Vegas Video Quality Problem OR Not?

[sfxwe]

I was talking with a buddy of mine about how I am doing a dvd slide show / video for my in-laws for their 50th wedding anniversary. He asked me what program I was using and I told him Vegas Video V4.0, he tells me that Ulead produces better output, I told him he was full of crap, lol. So he proved me wrong .

He brought over his laptop and I took the same pictures I was working with and did a test using Ulead, and he was right, Ulead produced a notably better picture, compared to Vegas. Vegas produced a more blurred picture, Ulead had more detail in the final output.

I have looked at all my settings, I have everything set to what should be right. I am not stretching the picture, I DO NOT have it set to produce square pixels, I have it set to NTSC at 720 x 480 at the DVDA setting of 24p with drop down and moved the coefficient from 9bits to 10 bits. I have also tried many other settings in the options screen and can not seem to produce the same type of quality with Vegas. Doesn’t Ulead use Main Concept too? I love Vegas and would like to know how to get better results, any ideas, as to what I could be missing in the settings? I could post some screen shots if needed.

Thanks

[BJ_M]

they use the same encoder but if you add a sharpen in a small amount you will get exactly the same results ...also , if progressive frame
check off alternate scan pattern (no check mark) , and if doing any resizing- use best instead of good ..

and video quality to 31

[earlneath]

Maybe it's down to the difference between a TFT and a CRT display? Have you tried what the respective outputs look like on a telly?

If you get no answers here this sounds lika a good question for the forum on creative cow.

[sfxwe]

@BJ_M

Hehe, I knew you would answer this post as you seem to be the Vegas / MainConcwpt guru from what I can see from your other responses to the Vegas posts.


I will try the sharpen tip, but what is wierd is I also tried frame serving from Vegas to another encoder and got the same results, which bothers me.

I dont know if I unchecked the alternate scan, I will let you know.

I did use the best instead of good.

I also had the video quality set to 31.

@ earlneath

I transfered the output from the laptop to my computer so the viewing source was the same.


Let me check BJ_Ms setting on the alternate scan, I will report back.

[BJ_M]

oh -- another thing , what where the source of the pictures and what size were they?

[tygrus2000]

I have used the built-in mainconcept encoder in VV4 as well as rendered my project out to uncompressed avi then encoded with TMPGEnc and it was my impression that TMPGEnc was better, more detail sharpness in the photos. I think you will find VV4 has way better control over your project than Ulead does but you could be right about the final encodes.

One thing to think about is that super sharpness isnt everything. Digital pics that are very sharp look amaturish IMO. Look at a film DVD and you will see that scenes are quite soft and not super sharp and they look fine. In fact a little touch of blur can give your project a soft, dreamy feeling.

tygrus

[sfxwe]

Well, I feel like an idiot , I never thought of the sharpen filter even though I have used it on other projects,lol. I just assumed with good pictures I wouldn't need it. So THANKS again BJ-M, lol, you da man.......as always,the sharpen filter did the job. I just love this forum, you guys rock .

A side note: I did a test run with just sharpen, and then a test run with sharpen and the alternate scan unchecked and I did not notice a difference between just the regular sharpen and the sharpen with alternate scan unchecked. Should I really uncheck the 3 boxes for alternate scan?

As for the source pictures, some were from a digital camera and some were regular pics scanned at anywhere from 300 dpi to 1200 dpi depending on the size of the actual photo being used. Some of the photos I used were very very small, like 1 in by 1 in.

[BJ_M]

Should I really uncheck the 3 boxes for alternate scan

you only should if you are doing progressive encoding with a progressive source - you may not notice the diff much with some content (static)

[sfxwe]

Thanks again BJ_M

@ tygrus2000

I agree with you, but these were coming out to blurry, I was loosing to much detail.

LOL, I also tried to frame server it out of Vegas to another encoder, but I was still getting the same results. I am resizing the pics in the slide show, something I normally don't do, and I think this is what is causing my blurr problem. It seems when I do not resize the pics they come out just right without any sharpening.

IMHO Vegas is so much better than Ulead, and it is so much eaiser to use, so I wasn't gonna switch over to ulead :P , no way, no how, not ever, lol.