Fuzzy Still Pictures

J

John Kelly

Hello,

Below my sig is one of the messages I referred to and a second where REHAN
(WILL TRY HARDER NEXT TIME) tried to convince everyone that he was right
and I wrong !!! A selective memory and re-write the facts where they don't
suit him

You will note that he replies that I and Jen are right on this (We knew we
were) Jen Rowe's remarks exactly match what I had said prior to her
comments...and you will note that they exactly match what I have said
elsewhere in this thread.

REHAN (WILL TRY HARDER NEXT TIME) and his HOTLY DISPUTED Baiting remarks
bite the dust again (They made him an MVP though)

--
John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
Truthfully, I am not an Instant Expert, But I know someone who is going to
have to try a LOT harder
\|||/
(oo)
----------ooO-(_)-Ooo-------------
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work


From: "Rehan" <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Combining avi movies with jpg photo slideshow
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 10:30:24 +0100
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OK I was talking from my back side... when I said cropping wont work :)

John and you are right on this.

--
Rehan
www.rehanfx.org - get more effects and transitions for movie maker





Jen Rowe said:
John's reply is correct. The problem you're facing is that images are
square
pixels and video is typically non-square pixels. It sounds like you want
to
output as 16:9 PAL which will have a resolution of 720x576 but those
pixels
are actually wider than they are taller so that when rendered they make up
the 16x9 frame.

However your images will have square pixels so you will need to
resize/crop
your picture so your resolution matches the 16:9 ratio. As you're using
PAL
you're better off resizing/cropping your images to 1024x576. (that way it
only gets resized horizontally by MovieMaker). As John said you're
probably
better off cropping the 16:9 area of the picture you're interested in and
then resizing that crop to the 1024x576 resolution. If you've done it
right
nothing should look stretched in your image.
Regards
Jen
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.

"Hyde the darker side" <"Hyde" the darker (e-mail address removed)>
wrote in message
Click to expand...


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Subject: Re: cannot burn cd need help
From: "John Kelly" <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
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Dear John, you have a tendency to incite flame wars on this newsgroup...
Click to expand...

Ha !!! Wow, isn't that what I said to you ages back ???

Oh yes i remember that argument very well... it is particularly
interesting
because you now claim that it was me who was corrected in that argument...
lol
Click to expand...

LOL ???? Yes I do, but not only do I claim it, I can prove it...In fact a
whole section of my website was created just because of your continued
stupid
remarks along the lines of....I don't think Movie Maker does do a size x
size
(even though it says it does)....I think it actually does Mywhim of the
moment
by another whim of the moment....lets do a test and lets do another test,
lets
not believe what Media Player says the size by size is....I think its this
by
this (In a desperate attempt to prove a point that every one else was
having a
good laugh at).......would you like me to dig out the word for word remarks
you
made ????? Why were you laughing ??? or was it a nervous laugh???
But listen would you consider this to be helpful or relevant to the OP in
any way? If you now want to open this argument again please start a new
thread an invite us there.
Click to expand...

I did not think your remarks were at all helpful to the OP I am still
wondering why you did it.

As we now know, my remarks were relevant (I just answered the question as
it
was presented by the OP)

It was you with your usually belittling remarks working on a play of my
words
"Fix-It" that you used when you again started a flame war, in this thread,
telling in your often used negative way that a certain thing cannot be
achieved...remember??? you had decided that the original poster was doing a
certain thing (which was wrong) and then wove a story around it so as to
make
yourself look good. You started it...not me. You were wrong with those
remarks,
as usual....pity the less informed who have to come for help are exposed to
such an opinionated person as your self.....should I remind you of the
little
event only a few days back when you were making it up as you
went....telling a
novice how Windows created a program entry in the registry in a certain
position....It was a total load of rubbish with no foundation in the real
world
at all and if you had not been corrected at least one novice would have
believed everything you said....should I mention these URL's that you like
to
throw around....I can't remember the exact subject (but it will be easy to
find) When you were again corrected you bring in a URL that you claimed
supported your argument...I went and had a look at it just in case you had
for
once found a URL that did prove your arguments...and I was right
again....not
only did the URL not prove your point, it was not even connected to the
subject
at hand.!!!!!

