Sharpness and Panning a Panorama -- am I missing something?

[mhwarner]

I am currently creating a slideshow and have included a few panorama shots. I am using a simple left-to-right pan on the panos and while they are panning, they are not sharp. When the slide opens after initial transition effect, it is sharp. Then the pan begins and during that entire time, it is not entirely sharp. Upon completion of the pan in the few seconds before the next transition begins, the slide is sharp again.

So my question is, is this standard/normal or am I doing something wrong in setting up in O&A. I searched and did not find any postings here, although I have some vague recollection of a similar question being asked way back during the early 5.0 beta cycles and I do not remember if there was an answer or what it might have been.

Some details:

All my slides have been resized to 1024x768 (ultimate result will be a DVD), except I have resized the panos to 768h x whatever width they need to maintain the correct aspect ratio. I have animated each of them with 3 keypoints -- the opening one and a second keypoint a second or so after the effect transition completes (so that it doesn't pan until the transition to the slide is complete), and a final keypoint a second or so before the next slide transitions. The first two keypoints are of course the pano shoved all the way to the left showing only as much as fits in the initial frame. The third keypoint is with the pano moved so that its right edge is at the right edge of the frame. I held down the shift key when I moved it for the keypoint so that there is no up and down motion.

I left the settings for everything set at "Linear" and did not do the setup stuff to "Separate here" for the keypoints (the reason being that when I added the first pano and tried setting the buttons to "Smooth", the pano seemed jerky and I figured for a straight pan with no other movement linear made more sense).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[xahu34]

Hello mhwarner,

I think what you noticed is a rather natural effect, which you will also see with shows produced with m.objects, a professional German presentation SW (at about 20 times the price of PTE). Moving and even more zooming very sharp images produces flickering effects. I think, this is the reason why PTE even offers a blur-option within O&A. It isn't that bad, if the image is only really sharp when it is still. The mentioned blur-option of PTE isn't that comfortable, as it blurs the image, if it is in motion or not. Here programs like m.object and Wings Platinum (30 times the price of PTE) behave more intelligent. Using PTE it might be good to have the blurred version during motion, but to replace it with the sharp version immediately after motion has stopped.

Kind regards

xahu34

Munich

[mhwarner]

Are you viewing on a LCD monitor? If so do you know the refresh rate in mSec?

Tom

Hi Tom,

Yes it is an LCD (SamsungSyncmaster 245 BW) at 1920x1200 resolution. In the Display Properties, Advanced "Monitor" tab, it says 60 Hertz under Screen refresh rate. In the monitor's specs, it is shown as "Response Time (in ms) (Typ.) 5 ", but I don't know if that is the same thing as the refresh rate. Unfortunately, I live off the grid and have gotten rid of all my CRTs, so the only monitors I have are to test are LCDs (both external and on my two laptops). I did just reset the options for one of the pano slides from 16 seconds to 40 seconds and it is much less noticeable at 40 seconds. Guess I will extend the timing somewhat for the rest as well. In this instance, since the final output will be DVD, I imagine it will be less of an issue since the overall sharpness on the DVD, even with PTE's capabilities, is not nearly as good as what is available from a .EXE on the computer.

Thanks for replying.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Mary,

It's definitely the monitor. There is no "blur" when doing a pan of panoramas with PTE. The aforementioned "sparkle" is only an issue for zooms not for pans (unless there is a simultaneous zoom) and can easily be ameliorated by using the blur then duplicating the image after the zoom has ceased using a sharp vesion in a duplicate slide with a 1500ms fade in/out.

The pans on large panorams are perfectly sharp. I do this all the time and use both CRT and LCD monitors. But as Tom suggests is an issue with some LCD displays. You will also see this as a "trail" following rapid mouse movements with some LCD's. With CRT's which use electron guns and triads of RBG phosphors there is a "persistance" or decay time of the illuminated phosphor which smooths out rapid changes but LCD monitors work entirely differently and this definitely can blur a pan especially if the speed of the pan exceeds the ability of the monitor to refresh. And just for the record, executable shows created with PTE are every bit as good or better than shows created with m.objects or Wings Platinum - I know this because I use all three.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Tom,

Yes it is an LCD (SamsungSyncmaster 245 BW) at 1920x1200 resolution. In the Display Properties, Advanced "Monitor" tab, it says 60 Hertz under Screen refresh rate. In the monitor's specs, it is shown as "Response Time (in ms) (Typ.) 5 ", but I don't know if that is the same thing as the refresh rate. Unfortunately, I live off the grid and have gotten rid of all my CRTs, so the only monitors I have are to test are LCDs (both external and on my two laptops). I did just reset the options for one of the pano slides from 16 seconds to 40 seconds and it is much less noticeable at 40 seconds. Guess I will extend the timing somewhat for the rest as well. In this instance, since the final output will be DVD, I imagine it will be less of an issue since the overall sharpness on the DVD, even with PTE's capabilities, is not nearly as good as what is available from a .EXE on the computer.

Thanks for replying.

[mhwarner]

Hi Mary,

It's definitely the monitor. There is no "blur" when doing a pan of panoramas with PTE.

...

The pans on large panorams are perfectly sharp. I do this all the time and use both CRT and LCD monitors. But as Tom suggests is an issue with some LCD displays. You will also see this as a "trail" following rapid mouse movements with some LCD's.

Best regards,

Lin

Thanks Lin,

I definitely do see the mouse "trail" (kind of a slight ghost) when moving across the monitor. And as I described, the panos are not really blurry, but look more like the images did before I sharpened them. They are sharp at the beginning, then go to not particularly sharp, but not really blurry either, then back to sharp at the end when the pan stops. Extending the time of the pan helps and since these are going to end up as DVDs, it probably won't be that noticeable. I just wanted to be sure I wasn't doing something wrong in setting it up.

[Igor]

Mary,

Lin is right - the more fast speed of panning the more blurred picture on LCD display.

PicturesToExe doesn't apply special blur filter on moving picture. If you press PrintScr button and save a screenshot to a graphical editor you will see that image is sharp.

You can even judge this effect of LCD panels as a kind of natural motion blur

Like in a movie when camera moves.