of those PPT exporter to video apps? I’m wodering if that’s a solution. I don’t know what else to try. My SMEs are PowerPoint guys. They don’t know anything else. Any chance Keynote exports any better?
-
The Camtasia PPT plug-in might do it. At least one would end up with .avi video that could be chopped up and extended over the appropriate duration for the slide content.
Any other options for exporting the images, or is PowerPoint the problem?
-
Well, here’s the result using screen capture, that’s your answer …
Interpreted as .9:
Interpreted as Square:
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
I’ll add one more point, while the original screen caps look very sharp the scaling done in Premiere will always create a little murkiness. You could create a batch export in Photoshop to rescale all to your images project size, it will do a much better job than Premiere ever will. Not sure about Keynote’s export capabilities.
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
Well…I think there’s a few points missing.
Is the problem the scaling, or the type quality?
If you’re exporting 720×480 images from PPT, they’re not 4×3…720×540, or 640×480 is 4×3 square pixel…720×480 is only 4×3 with a .91 PAR.
If you export a 720×480 image from PPT, you may protect it’s proportion by forcing it into square pixel interpretation, but it will not sit “pixel-for-pixel” on the DV raster you’ve specified in the project settings…therefore the antialiasing will be awful. If you take the 720×480 image and interpret it as .91, the circles will be out of plum and the image will be distorted slightly, but the text antialiasing will at least be as good as the exported image was as now it’s a “pixel-for-pixel” match to your project settings.
On Vince’s first post with the demo slides, he demonstrates that the .91 interpretation distorts the image, but it doesn’t take into account that a forced square pixel 720×480 image is 110% as wide as a DV .91 image of the same size and it won’t “map” onto a DV frame, so it will be in proportion, but the edges will all go south…
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions, -
Tim, you’re right, I don’t understand how a PPT export gets to 720×480 either, especially since I don’t think there are any options for sizing out of PPT, that’s an answer we need.
No matter what, no, the PPT native aspect ratio won’t match the DV frame.
I do notice text pixelation issues when bring PAR 1.0 AE comps into Premiere DV sequences and they get interpreted at .9, but I’m not sure Premiere treats still images the same way, so it could simply be an issue with motion footage in my case. I just make it a habit of keeping the original PAR.
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up