[MacDV] Re: Creating Slide Shows Part II

[Mark M. Florida]

On Jan 5, 2004, at 7:55 PM, Chuck Kay wrote:

>
> On Jan 4, 2004, at 5:04 PM, sb wrote:
>
>> Apply a 1 pixel vertical blur to the image.
>>
>>  sb
>
> SB, I think I did this but can you describe? thanks!
>
> Thanks to so many of you for the comments. Particularly to Mark 
> Florida for recommending the Still Life Software. It looks very 
> promising. However, I am still having problems. They may not can be 
> solved. Some of your responses said I was going through too many steps 
> or my resolution is too high. I realize all that. I only tried the 
> extra steps because I wasn't satisified w/the results of the simple 
> steps. Although several comments said I was going through too many 
> steps, no-one said exactly what steps to go through. I think I've 
> tried them all.
>
> I won't post any more about this, I promise!!

Uh... you keep posting until you feel confident in going forward... I 
think we're all here to help each other out.

> However, if anyone can tell me the steps you go through to produce 
> YOUR beautiful photo to DV files, I would be more than appreciative. 
> We'll meet somewhere and I'll buy you all the tipple and haggis you 
> want!!

I use my 4 MP digital camera, re-shoot printed photos (on a home-made 
copystand), load those into Still Life, render to DV, then output to 
tape or DVD.  I just let the (sometimes annoying) "noise" things happen 
-- there's really nothing you can do if you want to pan and zoom 
through your stills.  If you do the 1 pixel blur thing, you really need 
to do it to the resulting video (produced by Still Life in this 
example), which would take a LONG time to render (well, maybe not *too* 
long on a dual 2 GHZ G5)...  If you blurred the original hi-res photo, 
it might help *a little* on the final output, but probably not a lot, 
since they're going to get scaled down and "squished" into a tiny 
720x480 rectangle anyway...

> Contrary to some comments, others have recommended scanning images at 
> a high resolution (Jim Heid for example in the Jan. Macworld, p. 77) 
> to get a good pan and zoom effect. Several employees at the Atlanta 
> Apple Store recommended the same (what do those guys know?:-)

Actually, that's correct -- if you zoomed into a 640x480 image (4:3 
aspect ratio for iMovie, for example), the image would start to break 
up and look pixelated very quickly -- if you zoomed into a 1280x960 
image, you could blow it up 200% and still have a crystal clear image 
with no pixelation.

> My scanned images seem to do better than my images from my high 
> resolution camera. My camera produces images at 3072x2048 at 180 dpi 
> (3:2 ratio). With Photoshop, I change the resolution to 72 dpi 
> resulting in an image size 1229x819. It seems to me what matters is 
> the pixel count. If I make the image any smaller, I will not be able 
> to do the kind of zooms I would like w/o pixelation.

DPI doesn't matter -- it's the actual pixel resolution of your image 
that matters.  The more pixels, the more you can zoom in without 
pixelation.

> Do I need to convert or crop the picture so that it is 4:3 aspect 
> ratio? Hey, I'm grasping for anything to make this work.

Still Life will work with an image in any aspect ratio -- but the 
output is always in the proper video aspect ratio.

> Even when my images are 72 dpi, I still get the shimmering effect. For 
> example, I took several photos of Christmas decorations (lights, 
> trees, etc...). The lights look like the are just a flashing (they're 
> not) when I do a simple pan. However, other objects do the 
> same-particularly ANY type of line-brick on the side of a house, the 
> edge of someone's clothing, etc....

The higher contrast the image, and the smaller the detail, the more 
prominent this effect will be.

> I may just have to be satisfied with what I've got although I've seen 
> many examples with good results.

Where have you seen these examples?  Do you know what hardware/software 
was used?

> I am self-admittedly a "perfectionist." I am using a 20" Cinema 
> Display w/an ATI 64 MB video card that handles quartz extreme and 
> OpenGL just fine. (Dual 2.0 Ghz G5). Is my Cinema Display to high of a 
> resolution to display the video properly? I dunno...

So... wait a second... do you see this "shimmering" problem on your 
computer monitor or on your TV/video monitor?

- Mark