Preview is lower res. Please search the forum.

You haven't mentioned what your selections are as the output file or the input source.

Dafydd

Sorry. My input files are photos on my hard drive. High resolution (3072 X 2304). The output is to DVD. (Selecting "Creat Disk")

DVD HQ resolution - mpeg2 will degradate your still images somewhat. You need to look at what render selection you are making and what storage device you have to retain and create a HD quality file.

Take a look at the selection available to you. HDV 720p in Produce for example.

I hope that helps

Dafydd

Thanks for the advice. I tried it but not much improvement. I'm just wondering why an image would look not as good when brought down to the timeline?
As stated previously, when I click on an image in the media pane its preview looks great. When I drag the same image to the timeline and click on it the preview isn't as clear. This is even before I produce a file or burn to DVD.
Don't know what's going on.

Have you set the highest resolution for the preview pane? You can do this by:

1. click on the video clip in the timeline,
2. select the "Snapshot / Video Quality" button next to the fast forward button,
3. select "High Preview Resolution" from the three options in the drop down list.

This should provide the same quality as viewing the video from the "Media Pane".

Hi Colin,

You got my hopes up for a while there. I checked and the selection is already on High preview resolution.

Do you notice a difference on your machine?

Steve:

Couple of things apply here. The timeline preview is almost always going to be "soft". There is a "media" window in which the video image will be shown sharper than the timeline, click on the "screen" symbol next to the speaker icon below the preview window to get this media player.

When you put material on the timeline there are a lot of things going on in the way of "processing" that probably take a lot of "resources" and none of the NLE's I've worked with had a really sharp timeline image.

When you render (produce) to a finished form, almost nothing is going to look as good as your TV can show. Regular DVD is standard definition not high definition and it is not going to have the same resolution as your still images. Blu-ray will come a lot closer if you have that capability and can play it back on a BD player.

Dafydd's suggestion of 720p should show your final "render" fairly sharp and while I am editing a project in PowerDirector I stop from time to time and do a render to 1280x720p WMV just to get an idea of how the image is going to look in high def.

Hope this helps some.

Thanks Bif for the reply. You say that you "render your project from time to time". I'll give that a try. Thanks again.

Steve