Unwanted blur when rendering

[Notuom]

Hello.

I'm trying to render my stop-motion project in Sony Vegas Pro 8. So I don't want any blur between my frames. Yet it's there, and I can't find a way to make it go away, anywhere in the options. The "bypass motion blur" setting is already on. I tried rendering with lower FPS, but I don't think that's the way to go, and the results aren't much better. My source material is pictures from a camera at school which I don't know the brand of anything, but I don't think it should matter. They're standstill images, and they look very pretty inside Vegas. I'm rendering 720x480. Also, right now when rendering there are scanlines all over the place when there's movement... And I'd like it if it could be cleaner. I tried lots of codecs and filetypes but they all had the same problems... I have the K-Lite Codec Pack installed.

As you can guess, I'm far from being a pro with all the encoding stuff, there's so many options of which I don't know the meaning... Anyway, basically my goal would be to render a clean video, not necessarily lossless quality, but not with ugly scanlines and definitely not with blur between my frames. I searched on google, then on this forum... And I couldn't find what I needed.

Could anyone guide me?

Thank you.

[guns1inger]

Motion blur, as far as Vegas is concerned, is something created only by internal effects and filters. It does not arbitrarily add blur to video.

If you are seeing scanlines then a) this isn't motion blur, and b) you should try outputting to a progressive format, instead of interlaced. Start by creating a progressive project, then importing your images. Make sure you choose a format that supports progressive output as well.

[lordsmurf]

I bet you're deinterlacing with a blend method.
There is no reason at all to deinterlace, if DVD is the final destination output.

[Notuom]

Thank you for your replies.

Now the scanlines seem to be gone, but the blur is still very present. DVD is not the final output for now; probably Youtube. I might burn it on a dvd but then I'll use ConvertXtoDVD, which I think will do the job correctly whatever the settings of my video since it converts it to be compatible with a DVD while still keeping the same quality. At least that's what I understood from my previous conversions.

As for blend methods and filters, I didn't deliberately add any of them. If some of them are there by default, then I don't know where they are and what to do to remove them.

I tried setting "deinterlacing" to "none" and also "field order" to "none (progressive scan)" in the project settings but it's still blurring.
Here are my project settings and render settings.

Some of it is in french even though Vegas is in english but whatever. "Flou de mouvement" is "movement blur" or something similar, and I'm pretty sure this has something to do with why my video blurs excessively... But I can't select "none"; only "Gaussian", "Box", "Pyramid" and all of those but with "asymmetric" on the right. I tried with and without the "interleave every second" option since it's apparently the only thing left I can change, and it doesn't change anything.

Is there a blur option hidden somewhere else that I didn't see?

Thank you.

[poisondeathray]

Are the "blurs" between frames or within frames? ie. is each frame blurry, but consists of 1 frame, or are they a mix of 2 frames? (e.g. you can step through individual frames with virtualdub)

Have you tried other export formats? ffdshow H263+ is just about the worst choice you could make

[Notuom]

Yes, I did try other formats, but if you have anything better, I'm all open to suggestions, since I don't really know what to choose... I tried XviD, DivX, MPEG2, MPEG4, H263+, Intel Indeo... All the same results so I'm guessing it's not coming from the encoding but from somewhere in my settings in Vegas. But then I'm just wondering why the preview has no blur at all if it's coming from Vegas.

The blur is a mix of 2 frames, not a blurry image.

[edDV]

...But then I'm just wondering why the preview has no blur at all if it's coming from Vegas.

The blur is a mix of 2 frames, not a blurry image.

What happens if you output to DV format or MPeg2 progressive or MPeg2 interlace?

That tests whether its Vegas settings or encoder settings.

[Notuom]

Yep. Everything. Just tried both DV and MPeg2 again to be sure, and it does the same thing. Except if I understand correctly what Interlace is, well, progressive doesn't have lines and interlace does. Other than that there's the same movement blur both way. Definitely comes from Vegas IMO, but I don't know where else I should be looking.

