Thanks for this reply. I am not sure how to deinterlace the source, which in this example is a series of digital still images. Can you give any further information on how to deinterlace. Would this process have any harmful effect on the picture resolution?

you can deinterlace stills right in photo imaging software such as photoshop. Otherwise, in VV set your project setting to deinterlace, then when you encode, that is where you would choose to interlace it again or go progressive scan.

I always prepare my stills and graphics in Photoshop. If there's flicker I usually add 0,3 Gaussian Blur. Yes, the blur is visible to the eye in Photoshop but on a TV-screen with it's lousy resolution 0,3 pixels radius is nothing, and it saves the day - any day. Alternatively, use the selection tools in PS, feather the edges and blur only the areas that flickers.
Best/Tommy

Thanks very much for the advice given above. I did a test burn using the techniques you referred to, but there is still enough flicker (mainly in the centre of the picture) on my normal TV set to be a bit disconcerting. Is this normal, or should you be able to eliminate interlace flicker from digital stills completely?

Of course, there is no flicker when you "pause" the picture. The pictures don't flicker either when shown through the computer monitor, and when shown direct from the digital camera's memory stick. I guess there would be no flicker if you played the DVD through a video projector?

When you deinterlace and add a little Gaussian Blur, I wonder whether you are reducing the resolution of the still images to some extent?

Regards, Fred

Fred, yes you are correct, "When you deinterlace and add a little Gaussian Blur, I wonder whether you are reducing the resolution of the still images to some extent?" - Blur is blur, as far as I know. The trouble we've all got with stuff going to a TV set is that every thing is "too" good. Fine lines, two fields of info, a deccoder called a TV that, in PAL-land has 625 lines of seen fomat . . get the picture? Well, something is going to be outta synch a somepoint. Soooo, and this is the way I try to understnad it . . I have to introduce some form of "fudging" and yes a little bit of blur does it for me. Does one loose resolution, well yeh! Does one notice it? I aint so sure. Putting it another way, does one "appreciate" the defintion more than seeing the images jumping about - yeah? I know I'd prefer to see stactic images . . The parameters on both are so very very close . .anyways, this is my take on it . .it aint a "pro" reply, but at the ened of the day one needs to get stuff done . .

Regards,

Grazie

This I think is going to become more of a problem. In the country we've now got a fairly serious rollout of SD and HD DBV and still a very large proportion of the population watching off analogue.

So for sure these kind of fixes work well for analogue stuff being fed via composite but then more and more we see plasma and LCD TVs fed by RGB from DVD players or ST DVB decoders. Now the pictures are that much sharper and a lot of the problem also disappear.
So who do you aim for, the lowest common denominator or the ones with the most cash?

farss, yes of course . .as things get sharper with more def .. AND the actual "customer" base is lagging behind . . interesting . . . a format for all seasons!?! - I suppose we can only "grab" that which is ion front of ourselves at anyone one time and make the best fist of it for now . . . but yes, I hadn't even thought of the "features" of HD rolling across the plains . . hmmmm....

Guess what? In the meantime I'm gonna have some fun, shoot some film, edit some videos and maybe make a quid or two - yeah?

Regards

Grazie

Vegasnewbie, you aren't going to affect the resolution to a great degree by putting a touch of blur on the stills. If your stills are high res enough, it wont matter. I use 6 mp stills in my slide shows and although the gaussian blur takes a slight edge off, it looks fine. Remember, sharpness is not everything. If you are eventually going after a film look, this can be to your advantage.

Also, when you have really bad interlace flicker, even when you pause the picture you will see jumpiness. It can be that bad.

I wonder about your other settings. Did you disable resample on every still? Did you set the re-intrlace or progresive options on every still? Are you sure reduce interlace flicker is switched on for every still? Are you keeping your project renders at the highest possible quality? Also, in the render dialog box, there is a check box called "allow motion based compensation" check that. The last thing I can recommend is not to use the MainCncept encoder. Its very good, but in my opnion, oversoftens the images. TMPGEnc gives more definition.

Thanks very much 4th order for your help. I have set out below all the key settings I used for the stills slide show project.

