Best resolution to work for making VCD

[miggs]

Hi Im new in this forum and I cannot decide where to post this topic. I just put this here in the newbie section.

Im making a slideshow movie from still pictures of our school activities using Adobe premiere (also importing some graphics from photoshop to the premiere program). I wanted to get a very good result since this movie would be reproduced in VCD format and will be distributed to many people.

My questions are:

1. What is the ideal still picture size I will use to get a non stretched picture or pixelated output in the video?

2. What is the best format and resolution I will use in composing my still images in photoshop and premiere such that if I convert it to VCD I could get a nice result.

I tried resizing all my still images into 352 x 240 size 72 dpi, also making some text and graphics from photoshop using 352 x 240 size 72 dpi, and imported them to adobe premiere using custom size 352 x 240 also. I use this size since it is the VCD resolution I found in the internet.

I render it to mpeg and burned it on CD. When I try to play it on VCD player and view on TV, the images is okay but the transition effects make the images look ugly. Also the texts which has some border and dropshadow effect looks ugly than viewed on PC monitor. The colors too were different.

Please help me.

[the * dude]

ummmmm....

dude you don't need to resize to such low res, vcd format includes full d1 res for still pics!!! i guess thats 740x576... ithink ,

[bugster]

ummmmm....

dude you don't need to resize to such low res, vcd format includes full d1 res for still pics!!! i guess thats 740x576... ithink ,

True, but this only works if you have nothing but still pictures on the VCD. As soon as you add transitions, you get mpeg video and everyting has to be downsized to 352x240!

(BTW, its actually 704x480, for NTSC).

So the solution to getting better quality images and text, is don't use any transitions and so get the higher quality that higher resolution brings. If you MUST use transitions you have to suffer the quality drop.

You might be able to improve things by encodeing to mpeg-1 in Tmpgenc, it is very good for this and its free (for mpeg-1).

[Cornucopia]

Personally, I couldn't give a hoot about transitions. I prefer the hi-rez pix.
I you have to have transitions, one workaround (but a long painstaking one) is this:

Instead of---

[Video]
A, A, A, A->B, B, B, B->C, C, C

or

[Still]
A | B | C (timed or user-advanceable)

try

A | A->B | B | B->C | C (timed only)

where you have "still resolution" on the part where the pictures are static, and "video resolution" on the part where there are transitions.

Note that this doesn't work with continuous audio underneath. If you want that, you have to make it video resolution.

OTOH, you could always make an "XVCD". (See guides)

Scott

[miggs]

Hi, thank you guys for the reply. I will try to play with your suggestions.

I have a set of about 200 still images, JPEG format, some Hi-res, the smaller ones has size 640 x 480 pixels. I need to put transitions between images because I think it's boring to look all 200 static images on TV.

What I did to solve the text problem is making the slideshow video first, rendered as AVI uncompressed. Im thinking I could preserve the quality doing this way, yes the output file is VERY big, but it's okay. Then made the texts in a transparent slide in the photoshop. Then again load the AVI to premiere then "float" the text in the video. That way the texts just float above the video and the video transitions did not bother them. I use the same size 352 x 240 for all the images. The reason I do this is because when I set the premiere to custom VCD resolution 352 x 240, my large still images shoots out of the view of the video. So I worked everything to 352 x 240 to fit my images on the video.

Again I render as mpeg, burn, and test it on TV. I noticed the text's edges is not smooth. I think I can sacrifice the quality of images during transition. But if there'a other way to solve this then I'll be happy. Is it okay to work on higher resolution like DVD size, I guess the transition effect would look smooth when it's at high resolution, then just export or downsize to VCD size?