It seems then, rehan, if someone dares to correct you then that is
considered
by you to be the start of a flame war (I know someone else who behaves that
way...52 !!!)....interesting view you have on life. If that is how you want
it
then I guess we are in for a few of your flame wars...because if you do
spin a
story again about how something works ( making it up as you go along ) you
can
expect me to correct you, and if you do decide to invent a scenario that
does
not exist in order to support stupid remarks you can expect me to correct
you
there as well.

Thank you for confirming that this is another of your flame wars by the
way.

--
John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
\|||/
(o o)
----------ooO-(_)-Ooo-------------
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work
 
A

Al Stu

Rehan,

I have a little exercise for you now.

Using one of your screen capture images, import it into WMM collections then
place it on the time-line. Make WMM full screen and make the preview window
as large as possible. Now compare the preview quality of the image on the
time-line to the one in the collections.

If the still image fuzziness issue is due to WMM changing the pixel aspect
ratio then shouldn't the preview of the image in collections suffer the
fuzziness fate when previewed in WMM? In my testing it did not.

Now take it a step further and save it as a DV-AVI movie and compare the
play back in WMP with the WMM time-line image preview. Do they have about
the same quality (level of fuzziness)?

Seems to me WMM may be saving the lower resolution time-line preview image
in DV-AVI movies, instead of a higher resolution image like it does for WMV
movies.

At this point I'm leaning more toward this being a bug/flaw in WMM than the
result of a DV-AVI pixel aspect ratio specification.
 
R

Rehan

Hi Al

So can you confirm that the DV AVI output of still images is fuzzier than a
WMV output of 640x480 size?

Using one of your screen capture images, import it into WMM collections
then place it on the time-line. Make WMM full screen and make the preview
window as large as possible. Now compare the preview quality of the image
on the time-line to the one in the collections.

If the still image fuzziness issue is due to WMM changing the pixel aspect
ratio then shouldn't the preview of the image in collections suffer the
fuzziness fate when previewed in WMM? In my testing it did not.
Click to expand...

The preview in the timline is significantly different from the preview in
the Collections. This point is fully covered by Dean Rowe in his previous
blog entries. In the preview the images are fed through a DirectShow graph
that resizes them to 320x240 always. This is so that memory allocations etc
are minimum and the performance of the preview is optimal.

Seems to me WMM may be saving the lower resolution time-line preview image
in DV-AVI movies, instead of a higher resolution image like it does for
WMV movies.
Click to expand...

There you go. So you can see my point about the DV AVI being not suitable
for still pictures. As far as the explanation of this observation goes, you
have a different theory. Although I dont think your theory is correct...
because that would be too big a flaw in movie maker; I am prepared to test
your theory. So if we have two copies of one of my images one of size
320x240 and the other of 640x480, and render to DV AVI. According to your
theory the output should look the same? Is that a fair test? Try it.
 
A

Al Stu

Rehan said:
Hi Al

So can you confirm that the DV AVI output of still images is fuzzier than
a WMV output of 640x480 size?



The preview in the timline is significantly different from the preview in
the Collections. This point is fully covered by Dean Rowe in his previous
blog entries. In the preview the images are fed through a DirectShow graph
that resizes them to 320x240 always. This is so that memory allocations
etc are minimum and the performance of the preview is optimal.
Click to expand...

I already know this but the point is not the reduced time-line preview
quality, but rather the fact that WMM can display the image clearly and
therefore a) the fuzziness must not be due to changing pixel aspect ratio of
still images. b) WMM should be able to render the same clear image in a
DV-AVI movie that it can in a WMV movie. After all, in order to maintain
correct proportionality the pixel aspect ratio will have to be the same for
both, will it not?
There you go. So you can see my point about the DV AVI being not suitable
for still pictures. As far as the explanation of this observation goes,
you have a different theory. Although I dont think your theory is
correct... because that would be too big a flaw in movie maker; I am
prepared to test your theory. So if we have two copies of one of my images
one of size 320x240 and the other of 640x480, and render to DV AVI.
According to your theory the output should look the same? Is that a fair
test? Try it.
Click to expand...