1. Loaded each still image into Photoshop

2. Filter, Video, Deinterlace (Selected eliminate odd fields, create new fields by interpolation)

3. Saved file as Quality 12, Format Option: Progressive Scans 3 (Size 56.6 Kbps)

4. Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur (Added 0.2 pixels radius)

5. Saved file, then imported it into Vegas 4

6. Edit, Switches, Reduce Interlace Flicker (ON for each still)

7. Edit, Switches, Disable Resample (ON for each still)

8. Video Properties: Field Order – Lower Field First; Full resolution rendering quality: Best; Deinterlace Method: None; Pixel aspect ratio: 1.0926 (PAL DV)

9. File Render As: MPEG-2, DVD Architect PAL video stream; custom, advanced video: checked “Allow field-based motion compensation

10. Burned DVD using DVD Architect.

I am not sure what you mean by: “Did you set the reinterlace or progressive options on every still.” Is this covered by the steps I have taken above? Have I interpreted correctly the instructions you have given me in your postings? Thanks very much for your help.

Regards, Fred

Hmm... just an odd feeling here... and a question (more to 4thorder than vegasnewbie) why would you have to de-interlace a non-interlaced still image (I think I got it right that these are still images from a digital camera right which will be progressive in the first place). Steps 2,3 seem to be not required then? Obviously the blur may still be required.

What resolution (pixel dimenstions) are these still images? If they are more than 720x480 (and you are not doing any drastic pan/crop/zoom) maybe you should try reducing their size before adding them to the project?

Yes, these are still images from a 5 megapixel camera. The file sizes are about 2.1 Mb and the pixel dimensions are 2592 x 1944. Wouldn't Vegas 4 automatically reduce the size of the pictures to the required size, I wouldn't have thought it necessary for the user to do this manually? For TV viewing, I doubt whether there is much benefit in importing images larger than 720 x 480?

Originally, I didn't deinterlace the images, I just used the "reduce interlace flicker" switch. None of the various tests I have done since seems to alter much the amount of flicker evident on a 50Hz TV.

Regards, Fred

Images of that size will make Vegas do extra work that may be unnecessary - especially if you are not doing any zooming. You basically answered your own question there.

At least you can stop doing the de-interlacing step anyway... and how about at least re-sizing the images to a smaller size? Just see what happens?

All digital images or video are interlaced to start with. Thats just the way they come out of the equipment and this may not jive with your intended end product. Therefore it is a safe step to force a de-interlace them put the field back together in the rendering either as interlaced or progressive. I have tried this enough times to know that I won't do a render without it. Also, when adding the gaussian blur, add it in Vegas, not in your photo editor. I think that might help your end result. I think the setting is 0.02.

As far as resolution goes, you are right, VV will render your high res pics down to 720x480 which is dvd spec, but consider that the more information the program has to work with, the better the end result. That is why I dont resize my pics before they go into VV. I also do not resave them to a lossy format like jpeg. It makes for large projects but if quality is what you are after, its worth it. Also, lossy fomats will make more jaggies in the picture which are then enhanced by interlace flicker. Stay lossless all the way if you can. I use TIFF or PNG formats.

Also, another suggestion in your VV project settings, use blend fields not interpolate.

All digital images or video are interlaced to start with

Video yes (normally).... images from a Digital Still Camera? No way is it interlaced.

Why would Still images (from a digital camera) be interlaced? Interlacing is a feature of TV's (hence why our video cameras capture by default and most commonly in interlaced mode) and has nothing whatsoever to do with digitial still photography.

I would highly (and politely) recommend you check out your understanding related to interlacing and digitial still cameras.

As for everything else... I don't believe you will gain a single pixel of additional information by loading a larger resolution image into Vegas than you need. Zooming/Panning/cropping of course will require and benefit from the higher resolution (and I do use high res slides when I need to as well). I also use PNG but stay well clear of TIFF due to issues with that requiring the use of quicktime calls which slow down the whole process a great deal.

But... if you find Vegas works fine (as far as speed of operation / rendering) while using larger than necessary images I would certainly not argue against you doing that.

Thanks for these suggestions. In the last stills slide show project I prepared, I followed your suggestions and I deinterlaced each still in Photoshop. Therefore, when setting the video properties in Vegas 4, under the heading of “deinterlace method” I selected “none” because the deinterlacing had already been done in Photoshop. Do you think I should have selected “blend fields” under the heading of “deinterlace method”, even though the images had already been deinterlaced?

