Quality of video is very poor

[Guest]

Can someone tell me why the quality of the photos in a WMM video I made are
so poor? The original photos are of very good quality (2048 x 1536 - 24 bit)
and were taken with a digital camera. I found working with the program a lot
of fun, but was very disappointed with the photos. The sound is fine; the
transitions and effects worked fine. It seems very inconsistent. Any help
would ve appreciated. Thanks.

Walter

 

[PapaJohn]

high quality DVD video is fixed by MPEG-2 standards at 720x480 pixels....
that's a lot less than your images, so part of your issue is to determine
how good a quality you can get when making a video.

a Photo Story may be better for your needs... it all depends on where you're
heading with your videos.

Website references are to www.papajohn.org

PapaJohn

 

[Guest]

I too am trying to make the playback quality of a DVD better. My daughter
has used our camcorder for a school project. She has edited it and added
titles, however the playback quality is very poor compared to connecting the
camcorder to a TV directly. I am not sure it is good enough to show to her
school.

I understand from your answer Papajohn that there are limitations as to how
good the quality can be. But I don't understand the rest of your answer. Is
it possible to improve the quality - if so what do I do?

What is a photostory? Would that improve the quality of the playback or is
it something different entirely?

Treehouse

 

[PapaJohn]

See the Photo Story 3 section of my website... it's different add applies
only to still pictures.

If you can bypass the disc/DVD entirely, you can play higher quality such as
High Def content if you can connect your computer to a hig screen directly.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately I (and my laptop) won't be present when
my daughter's school play her video, so it has to be on DVD. I have bought a
firewire cable today and so will try it to see if I can improve the picture
quality. Any other suggestions gratefully received.
Thanks

 

[RalfG]

If you are watching the edited video on your laptop the DVD resolution
images will naturally look poor because the computer has to interpolate the
lower resolution of the video on the LCD display. LCDs only look best at
their native (full) resolution. TV resolution is only ~720x480 and on top of
that the display is interlaced, not progressive like the computer display so
even more electronic fudging has to be done within the PC to deinterlace the
video data in the DVD files.

If the burned DVD has poor image quality when viewed on a TV that's a
different matter. You cannot increase the resolution but you can increase
the video encoding Bit rate. The higher the bit rate you use the more image
data that is preserved in the video file. This will increase the file sizes
however, if that is a consideration. If you are working with still images
you might also get better looking results if you resize the images down to
720x480 with image editing software before you put them into the video.
Movie Maker's resizing/resampling algorythms might not be as good as
dedicated photo editing software would have.

 

[Guest]

I just made my first video...transitions are great...I'm happy with the thing
in general...but when I posted it to YouTube and to MySpaceTV the quality was
a JOKE. This was a high quality video of my buddy who is ... oh man, what an
embaressment... so I went online.
Now I know to try for the MPEG4, AVI format..etcetc. Well.. how do I save
the video on WMM into that kind of format? I have looked everywhere in the
program and it's all just too uncooperative.

I really need to fix this video. I have to make 5 more... and trust me... I
have to fix the quality. It needs to be CRISP..not blurry.
(video is on my page...www.myspace.com/westendmgmnt)

I'm at a loss.

Please, please help.

 

[John Inzer]

I just made my first video...transitions are great...I'm happy with
the thing in general...but when I posted it to YouTube and to
MySpaceTV the quality was a JOKE. This was a high quality video of
my buddy who is ... oh man, what an embaressment... so I went online.
Now I know to try for the MPEG4, AVI format..etcetc. Well.. how do I
save the video on WMM into that kind of format? I have looked
everywhere in the program and it's all just too uncooperative.

I really need to fix this video. I have to make 5 more... and trust
me... I have to fix the quality. It needs to be CRISP..not blurry.
(video is on my page...www.myspace.com/westendmgmnt)

I'm at a loss.

Please, please help.

=============================
Maybe the following article will help.

From Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story 3
PapaJohn's Guide to YouTube
http://tinyurl.com/2eh3d3


--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[RalfG]

The default file type WMM creates is WMV. You have to do some experimenting
(save to computer) to find which settings will give you the final results
you want.

The options you pick in Finish the movie will affect the quality of the
video. For instance when you pick "Send to the Web" the encoding bitrate,
hence video quality, is set according to how fast of a connection you
select. Of the 3 default choices DSL would be far and away the best
(384kbps), with the other two using much lower bitrates, 48kbps or 38kbps,
which result in smaller file sizes but much lower quality. You do get more
options to choose from when you click on "Show more choices". Those will
allow you to encode the video to a certain file size (best fit) or in "Other
settings" allows you to pick from a wider range of bitrates and resolutions.
I usually use "High quality video (small)" for sending clips in email. The
videos from my digital camera are only 320x240 resolution anyway. That
setting employs a variable bitrate formula which gives good sound and
picture quality. I can reduce a 20MB .MOV clip from the camera (320x240, 3.5
minutes long) down to about 2.5MB in WMV format without lowering the
resolution. I use the Save to my Computer option and attach the videos to
email manually.

Using higher bitrates increases the video quality but also makes
proportionately larger files. Lower bitrates reduce the video and sound
quality but also reduce the file size a lot. You can use whichever setting
suits you best and still fits the restrictions set by YouTube or whatever
online video site. You don't have to upload the video immediately, you can
save it to your computer instead and manually upload it later when you've
got the final result you want.

Some examples:

Starting with a 23 second MPG video, 320x240 pixels, encoded at various
bitrates.

"Video for Broadband -150kbps", video size is 416Kbytes, picture is
adequate but sound is a bit distorted

"High quality video (small) -variable bitrate", video size is up to
673Kbytes but picture and sound are both good.

"Video for Broadband -512kbps" video size is 1.275Mbytes, sound and picture
are both very good.

I you're doing a slide show you might want to pick a higher setting with
640x480 resolution, or even 720x480 (NTSC television) or 720x576 (PAL
television) for putting onto DVD/VCD. It is possible to increase the screen
size of videos, for example from 320x240 to 640x480, but the quality will
suffer. The bigger video won't look any better than if the viewer just
increased the size of the 320x240 original in Media player to 200%, but it
will make the video file much larger. In short it usually isn't worth doing.

 

[Guest]

I appreciate the answer but my question was.... how do I format a video I
took directly from my camera..no DVD.. I downloaded it direct from the camera
tape...INTO MPEG4 or AVI format with Windows Movie Maker???

I also watched the same YouTube video on the computer at work...not on my
laptop at home... and it's blurred. Not as good as the original or other
video segments I see that are crisp and clean.

HOW DO I SAVE MY MOVIE MAKER VIDEO PROJECTS INTO AVI FORMAT? You can't do
it from the WMM program, can you???

?????
c4ligrl

 

[John Inzer]

HOW DO I SAVE MY MOVIE MAKER VIDEO PROJECTS INTO AVI FORMAT? You
can't do it from the WMM program, can you???

===========================
The screaming is not necessary.

Yes, you can save as .avi in Movie Maker.

To save as an .avi movie file...
(and several other options)
Type...Ctrl+P to open the Save Movie Wizard /
Choose...My Computer /
Next /
Enter a Name and a Save Location /
Next /
Show More Choices /
Other Settings /
Open the drop window and choose...DV-AVI /
Next /
Wait while the movie is saved /
Finish...

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[RalfG]

Isn't converting the video back to DV-AVI format just the same as capturing
the video direct from the tape to the hardrive in the first place? I could
be wrong but my understanding is that the DV-AVI format uses only specific
CODECs and creates relatively large files, so it isn't exactly the same
thing as the highly compressed AVIs you can get using say XviD and MP3 or
other such CODECs. Seems like a redundant step so just wondering.

 

[Graham Hughes]

Various reasons for saving back as a dv.avi.

You may have edited the mvie and want to archive a high quality copy, which
is now not the same as the original. This may be saved to hdd, dvd or back
to tape.

