Image size in version 5

[Ronniebootwest]

With the ability to zoom in to an image, it seems obvious to me that the larger the image the better.

In the days berfore 5 most pundits recommended 1024 x 768 x 72 res.

So what is the recommended image size now please?

Ron

[Ken Cox]

Ron i think igor brought that up in ver 2 or 3 - bigger the better

ken

[JRR]

Ron i think igor brought that up in ver 2 or 3 - bigger the better

ken

I seem to recall a suggested size of 2000pixels on the long side, but don't quote me.

BUT if you don't have a competely up-to-date video card doing that can create problems with ver 5.(based on my VERY limited trials)

In my workflow for creating an AV, I take the images I think I want to use straight from the "as is from the camera" (@2-4mb) and copy them into a new folder and then start working on the show. (I end up with the final slides at 1280x960 (@400kb)

In version 4.x I had nice smooth transitions even with the 2-4 mb files, but with ver 5 they splutter their way through transitions until they are reduced to the final size. If I want a p/z/r I have kept the file as large as I can so there is not too much jerkiness, but at the sametime making sure the picture does not fall apart too much on the zoom.

(Of course having a cranky video card is helping to prevent me from over-using the effects in ver 5 in my tests )

[Ronniebootwest]

I am still confused with this issue!

Before version 5 hit the streets, we all seemed to be happy enough to go along with the 1024 x 768 x 72 res for most of out slide shows, mainly to keep the size of the images to an acceptable level. Now, with the advent of version 5, size does not seem to matter. There must be an optimum size that we can aim for surely? I have a pretty powerful computer and always set my monitor to 1024 x 768 so what size of image should I aim for?

Lin Evans (amoung others) has produced some very good demo's, it would be interesting to know how he determined the size and resolution of the images he used.

Ron

[Ken Cox]

whatever your system can handle -- p2e will handle them correctly and Igor has added more features to handle various sizes/formats

so

if i were you Ron, when you get your raw picts adj to the way want , just save as 80 - 90 % quality jpegs and see if your system can put the show together

the thing you want to remember is to not be doing things twice -- if your system can handle big then use big

ken

[ContaxMan]

My guess is that Ron may be looking for some guidelines to include in his tutorials. I'd find these useful too, as it's hard to guess what an unknown system may be able to handle!

[Ronniebootwest]

Ken

Thanks for the advice. OK I will do some experiments with various size images - starting BIG and ending small.

Roger

You are quite right, I am looking for some basic guidelines from the members who have already mastered version 5. At the moment there are not any real tutorials available and because of this, I reckon a lot of folk are just sitting on the fence because version 5 does seem to be a little complicated. For example, the show I posted recently, where I just used a simple 'scrolling text' effect for opening and closing text slides, took me ages to work out. Without the help I received from Lin Evans I would have given up.

I am going to produce a quick pdf tutorial on just how I made that effect work, just to give other users a little encouragement. Please keep visiting my web site for details.

Ron

[Johnwnjr]

In Magical Movement I have checked and found that most of the images were 1024 x 768 except the big wheel which was 2624 x 1968. I have noticed in other experiments that a zoom of course can degrade a picture, usually when it enlarges the image up to 200%, - so it seems best not to zoom too large. I noticed in Lin Evans Colorado sequence that he zooms out more often than not, and the picture improves as this happens. - This was particularly noticeable when I projected the sequence at 1024 x 768 on a large screen.

John

[jevans]

With the ability to zoom in to an image, it seems obvious to me that the larger the image the better.

In the days berfore 5 most pundits recommended 1024 x 768 x 72 res.

So what is the recommended image size now please?

Ron

Ron, I think that this may have been addressed before in the forum, but here goes for a description of what I am doing at the moment.

My monitor is an LCD with a resolution of 1280 x 1024. I take all my digital pictures at an 8M setting, that is 3264 x 2448. If I am not using p/z/r effects, I crop the images to 1280 x 1024 (or sometimes 1280 x 960 to maintain the same aspect ratio as the camera). This is very similar to the process used by most people in previous version of PTE, mainly because :

a) It is near to the resolution of 1204 x 768 which many digital projects use

The reduced size image speeds up the processing during the show and it is better to pre-process the image in Photoshop than to get the digital project to do the processing.

With Version 5, I now need to tak into account the image size required for p/z/r effects. Thus I am using the original image size of 3264 x 2448 and adjusting the zoom/pan settings to get the required effect. If I use a 1280 x 960 image for example, I can zoom in, but cannt pan or zoom out. Thus the image size used in a show depends on what you are going to do with it. Ken makes the point that you should use the largest image size and of course this is correct as it will give the most flexibility. However the downside is that it will require more processing and hence a better graphics card spec.

Regards

Jeff

[Lin Evans]

The issue of image size to use for various purposes (zoom in, zoom out, display, etc.) has a number of variables which we need to be aware of, but which may be solved by the release.

Let's set some foundation information so we are all on the same page:

Obviously we need to create our shows with the final disposition in mind. That is, if the show is to be displayed on DVD via NTSC or PAL it has different requirements than if it is to be displayed on a high resolution computer monitor. Fortunately I have systems allowing me to display resolutions from 640x480 to 2048x1536 on a single monitor so it's reasonably easy to test these differences.

Also we need to be aware of whether we will be doing extreme zooms and how this will affect the images depending on the display used by the viewer.