[guns1inger]

If these are all progressive frames, and your output is not for DVD, then try outputting at 30 fps, instead of 29.970. The fraction might be enough to cause some frames to blend.

Otherwise post a sample showing the problem.

[Notuom]

Changing it to 30 FPS didn't do any good, but thanks for the suggestion.
Well, here I rendered a small part of it then exported it in gif from Photoshop. I slowed it down a little bit so you can see what's happening If you really need the avi file then I'll host it, but since you asked for a sample, well here it is (No need to comment on the actual contents :P):

You can clearly see the blur between frames which I don't want. I want it to be as "sharp" as possible, since it's stop-motion. I'm sure there has to be a way, somewhere, to make it so it doesn't render that way, but where?...

Thanks again for helping.

[poisondeathray]

Nice content LOL

How do you have this setup in vegas? You imported a bunch of jpgs and lined them up on the timeline end to end or did you stagger them on different tracks? Did you apply any filters or effects?

[guns1inger]

Attached is a simple test file created in Vegas Pro 8. Three still frames, numbered 1, 2 and 3. The project was created as a 25 fps progressive project and output as a progressive mp4 video at 25 fps. If you load this into something that allows you to go frame by frame you will see that there is no blending. Each frame is distinct.

One thing to note. When you import a still image into Vegas, by default it is not 1 frame long, but approx 5 seconds. I suspect (and this is without seeing your timeline) that you are using the default timing for still frame import, and possibly have the auto-fade turned on as well.

still%20test%201.mp4

[Notuom]

Nice content LOL

How do you have this setup in vegas? You imported a bunch of jpgs and lined them up on the timeline end to end or did you stagger them on different tracks? Did you apply any filters or effects?

Forgot to mention that. I used the "image sequence" feature since it seemed like the best way to do stop-motion with the number of images I had. In the options of those, the FPS is set to 5 and the field order to progressive scan. I don't see any options about blur though.
They're on the same track.
As I said though, on the preview it looks perfect. I did not apply any filters or effect. :\
Where should I look for the auto-fade option?

That's what my timeline and image sequence properties look like: Link

PS: When rendering in Half NTSC using H.263+ in ffdshow, it looks great, no blur at all... But I can't export it in MPEG2 that way and that's the format my teacher wants... If I can't find a solution to this I may just render it that way then import it in Premiere Elements at school and make it the exact format he wants since we're supposed to edit it using Premiere Elements but I don't like the interface compared to Vegas... Hope it works.

[poisondeathray]

Your still image sequence import is set to 5 fps, but your project settings (and render settings) were set to 29.97 fps.... I'm guessing that mismatch is contributing to what you are seeing.

As guns1inger said earlier , the default still import is set at 5 sec (150 frames @ 29.97), but you can change that in the preferences edit tab. But if you import as image sequence, and set to 29.97 fps, the individual images will zip by too fast in a fraction of a second. By importing it the "regular" way, you can shift+select to import a large selection of stills and drop them onto the timeline in a similar fashion, and each will be displayed (repeated) for 150 frames (5 sec) as in guns1inger's example, or to whatever you set in the preferences.

[Notuom]

Ah... Well I'll try to do as you say with individual images. I used the image sequence function because nothing else seemed to work. I didn't think it could really cause a problem to use 5FPS in the sequence and 29,97FPS in the project but it makes sense... I'll try it now, thanks.

PS: Now that's just weird. The old project's preview only now has blur between frames... Whatever, guess I'd better just start from scratch and learn from my errors...

Thanks alot for your help, everyone.

[poisondeathray]

I would try it out on a mini-test project (e.g. use 30 frames) from start to final render to figure out if the settings are correct, and to minimize wasting/testing time

So...were you top or bottom?

[Notuom]

Oh great, it works perfectly now! Fortunately I knew where to place everything this time so re-editing wasn't long. It should be on Youtube soon.
I should've tried this earlier but I really didn't think it would change anything... heh. And here I thought it just wasn't the way to do it. I guess it is.
Oh and I'm bottom... I was playing Yoshi in this part. lol

Thanks again!