Adding still pics to video with ULead Studio 6

[jancy]

I've been trying to make an xvcd with Ulead Studio 6 (352X240 @ 2300Kbs). The movie part of it does well enough, but when I add still pictures to the last part of the XVCD, the pictures are very grainy and blotchy. The pictures are 2048 X 1536 resolution taken with a digital camera. I've tried reducing them down to 704 X 480 and 352 X 240 with a photo editor, but they don't look very sharp either when played back. I've looked thru the posts in this section and I can't seem to find that this is a problem with most people, so I'm wondering what I'm missing here...

Essentially, I'm making a XVCD with a movie at the beginning and a slide show at the end. Thanks for answering...

[Steve_h]

You should be able to get good results combining video and still pics. Remember however that you're going down to 352x240 so there is no way you are going to keep the same sharpness. I guess by "grainy and blotchy" you may mean mpeg artifacts. Try this:

1) Set up Video Studio for hi-res such as 640 x 480.
2) Import the original digital camera pictures into VS.
3) Render the VS output to a hi-res, high bit rate video (such as 6kbs).
4) Convert to either (X)SVCD or (X)VCD with TMPGenc.

TMPGenc makes a much better VCD than VS. Also if you look at the results on the computer you will see artifacts that you won't on a TV.