Still jpg photos are blurry in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4

[Newbie7546]

Hi everyone,

Please help!  I am somewhat new to Adobe Premiere Pro and have been pretty much self-taught.  I recently put together a wedding video for a friend and added in some still images.  For the life of me, I cannot figure out why when I export the video, the images come up blurry.  I've tried everything--deinterlace, do a frame hold on each of the pictures (on the in point), etc.  I would really appreciate any advice about this--maybe I'm missing something obvious?  I've attached a screen shot of what a typical image looks like once I've exported the video.  Thanks in advance!

-E

[shooternz]

What was your Project setting?

What size is the still image?

What did you export as ? (file type and setting)

What was your video footage? (type /camera etc)

[Newbie7546]

I've attached a screen shot of my project settings--is this what you are asking about?

This particular image is 2400 x 1600 (all of the images are really high quality like this one)

Export Settings: Video Codec is set to Animation, 29.97 fps, NO optimize stills, 720 x 477 (same as video input size)

Video Footage: Sony Camera, MiniDV tapes, Widescreen SD

Huntrex--thank you for the info on never having to deinterlace a photo.  In answer to your question--yes, I am using the motion effects for the pictures, but I have to zoom out on all of my pictures to make sure they fit on the same size screen as the video.

I hope I've answered all these questions correctly!

[shooternz]

The Project settings are the ones you setup your New Project as  (usually a preset)

720 x477 seems a bit unusual for miniDV ?

Are you on a MAC?

[Newbie7546]

Oops, sorry.  It looks like it was 720 x 480...does that sound right?  And yes, I'm on a mac.

[the_wine_snob]

For resizing still images, in PS, prior to Import into PrPro, this ARTICLE will help you automate that process, and explain why bigger is not better in this instance.

Good luck, and hope that something helps,

Hunt

[Newbie7546]

Hi Hunt,

Unfortunately, I just tried that and the same problem still prevails.  UGH.  Any other suggestions as to what the heck I'm doing wrong?

[the_wine_snob]

OK, a couple of questions here:

Where/how are you determining the image degradation? Is this via a DVD-Video, played on a CRT TV, or are you using a DVD software player and looking on your computer's higher-rez monitor? Other?

If you are viewing in the Program Monitor in PrPro, have you Rendered your Timeline? What is the Program Monitor set to for Magnification and Quality? I recommend using 100% and Highest (though some get better results with Automatic, but not that many).

You've resized your images to match more closely your Project's Preset Frame Size, and Optimize Stills is OFF. Is this correct?

When you resized your still images, did they start out as JPEG, or did you have maybe the camera RAW files to work from? Did you resize the images and then Save_As JPEG once more?

I use a lot of animated material that comes to me as MOV [Animation], and this material is excellent in a DVD-Video. Most is Exported from 3D animation programs. The MOV [Animated] has proved to be a good combo format/CODEC, especially if the artist is on a Mac. PrPro (on my PC) works with these images nicely.

Hope that there is something in the answers, that will point someone in the right direction.

Hunt

[Newbie7546]

Hi Bill,

I am using the Program Monitor in PrPro to view the video (set to High Quality).  However, I have also created the final video and viewed it on my HD Sony tv.  All of the pictures are still blurry.  Yes, I have rendered my timeline.  Yes, optimize stills is still off.  The images that I recieved from our professional photographer were in jpg format, so I've tried saving them as .psd and .jpg once edited to be the correct size.

Any ideas?  Sorry it took so long to reply...I got caught up in grad school work, but have a short break to try and tackle this problem again.  Thank you for any help you can give me.

-E

[Guest]

Hi E_

I have embedded photos in my videos and not had the result blurry, but was working in HD.  Just a thought since it is obviously not an obvious solution from the data, when you say you resized them to the correct size and they were still blurry, what size did you edit them to?

Cheers, Ian

[Newbie7546]

Hi Ian,

I resized them to 720x480 (per Hunt's recommendation)

[rico1931]

I just did a project and put in still images as .jpeg and no problem here... are you sure the pictures weren't taken blurry already?

[Newbie7546]

No, the pictures were of high high quality from a professional photographer.

[Curt Wrigley]

We may need to look at your end to end workflow.  It appears they are being interlaced.  Your photos should not be blurry or stair stepped as in your example.  But they wont look like 10MP high res images either,  TV is only 720X480; so they will be a bit softer than the originals.  But shouldnt be blrry or stairstepped.

Are your titles blurry or stairstepped also?

What sequence preset are you using?

Are you changing any settings when you add photos to the timeline?

What settings are you choosing to export?

What device are you viewing on?  (TV, LCD, ...)

[Newbie7546]

I've attached 2 screenshots of what the pictures look like in my video.  I hope this answers some of the questions you had.

Yes, I guess the titles are a bit stairstepped as well...hadn't really noticed that until now.

I apologize, but what do you mean by sequence preset?  I'm still rather new to all of this.