You may want to make various versions of your movie, such as compressed for
the web, more compressed to email, make a dvd to watch on the tv. By
starting each step with the dv.avi you retain as much quality as you can for
each seperate movie you make.

dv.avi is lossless, so each time you save it you get an exact copy, each
time you save an mpeg or other lossy compressed format you compress it
again, so the quality will reduce, albeit slightly with some types.

All dvd authoring apps will import a dv.avi to make a dvd, few will accept a
wmv.

Talking of avi is no good, as avi is just a wrapper and unfortunately many
people don't realise this. It means nothing without the preceeding bit,
such as the dv/divx/xvid/mpeg1/mpeg2/mjpeg or the hundreds of other types.

 

[RalfG]

I didn't say the video came from a DVD, I was talking about it being in DVD
resolution. That is the maximum resolution that WMM can output, ie. 720x480
pixels in the NTSC television standard, regardless of what the input
resolution of the source video is. The taped resolution is likely lower than
that anyway. That resolution (720x480) would look sharp on a standard TV
but will be blurry when watched in full screen mode on an LCD or CRT
monitor. It should look sharp and crisp if you watch it in a window at its
actual size though.

The WMV video format is already MPEG4, so you don't neccessarily need the
files to be AVIs if WMV is accepted where you upload them. You do need to
use the highest bitrate possible when you encode the file to get the best
video quality. That means many of the presets in WMM are not going to be
good enough, especially the default "Send to Web" settings. All of them
output the video at 320x240 but only the DSL preset uses a half decent
bitrate (384kbps). The other two presets are meant to create very small
files, not very good ones. If you pick the option to "Show more choices" you
get acces to more settings for broadband, allowing up to 512kbps bitrate at
320x240 resolution. I don't know if myspace allows videos that are 640x480
or higher.

You could convert the WMV files into AVI format, there is software that you
can get to do this, but that wouldn't improve the video quality.

Looking at the videos on the myspace link that you posted it is plain that
those videos are pretty low resolution ... only 320x240 perhaps. As well as
using the lower resolution (which in itself throws away much of the image
detail) these videos were also encoded using quite a low bitrate, which
throws away even more image detail just to get small file sizes. That's the
main reason why the videos look bad. On top of that, the files were
apparently converted again after you uploaded them, into Flash format, which
means even more image degradation was caused, possibly without you having
any control over the final conversion process.

The biggest single factor affecting quality that I could see in those videos
was the low bitrate. Even a low resolution video can look crisp and clear,
but you have to use a high enough bitrate when you create the file in order
to retain the detail from the original video. If your files get converted
into Flash videos after you upload them to Myspace, YouTube etc, then there
is not much, if anything, you can do if the Flash video ends up being poorer
quality than the WMV or AVI file you uploaded.

 

[RalfG]

I can see where saving a master copy of a video in a lossless format is
beneficial.. I do my photo editing/archiving in TIF format.., it just seemed
that people were using DV-AVI and AVI interchangeably. To an extent it is
true, but even if DV-AVI is a type of AVI file, the terms aren't
synonymous.

I don't have a use for the format... yet... but just to get an idea of how
DV-AVI compared in size to AVI or WMV, I converted a 1MB MPG1 file. As
variable bitrate WMV file the video clip was reduced to 416Kbytes in size,
but when converted to DV-AVI it exploded to over 80Megabytes.

 

[Graham Hughes]

I also use tif.
People do as you say use avi, when they mean dv.avi, divx.avi or any of the
others, which is a real pain, but then most people also don't realise any
different - why should they?
It is no use going from wmv to dv.avi, unless you wish to keep changing and
resaving a video file, as once the quality is ost, the saving to mpeg1 say,
then you will never get it back, you'll just end up with the same file but
larger in size, as you found out. dv.avi is not a highly compressed format,
being around 5.1, with mpeg2 dvd at highest quality being around 20.1.


The ony real use of saving to dv.avi is if you capture digital video as
dv.avi in the first place, or if you have an app which won't accept any
other format.