Nothing is too big a flaw in WMM, 27th frame drop is huge flaw.

No I do not believe that would be an adequate demonstration, although I'm
not sure what would be yet either. But as I said I'm still leaning more
toward a WMM bug/flaw than issue with change of pixel aspect ratio.
 
B

Bob [MVP]

It's the NTSC (or PAL) digital video standard that
specifies a horizontal resolution of 720 pixels
per line -- whether it's compressed using DV or
MPEG-2 encoding.

--
-Bob
_______________________________
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Media Center Edition
http://www.microsoft.com/ehome
 
A

Al Stu - MVP

Number of pixels is not pixel aspect ratio though.

What I'm getting at is that it is being claimed there is a DV-AVI pixel
aspect ratio specification. I have not been able to find such a
specification so have requested source of info the claim is being based on.
If you know of such a source it would be much appreciated.

Can you shed any light on the issue of still photos being fuzzy when save as
"DV-AVI (NTSC)" (*.avi) movie, but clear when saved as "High Quality Video
(NTSC)" (*wmv) movie?

TIA
 
R

Rehan

First of all congratulations of becoming an MVP. Is this for Digital Media?

What I'm getting at is that it is being claimed there is a DV-AVI pixel
aspect ratio specification. I have not been able to find such a
specification so have requested source of info the claim is being based
on. If you know of such a source it would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Fair enough.

The standard spec is perhaps not available for public viewing free of charge
(Cost of obtaining a copy from the standards body is like half a grand). The
following URL contains all the details about the spec though:
http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-tech.html

Can you explain how can a video frame of 4:3 or 16:9 ratio can fit in the
standard fixed size of 720x480 pixels without using non-square pixel
encoding? This page on MSDN explains how non-square pixel encoding works:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...mencode/htm/preservingthepixelaspectratio.asp

Btw, Have you read the Dean Rowe blog entry I pointed out before. I ask it
since you are asking the questions which are covered by him.
http://blogs.msdn.com/deanro/archive/2005/04/19/409563.aspx



--
Rehan
MS MVP -- Digital Media
www.rehanfx.org - get transitions and effects for Windows Movie Maker
 
A

Al Stu - MVP

Thanks, though MVP status isn't something new, I've been a MVP for quite
some time.



Yes I've been to all those links, still nothing that points to a DV-AVI
pixel aspect ratio specification standard.



The display device that has square or non square pixels, the DV-AVI file, so
far as I can determine, and you have not shown otherwise thus far, has
neither square nor non square pixels. It just has pixels, 720 of them by
480 of them.
 
B

Bob [MVP]

The display device that has square or non square pixels, the DV-AVI file, so
far as I can determine, and you have not shown otherwise thus far, has
neither square nor non square pixels. It just has pixels, 720 of them by
480 of them.
Click to expand...


That's correct. So if you import a 640x480 pixel image,
the horizontal resolution needs to be upsampled from 640
to 720. THAT is where the "fuzzy" artifact comes from.

If you save the same image to a 640x480 WMV video, the
resolution is preserved. So it looks better on your
PC than the DV-AVI video.

--
-Bob
_______________________________
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Media Center Edition
http://www.microsoft.com/ehome
 
A

Al Stu - MVP

Two problems with that.

1) Upsampling does not occur on images with larger pixel foot print, say
2160x1440. Yet they are still fuzzy if saved as DV-AVI, but clear if saved
as WMV.

2) Isn't "High Quality Video (NTSC) also 720x480? Yet the image is not
fuzzy.

So upsampling is obviously not the cause of the fuzziness.
 
R

Rehan

1) Upsampling does not occur on images with larger pixel foot print, say
2160x1440. Yet they are still fuzzy if saved as DV-AVI, but clear if
saved as WMV.
Click to expand...