Right now pte is using bilinear interpolation to auto-fit display screens having differential display resolutions. This creates artifacts when using low resolution monitors with high resolution native images, especially when viewing edges of straight lines such as doorframes, edges of vehicles, etc. Reference this answer by Igor to a question raised by Andrew concerning this issue:

-----------------------------------

Andrew,

You're right about this problem. Unfortunately Bilinear resizing gives such artefacts when image reducing in several times. Bicubic gives much better results, but Bicubic works in 10-20 times slower and can't be used at all here.

I see another good solution for this problem. And I hope we'll realize it in the next betas (already in v5.00).

-------------------------------

By this, I assume that some other interpolation method or anti-aliasing technique may be on the horizon for the release, so this may all be premature, but let's continue.

When we start with a high resolution oiginal image then use bilinear to make it fit a lower resolution screen such as 1024x768 we end up with a "rope-like" twisted appearance and other aliasing, especially on man-made articles. With trees, grass, etc., there is not so much apparent, but do this with houses, bridges, automobiles, trailers, or anything having straight lines at other than 180, 90 or 45 degree angles and we have issues.

So we have the problem of how to zoom in very tight then zoom out to 100% display size when we have a computer monitor or television screen which is set up for a display size considerably different from our original capture resolution or from an exact mathmatical extract such as 50% of the original size.

Presently, the best way to do this is either to sacrifice quality of image by using lower resolution originals which have been resized from the capture or scan resolution via sophisticated interpolation techniques such as used in PhotoShop (you zoom in tighter than 200% and you loose significant display quality) or you match the original to scree display resolution by doing the interpolation with PhotoShop, etc., to make the slides the same as the intended display resolution. Right now, there is no other good way to accomplish this.

There "are" work-arounds we can consider right now such as using a high resolution original for the tight zoom then fading to a lower resolution copy for the final display or vice versa. This requires some "fiddling" around with fade techniques to approximate the appearance of a single image being used, but is possible.

Perhaps we should defer this discussion until version 5 is released because this may all become a moot point and we can simply choose the highest resolution supported by our viewer audience with no concern for these details......

Best regards,

Lin

[Lmoreels]

In my last show I use the size of the camera: 2560x1920 My PC is a 3Ghz 512 ram and 128 mB video ATI radeon. works wel.

In the show I mentiond on the forum the images are 1024, only those with zoom/ pan are 2560.

Luc M

[malcolm m]

One of my interests is video and video editing (using Adobe Premiere Elements software). As a new PTE user I have been struck by how similar the issues and techniques relating to the new features in Version 5 are to the issues faced by video editors.

In particular, the question of the optimum size of an image to enable Ken Burns effects (PZR in PicturesToExe) has been debated extensively in the Adobe Premiere Elements Forum and solved for TV display. The following link Adobe PE Forum is to the FAQ on the Forum which explains in detail why, for TV display, high resolution is not necessarily a good thing and can be positively bad. It also advises what the essential minima are. To access the web page click the "Login as Guest" button.

As an example. In the UK PAL system, standard TV displays have 720x576 non-square video image pixels. This is equivalent to a digital photo image of 788x576 square pixels (453k). For PAL 16:9 widescreen the equivalent digital photo image is 1050x576 square pixels (605k). At first sight these seem very small image sizes, they are even smaller for NTSC video, but any more pixels simply will not be visible on a TV display.

The video rule of thumb for zooming into still images is that to scale the image to 2 or 3 times the TV screen size the still image needs to be about 1.5 times each linear dimension; scaling the image to 4 times the size of the TV display needs about 2 times each linear dimension etc.

Hope this helps.

Malcolm

[ltdedorc]

My monitor is an LCD with a resolution of 1280 x 1024. I take all my digital pictures at an 8M setting, that is 3264 x 2448. If I am not using p/z/r effects, I crop the images to 1280 x 1024 (or sometimes 1280 x 960 to maintain the same aspect ratio as the camera). This is very similar to the process used by most people in previous version of PTE, mainly because :

(Snip)

With Version 5, I now need to tak into account the image size required for p/z/r effects. Thus I am using the original image size of 3264 x 2448 and adjusting the zoom/pan settings to get the required effect. If I use a 1280 x 960 image for example, I can zoom in, but cannt pan or zoom out. Thus the image size used in a show depends on what you are going to do with it. Ken makes the point that you should use the largest image size and of course this is correct as it will give the most flexibility. However the downside is that it will require more processing and hence a better graphics card spec.

Regards

Jeff

Ron,

1st, thx for emailing me the Scrolling Test with Version 5 tutorial. I've forwarded it to a couple of true beginners with P2E.

Relative to Jeff's posting, I'm essentially following something similar to what he's doing. And will be formatting my shows in 1024 x 768 rez for viewing on my & most monitors set to that rez and for digital projection. Altho my current show is in 920 x 690 rez, a carryover from V 4.48 for burning a DVD within the safe TV zone limits, I panned & zoomed to 400zoom +/- in Beta 3 & 4 in a few cases and found a definite degradation in quality in the p & z. So I used the straight from the camera 3264 x 2448 rez and the p & z was much improved. So now I have the capability to produce both CDs at 1024 x 768 rez for computer viewing and DVDs to view on TV & computer by doing a "Custom" AVI @ 720 x 540 rez (see my post, http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....80entry31286) until I find a better way...Harvey