Discussion Forum: Low Quality Video Export

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Topic: Low Quality Video Export

Message posted by tbrusson on August-23-2008 at 5:58pm

France
October-23-2006
164 Posts

Hi DaMan,
concerning your questions :

1. Will it look good on a 42 inch flatsceen?

Again it's a question of resolution.

A 42 inch (let's 1024x768pixels but with large pixels compared to computer screen equivalent resolution) screen can provide less resolution than a computer 30" screen (2560x1600).

TV screen are larger than computer displays and the pixel/screen ration is different than computer screen. Watching movie on tv is ok but working with it is a problem.

No one wants to plug a 42" tv screen to a computer as a display because of the size of the pixel (big).

A 42" inch tv screen can be hd or full hd (1920x1200). In that case you have to think about the way to play it too at such resolution :

1) hd or full hd / blu ray player :

If you want to play it top quality you can go blu-ray but you neeed to have the equipment to record it.
You could manage to make a applet with a frame which size would be 1280x720. Play it on your computer and record the screen activity. (again some screen capture software can handle such resolution in real time) The resulting movie would be ok on hd TV.

But then you will have to output stitched panos which size will be compliant with the 1280x720 applet frame (so bigger than regular tour which are dependent on the boradband line).

You could play a full screen pano at full hd resolution if you want to.

The output movie of the screen activity needs to be h264 to be blu ray compliant.

2) using DVD :

If you play it from a dvd t's ok too but the resolution will be lower (720x480 ntsc, 720x576 pal). (same issue as with movie dvd and movie blu-ray)

That size is close to the online example. So if you record the screen activity and convert it to mp2 dvd format (2 pass for better quality)
it would be ok.

Anyway you just need to make a tour with size of the frame which is close to the dvd resolution.

So to conclude, you have to have a tourweaver tour applet which must be at the equivalent size of the player capacity

2. It needs to be in a DVD playable format.

The output of screen activity gives you a movie just like any movie even if it's a vr tour. You can use it on different media, you can export it to h264 smalll size for web purpose and normal size mp2 for DVD.

About quality, what matters too is the compression format. That's the reason one recommand using h264 for streaming and blu ray. For dvd you have to use mp2 but some software give you the option to use 2 pass algorythm in order to improve the quailty of the output.

And you could use mpeg4 as well since a lot of dvd player can handle this format too but it's not 100% compatible with older dvd player.

To Daniel :

Camtasia as I stated before relies on hardware. You could improve the frame rate capture by capturing only the window of the applet. Close all other applications. You have to make several tests to see if you get any improvements. Depending on the graphic board you have,you can have better result.

I would advise to check with techsmith (company which provide camtasia) to see if they could make it by giving them the link and challenging them to record in real time the tour.

Otherwise they are developing the jing project (jingproject.com) and maybe you can try it (I never tried it myself)

thierry

Message posted by mskp on August-23-2008 at 7:28pm

September-14-2006
329 Posts

Hi!
The people from Camtasia recommend a 3.0 Ghz processor and 2-3 gb of RAM i some cases. I think this could be one. I am about to update my PC and try to do it in a way I will be capable to record a tour from a screen. The tests I have made so long are not satisfactory. The panoramas move very unstable. Any advise regarding the hardware will be welcome.
@DaMan: expecting with interest the results of your tests. Thanks for sharing them. Good luck.

Martin

Message posted by mskp on August-29-2008 at 7:18pm

September-14-2006
329 Posts

Quote: Originally posted by DaMan on August-23-2008
But you have given me hope and I thank you, because my way was a TON of work and if I can just capture TW that would be great.... I will be testing screen capture and will update everyone next week. I will post settings and resolution info with the example.
Thanks everyone.

DaMan

Hi!!

Any news regarding this issue?
DaMan, could you perform any test and if so what was the result?
As said in my post, I am about to update my PC and therefore I am interested to do it in a way that it will perform satisfactory using screen capture software.

Can anybody advice me regarding the update I plan to do??

Regards, Martin

Message posted by DaMan on September-01-2008 at 5:54am

United States
October-04-2007
111 Posts

I have not had time to even start testing with screen capture.. My son is having an operation and my car engine jsut blew up. It will be 2 weeks before I can look at this, but I will definatly keep you updated.

DaMan