It does. The first thing Movie Maker does is that it resizes the input
images to the output display size. So when saving as DV AVI an image of
2160x1440 would be resized to 640x480 as the first step. (see the dshow
graph on dean rowe's blog). The reason it is 640x480 is because that is the
"display size" being the 4:3 ratio. After all the processing in Movie Maker,
the encoding step resamples this image to 720x480. This second resampling
(upsampling) is where the non-square pixel encoding happens.

2) Isn't "High Quality Video (NTSC) also 720x480? Yet the image is not
fuzzy.
Click to expand...

It is !!! Compare it with the render to 640x480 wmv. But it is less than DV
AVI since in WMV encoding you can control sharpness (by specifying it in the
custom profile). I would guess that the profiles you tested with, use higher
sharpness value. Nevertheless it will never match the a square pixel
encoding profie of size 640x480.


Regards

--
Rehan
MS MVP -- Digital Media
www.rehanfx.org - get transitions and effects for Windows Movie Maker
 
P

PapaJohn \(MVP\)

A

Al Stu - MVP

Windows Movie Maker's inability to save images in the "DV-AVI (NTSC)" format
with the same clarity as "High Quality Video (NTSC)" is a flaw of Windows
Movie Maker. It is not due to fundamental nature of DV-AVI or the
specifications, or because it has to resample images or alter pixel aspect
ratio. It's a flaw with how Windows Movie Maker deals with the image.
There is no technical reason images saved in the "DV-AVI (NTSC)" format
can't be as clear as when saved in the "High Quality Video (NTSC)" format.

And that's where it ends for me.
 
J

John Kelly

My God,

Do you think that when you buy a larger screen TV that the dots get
bigger??? LOLOLOLOLOLOL

The "dots" on a tv screen know absolutely zero about aspect ratios...thats
ZERO All that happens is an electron beam of a particular nature passes
over them...that nature being Intensity and Colour.....

Magnifying glass...lol What a scream....

--
John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
Truthfully, I am not an Instant Expert, But I know someone who is going to
have to try a LOT harder
\|||/
(oo)
----------ooO-(_)-Ooo-------------
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work
 
J

John Kelly

Well Said.

There is a standards definition by the way. I can't give you the link...I
don't have it anymore....

When you move away from Movie Maker to more advanced software you will see
that a lot of the arguments are really very stupid. I gave up being nice to
these people a long time back as you know :)

MovieDV for example gives the ability to modify the non-rectangular pixels.
When you do that you can see that the colour of the pixel changes
slightly....its because its a sample of a wider range of pixels. Here are a
few of the pre-defined settings....


Pal D1/DV Square Pixel 720 x 576
Pal D1/DV 720 x 576
Pal D1/DV Square Pixel, 768 x 576
Pal DV 720 x 576 optimised for 3D
Pal DV 720 x 576 optimised for Titel
D4 1440 x 1024
Cineon Full 3656 x 2664

All but the last one are DV and can be saved as AVI with the actual content
formatted according to your own needs. There are perhaps 60 - 65 predefined
settings, most of which are DV. Where you see the D1 or D4 or D16 they are
the names of the standards within the defining documentation.

Its Movie Maker and its very limited range of options and perhaps a belief
that the world is no larger than that that cause these people in here to
believe that they are the ONLY range available as standards. They are
incapable of accepting (even when told by Microsoft programmers) that their
view is wrong. You will I am sure have noticed the positive and VERY
definite statements by Rehan that he has a clear and quite obviously WRONG
view of what Movie Maker does and what DV actually is. Their inability to
provide you with documents to support their "Guesswork" brought a smile as
well....and these are the MVP's for Digital Media....they should stay with
the basics as far as some are concerned...they look far less stupid that
way...Hint ask REHAN what a COM object is......A little knowledge (someone
told him the name) and that's why he gained the title INSTANT EXPERT

I think you revealed that you were an MVP about one day to early :) Never
Mind

--
John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
Truthfully, I am not an Instant Expert, But I know someone who is going to
have to try a LOT harder
\|||/
(oo)
----------ooO-(_)-Ooo-------------
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work
 

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