Best settings/software for adding still images to AVI?

[duffkegs]

I've created a decent DVD project that included many still images, but the images aren't nearly as crisp as those displayed directly from my digicam. Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to include still images in my projects? Titles produced by Studio 7 look great, but the still images are a little blocky. Does one editing package do a better job than others? The source images are 2046x1536. Should I shrink the pictures to DV resolution with PhotoDeluxe or something before inserting them?

Mike
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P4-1.8G/WinXP/Studio 7/Pioneer A03/ATI AIW

[resnullius]

well i mostly know th adobe products and have been rather content with them... i'd therefore sugest either premiere or after fx as both can do this you don't need to resize the pictures first with these as they can do it very well.

[Escatonic]

I don't know if this will be of any help, but if you want to include stills (as in a slide show), save the images from the digi-cam in a non-lossy format (.tif, .bmp, for example) as each modification to a lossy format (.jpg) degrades the image. I have found that to my eye that images should be about 5% brighter in video than on a monitor to look the same. I suggest resampling to the appropriate size (for SVCD/PAL it is 704 X 576 pixels, for example) and THEN importing them into your project. There is no visible distinction between any of the serious image editors when this function is performed since video will not display them as well as a computer monitor anyway. There are a number of free editors that are set up for batch processing (IRFAN does a good job of batch processing) if you have a lot that need resizing. Another note: the PAL aspect ration is 11/9 for SVCD. There is a shareware program called "bmp2avi" that spits out a fair .avi of a slide show, albeit with no transitions or sound. Good luck!