Hi rbowser -

Over the course of this thread, I've been a bit confused (& not because I'm stupid!) about:
1. the actual steps you took
2. where the distortion showed up - produced video file or on DVD.

In the attached screen capture, I've tried to replicate what I think you did... or perhaps I was taking the steps I would have taken to do what I THINK you were after. I did NOT produce the image to a video file first. That suggestion was only put in order to apply video effects, which are irrelevant in this case.

I was not able to produce any undesired distortion.

Cheers - Tony
Visit PDtoots. PowerDirector Tutorials, tips, free resources & more. Subscribe!
Full linked Tutorial Catalog PDtoots happily supports fellow PowerDirector users!

Quote: Hi rbowser -

Over the course of this thread, I've been a bit confused (& not because I'm stupid!) about:
1. the actual steps you took
2. where the distortion showed up - produced video file or on DVD.

In the attached screen capture, I've tried to replicate what I think you did... or perhaps I was taking the steps I would have taken to do what I THINK you were after. I did NOT produce the image to a video file first. That suggestion was only put in order to apply video effects, which are irrelevant in this case.

I was not able to produce any undesired distortion.

Cheers - Tony

Hi, Tony - You're a very good man to wade through my post and run an experiment. I'm disappointed the distortion problem couldn't be replicated. Hmm, maybe this is another issue that "depends on the intricacies of your particular computer set up."

OR - maybe it's due to how I did use a different tool for the rotation.

I've watched your clip twice to be sure. - The difference is that I used the top knob on the little box at the center of the PIP editing window - the one that shows rotation available when you hover over it. You used the rotation tools towards the bottom left. I don't know why I didn't use those,-- but that's the only difference between how you did it and how I did it. Oh, I also didn't use the opacity slider, I grabbed the opacity line in the clip itself and lowered it.

Answering your questions - sorry I haven't been totally clear on the thread:

--The distortion (which I'm sure you saw in my attachments--?) was in both the DVD folder (I always burn to folder, not to disc) - and in the hard copy DVD I burned from it.

The steps - much as you had them in your video:

Imported photo.
Dragged to a track.
Double clicked to get the PIP editor.
Set up a keyframe at the start for the photo in its original position.
Set up a second keyframe at the end with the image rotated 180 degrees by the knob at the center of the editing window.
Fades I did with keyframes in the Modify dialogue.

--And now I can see I still didn't have it right about how to use photos. I thought the lesson on this thread was to always produce photos to video if you're going to do Anything to them besides just have them as-is, static in the video. I thought this meant I needed to Produce even to just use the PIP editor.

rbowser