In addition, when selecting the field order under video properties, you have the options of “lower field first”, “upper field first”, or “none (progressive scan)”. I selected “lower field first”, but I am beginning to wonder whether you should select “none (progressive scan)” when you are working with a deinterlaced image?

Thanks also Liam for your thoughts. Because there is no flicker on my normal TV when the stills are played back direct from the camera, I also wondered whether the stills could be interlaced. However, I guess the photo from a memory stick is just one image, not a series of images that need to be produced if you are creating a slide show in Vegas 4. After all, you are creating 25 frames per second with your Vegas slide show, which is quite different from playing back the images direct from the camera. So I guess it is the movement of the 25 frames per second that is causing the flicker.

Regards, Fred

After reading about the video filters that are in Adobe Photoshop, it seems that, when screen captures are made from standard video (not DV), there are even/odd video fields from one frame to the next, and interlacing occurs, which can show horizontal lines through an image, or make it seem that two frames are visible on the same image. The Photoshop de-interlace filter removes either the even or odd fields from the image to clear it up.

So in the case of digital still images captured in a digital camera on a memory stick, it would seem that there is no need to deinterlace the images in Photoshop? But you would need to use the video deinterlace filter for screen captures from standard video, but not from DV.

Regards, Fred

You've got it half right. There is good reason NOT to de-interlace stills from a digital still camera. Maybe PS is very smart or maybe not, if it's not real smart and realises that it's not a interlaced image to start with then it's going to throw away every second line of pixels and that will not help at all.

With stills captured from video I only de-interlace them in PS IF necessary. Magnify them an look for any interlace combing. If there isn't any DON'T de-interlace as you'll throw away half the vertical resolution for nothing. If possible try to pick a frame with no motion, less chance of interlace artifacts that need to be removed.

This again goes back to planning. If you know you're going to need to pull stills from your video it's another good reason to use a tripod and keep the shots as static as possible. Better still have someone there to take stills.

Fred, I have experienced the same problem with Vegas (and MediaStudio Pro before that). Here is what I do now that completely resolves the problem:

1. Place all stills on a single video track.
2. Create a video bus track.
3. On the video bus track, enable Motion Blur and set it to 10% (by right clicking on the key frame at the beginning of the video bus track).
4. If you have other non-photo tracks, turn off motion blur for those tracks.

Using motion blur will increase your time to render, but for me this removes ALL interlace flicker with no other steps required.

HTH, Jerry

Thanks very much Jerry for this suggestion. However, creating a video bus track and enabling motion blur set at 10% did not work on my TV set. I tried this procedure several times, and burned DVDs with and without the edit switch of "reduce interlace flicker" turned on. Does Jerry's method work for anyone else?

There are no problems when playing a slide show back through the computer, the slides do not have any interlace flicker at all. But nothing that I have tried so far has reduced interlace flicker on my normal TV set. I wonder if people get interlace flicker when they play slide show DVDs through a projector?

Regards, Fred

Just one further observation, there is no interflace flicker at all when I play the rendered mpg file from Vegas 4 directly through the Windows Media Player. (Incidentally mpg files do not play back through Apple's free Quick Time player).

However, after burning a DVD through DVD Architect, when I played the DVD on my computer through InterVideo WinDVD, there was some flicker, but not quite as much as I get when I play the DVD back through my Sony DVD player and my "normal" TV.

So it seems that playing the mpg file back (before it is used to create a DVD with DVDA) gives a steadier result than I can get with the final DVD. Does anyone know why this should be the case?

Regards, Fred

The answer is very simple, PCs use progressive displays ergo no interlace and therefore no interlace flicker.
This can however intoduce interlace motion artifacts. Because the video is comprised of 50 fields per second being displayed as 25 frames per second you may see 'combing' on the vertical edges of fast moving objects.

Your problem is one that has plagued television since its invention, you can see it on many TV programs shot with the best cameras money can buy. It's just a limitation of the system. You can as you've done take steps to make it less obvious or by controlling what you display but in the end there's only so much you can do.