Secret to sharp imported graphics?

[Jon Barrie]

Don’t deinterlace the footage. That will cut the res in half making saw edges because there is information missing.
I just followed your process and it looks perfect on mine. Make sure you are looking at High Quality in the monitor (right click)
Make the graphic in illustrator and there should be 0 prob’s as it keeps the image in vectors, should never jaggie.
I did that and made it a PNG file, imported that (square pixel ratio, 72dpi) If you want to be sure it comes out clean use an image with 300dpi you can zoom then.
Illustrator is the way to go. But Deinterlacing will only make jaggies.
– Jon

[Jeff Brown]

I suspect the problem you are seeing is that the PNG is using un-premultiplied alpha; you should use premultiplied alpha for a smoother overlay.
Try a TGA file (with alpha) instead, or a PSD file on a tranparent BG. PNGs from Pshop sometimes don’t seem to work right.
Photoshop premultiplies with white, FYI.

-jeff

[Bruce Mitchell]

Thanks, Jeff. I agree that it must be something with the file. The quality loss is immediately upon import. Here is the image I’m trying to use. Is the white glow around the logo contributing to the problem or is that irrelevant?

TIA,

Bruce…

[Jeff Brown]

Try saving it as a PSD file. Looks to me like the alpha is reading as premultiplied w/ white (PShop standard), when it should be premult w/ black for PNGs. I don’t think you can change that in Premiere; I did look at it in Combustion and it exhibited the change from “clean” to “dirty” when I changed the premult. color.

-jeff

[Jon Barrie]

I just used your graphic and it looks perfect. Not sure what you’re problem is related to. De-interlacing will destroy half of the lines making the picture. That was the only way I could make it look jaggie. Don’t deinterlace.
– Jon ?

[Jon Barrie]

The only other thing you can do is add a little blur to the file.
1. Go to effects panel
2. type in fast blur
3. add fast blur to the clip
4. go to effect controls
5. set the blur to 1 horizontal & vertical
6. tick the repeat edges box.
That should look nice and smooth without looking blurry.
– Jon 🙂

[Bruce Mitchell]

Thanks for the reply Jon, but I don’t believe the issue is deinterlacing. I’ve exported WMV files with the deinterlace box checked and unchecked and the graphic looks the same. The graphic looks bad immediately upon import and, yes, that’s with my program monitor set to best quality so that’s why I believe it has something to do with the file format and the alpha channel as Jeff suggests.

I’m very curious how you get it to import perfectly. Is this in PPCS3 with a 1080i HDV project?

Thx,

Bruce…

[Jon Barrie]

Here is a JPG of the image in use as a still JPG from the timeline. (couldn’t suss out the linking thing here so here’s the address itself aswell)
I hope this is the link

It looks perfect to me.
Just opened up a new HDV 30i 1080 project imported and that was it?
Are you working in a Hardware based project? (Matrox Axio, Blackmagic?) Might cause the problem?
– Jon Barrie 😕

[Bruce Mitchell]

Nope, I’m not using a hardware-based solution, just PPCS3 (but I have the entire Production Premium suite).

Actually, that capture looks about the same as when I import. Maybe I’m expecting too much, but both of those look pretty “jagged” to me when compared to the original PNG viewed at the same size. I have found that cranking the Anti-Flicker Filter all the way up to 1.0 makes the graphics look much smoother, but it the logo were to have text in it (which this one actually does but I took it out for the example), the Anti-Flicker filter makes the text less sharp.

Many thanks for spending your time on this,

Bruce…

[Jon Barrie]

I’m really not sure what you are expecting from the image. A pixel is a colour square – It has an edge. When you work in Anamorphic which 1080i HDV is, the pixel gets stretched out to make a 16:9 picture from a 4:3 source. On TV or Projection it looks fine. Studying it on a computer is not a great representation of what it will look like anywhere else.
The distortion of the image i have made (16:9 ana – really 4:3) gets stretched out to fit your original image (sq pixel) So you will see a difference in the compare.
working in 1920×1080 (true 16:9 HD) you can compare and it will look the same as the original.
– Jon 🙂