Its always been a bit of a debate. Whatever format and resolution an image is, PD has to convert it - firstly for timeline use, and also for final production.
In PD8 the "default" timeline resolution appeared to be relatively (very) low, 640x360. Of course there is no real way to test this other then by using the snapshot function. Obviously if the content of the main track was higher so was the snapshot, but taking snapshots of the PiP tracks could produce noticeably poorer results.
PD9 seems to have a timeline default of 1920x1080 (as was strongly suggested by sundry users of earlier versions). Again only the snapshot function illustrates this (Note the function of the checkbox in preferences>file>use original video size). A snapshot will default to 1920x1080.
PD9 also imports some RAW formats (I use Sony ARW successfully, I can't comment on others). However, on my system an ARW file
3872x2592@9.5MB is imported and converted by PD to a 1616x1080 jpg@136Kb. The jpg produced by the camera at the same time as the ARW file is
3872x2592@3.4MB.
A snapshot of the ARW converted to jpg by PD gives a .png image of
1920x1080@1.98MB
A snapshot of the camera produced jpg gives a .png image of
1920x1080@3.1MB
A snapshot of a 640x424@86Kb .jpg from a compact camera gives a.png image of 1920x1080 @2.38MB
However, using stills in a video means that any image will only have the ultimate resolution of the produced video (max 1920x1080).
So the question remains, is there a need to import high quality images or could the same results be obtained by limiting camera shooting to 1920x1080, since PD will need to downscale larger res files and upscale lower res files?
There may be less of a debate than previously when using snapshots from the timeline as raw material for parts of a video (often necessary for tutorials etc) where the quality was noticeably degraded - ie in PD8 a high res image was downscaled in the timeline snapshot, used in the timeline again and then upscaled for production.
I'm not sure that gives any help at all but I think PD9 is better, on balance, than PD8 was in this approach.
Cheers
Adrian
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jan 01. 2011 12:30
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