I'm not changing any settings when I add the photos to the timeline (only the amount of time I want them to show up for)

Export Settings: Video Codec is set to Animation, 29.97 fps, NO optimize stills, 720 x 477 (same as video input size)

Video Footage: Sony Camera, MiniDV tapes, Widescreen SD

I'm viewing it on a Toshiba flat screen TV (which we happen to have set up as our computer monitor)

[Newbie7546]

Here is another screenshot...hopefully a bit bigger so you can see more closely what I'm talking about

[Newbie7546]

Here's a screenshot of what I think the sequence settings you are talking about are:

[Curt Wrigley]

It looks to me like you are doing everything right.   If you export your project to tape (for example) and play on a tv, do they also look bad?  Im trying to remove export variables to see if the problem is export settings.

Can you post the two original photogragh jpgs to see if we can re-creeate this?

[Newbie7546]

Yes, it still looks blurry on the tv.  Here are the two images:

[Curt Wrigley · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the photos.

I used them as is in the same sequence preset at you (DV NTSC Widescreen)   - Except I am on PC.  I just used the Motion/Scale to scale them to 32%

I exported to H264 at DV resolution. (attached)  I dont get the stair stepping and I think the sharpness is about what you can expect from SD video.

[Newbie7546]

Hi Curt,

Ok, so do you have any idea what I should try different?  Different export settings?  Or am I just stuck with stairstepping photos?

[Curt Wrigley]

I would be curious if you do the same export if you get the same results.   I choose H.264 / DV Widescreen. 

[Newbie7546]

THANK YOU!!   Wow!  Amazing...that worked...finally.

Three more questions:

1. What does it mean to switch between lower first, upper first, and progressive in the field type option?

2. Is there anyway for me to get around the look that my pictures are a bit out of proportion?  They look squished to me.

3. What is the difference between these different aspects:

     a. D1/DV NTSC Widescreen 16:9 (1.2121)

     b. D1/DV NTSC (0.9091)

[Curt Wrigley]

Newbie7546 wrote:

THANK YOU!!   Wow!  Amazing...that worked...finally.

Three more questions:

1. What does it mean to switch between lower first, upper first, and progressive in the field type option?

2. Is there anyway for me to get around the look that my pictures are a bit out of proportion?  They look squished to me.

3. What is the difference between these different aspects:

     a. D1/DV NTSC Widescreen 16:9 (1.2121)

     b. D1/DV NTSC (0.9091)

1.  Lower or upper indicates interlaced footage and which field gets displayed first.  Progressive means not interlaced footage (full frame)

2. When in the encoder screen click on the output tab and you will see what it will looklike before you encode it.   If the PARs for the seq and export are the same you should get sqwished.    Adjsuting the par to match will fix the sqwishing.  (par = pixel aspect ratio)

3.  The # i (  ) tells you the pixel  aspect ratio)   Why so many exist is a complex issue.  It has to do with some pixels being square and others retangular

[Guest]

Hi -E,

From your last post, it sounds like you have a solution with the different output selection, but if you are still curious, I'm confused by your quoted settings.

<<Export Settings: Video Codec is set to Animation, 29.97 fps, NO optimize stills, 720 x 477 (same as video input size)

Video Footage: Sony Camera, MiniDV tapes, Widescreen SD>>

MiniDV tapes implies that your video is in SD format, 720x480 (which is sort of implied in your Export settings).

Widescreen SD implies that you are aiming to get the output to SD in a 16:9 format, 854x480

Your posted photos look stretched and if you are happy with the video, then I suggest that CS4 is converting the video to Widescreen without distortion and stretching your photos to Widescreen without converting them (i.e. keeping the same number of pixels and just stretching them to the new size).  If you want to try another experiment, either crop or convert your photos before importing them to CS4 so that they are  854x480 and then just produce your video the way that you were doing when your troubles started.

I had HDV video, which comes in at 1440x1080.  To add photos, I cropped my hi res photos to 3840x2160 ( i.e. 2 times 1920x1080), resized the result 50% to 1920x1080 and then imported them.  In Encore I requested SD output (720x480) and the result was undistorted.  So CS4 was happy to rescale the video differently to the stills.  This experience is why I suggest using Widescreen aspect ratio for the photos.   Like you I am self taught and for myself, not good at absorbing the info in the manuals.  Another video software suite I used to use would also exibit Pixel Aspect Ratio problems.  If you took a frame of video and exported it as a still, then reimported it, the result would be blurry.  It turned out that sure enough, it would export the picture as a crisp 720x480 image, and because of the pixel aspect ratio of standard DV being 0.9091, it needed 720x534 for stills being imported. If I took the ouput stretched it to 534 and re-inserted it, you could not distinguish the video from the still.  A royal pain at the time.

Anyway enough rambling.  Worth a try if your new found si=olution gets you  out of a jam but you aren't yet trully happy.

Cheers, Ian