Hi there:

It's perhaps just common sense to think that your still pictures could be just the same resolution as you need for the output: 1920 pixels across and 1080 down. Depending on how you want to use them in your video, they could be smaller; for example, most slideshow styles in PowerDirector never put images over the entire area.

I wouldn't worry about your pictures being too large though. This will not affect the output file size. Larger photos should be better as that probably mean sufficient quality which will be simply reduced by PowerDirector as necessary; no mental intervention required on your side in this respect.

If you should worry about anything, it could be the aspect ratio. In other words you might want to crop your stills.

Bottom line: just import your photos into PowerDirector as they are...

Jirka

Thank you bolda for your kind reply,

I´ll import the pics with their original (and already cropped ) size and let´s see how it goes.

Enrique Diazruanova

_______________________________________

OS: Windows 7 x 64bit (Home Premium)
Motherboard: Gigabyte H55M-USB3
Processor: Intel Core i7@ 860 (LGA 1156)
GPU: Radeon HD 5670 1G memory
RAM: 8Gb DDR3

Hi Enrique -

I'd support Jirka's advice, up to a point.

The resolution of your input images will not have much effect on the file size of the produced video, but you'll notice a difference in how much work your PC is doing.

Personally, I crop my images to 1920x1080 before I import them into PD (partly because I trust the graphics software's ability to scale more than I trust PD's). It also means PD has less work to do in rendering.

Recently I was doing some testing on how image resolution affects video bitrate. I made 4 (almost) identical slideshows & produced them each to AVC H.264 1920x1080 @16MBps:

SS1 used images of 15-20MP - video file size - 48.3MB - quality Excellent
SS2 used images of 5-10MP - video file size - 48.2MB - quality Excellent
SS3 used images of 0.6-2MP - video file size - 48MB - noticeable decrease in image crispness
SS4 used images of <0.3MP - video file size - 47.9MB - quality putrid!

The quality of SS3 & SS4 was not surprising, as all the photos were 1000px wide or less... then rendered to 1920x1080! Dumb!

Cheers - Tony
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Thank you Tony,

Most of my original pics are more than 1920 x 1080 and I use Photoshop Elements, so maybe it is good advice to crop them to 1920 x 1080 in Elements before sending them to PD.

Thanks again

Enrique Diazruanova _______________________________________

OS: Windows 7 x 64bit (Home Premium)
Motherboard: Gigabyte H55M-USB3
Processor: Intel Core i7@ 860 (LGA 1156)
GPU: Radeon HD 5670 1G memory
RAM: 8Gb DDR3