Need video/photo software editing help
Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2011 1:03 am
Okay, I'm hoping there is some geeksquad type member here that can help me. I've been using Adobe Photoshop 6 without issue for some time. Absolutely love it. A couple years ago I tried using Adobe Elements to combine photos with my Sony handycam video footage, and immediately noticed all the photos became pixelated. Since Windows Moviemaker didn't do that, I stuck with it without issue. It created nice multimedia videos that didn't lose photo quality and didn't suffer too badly on Youtube.
This summer I got a GoPro HD POV camera, which is not compatible with my version of Moviemaker. I am not a computer nerd (wish I was lots of times) but did some googling at the time and saw where the file type needed to be converted, and something about codec, and yadayadayada. Tried a few internet suggestions but couldn't make it happen. Easiest option was to purchase software compatible for HD editing, so I bought the inexpensive Pinnacle Studio HD.
I went on a hunting trip last week and am using Studio for the first time to combine pics and video from the trip. It was very easy to jump right in to Studio, but I immediately noticed as I put photos in the timeline that they were pixelated similar to my previous experience with Adobe Elements. I hoped that was just temporary and would clean up when I did the final step in making the movie. Unfortunately it did not in regards to uploading it to Youtube, and I used the specific command directly from Studio to do so. In other words, I didn't choose the quality or settings, it has that sharing function built in. Now the DVD I made tonite plays beautifully on my 42" TV with crisp photos and the HD video segments only get better with size. But when the movie is shrunk into a smaller format, like Youtube, photos suffer greatly with pixelation. Video suffers minorly, but I'm guessing that has to do with Youtube's 480p, when the GoPro is set at 960p? I am mostly frustrated with the pics, since I know what they should look like. I read a little bit about bitmap smoothing for photos, but don't see how I would need to go to that extreme. Is resizing the answer for guaranteed crisp photos with what I'm doing? And if I do that for Youtube sharing, will it lower the DVD playback quality for the TV? Currently, I save my edited photos at 4x6" size and 300 res, unless I need another size for prints. I know that's much larger than the normal internet recommended sharing size , but I hadn't had a problem until now, and didn't want to be saving files at multiple resolutions.
PS--Please make your advice simple. You can probably tell that I'm really a drag and drop kind of person!
This summer I got a GoPro HD POV camera, which is not compatible with my version of Moviemaker. I am not a computer nerd (wish I was lots of times) but did some googling at the time and saw where the file type needed to be converted, and something about codec, and yadayadayada. Tried a few internet suggestions but couldn't make it happen. Easiest option was to purchase software compatible for HD editing, so I bought the inexpensive Pinnacle Studio HD.
I went on a hunting trip last week and am using Studio for the first time to combine pics and video from the trip. It was very easy to jump right in to Studio, but I immediately noticed as I put photos in the timeline that they were pixelated similar to my previous experience with Adobe Elements. I hoped that was just temporary and would clean up when I did the final step in making the movie. Unfortunately it did not in regards to uploading it to Youtube, and I used the specific command directly from Studio to do so. In other words, I didn't choose the quality or settings, it has that sharing function built in. Now the DVD I made tonite plays beautifully on my 42" TV with crisp photos and the HD video segments only get better with size. But when the movie is shrunk into a smaller format, like Youtube, photos suffer greatly with pixelation. Video suffers minorly, but I'm guessing that has to do with Youtube's 480p, when the GoPro is set at 960p? I am mostly frustrated with the pics, since I know what they should look like. I read a little bit about bitmap smoothing for photos, but don't see how I would need to go to that extreme. Is resizing the answer for guaranteed crisp photos with what I'm doing? And if I do that for Youtube sharing, will it lower the DVD playback quality for the TV? Currently, I save my edited photos at 4x6" size and 300 res, unless I need another size for prints. I know that's much larger than the normal internet recommended sharing size , but I hadn't had a problem until now, and didn't want to be saving files at multiple resolutions.
PS--Please make your advice simple. You can probably tell that I'm really a drag and drop kind of person!