Windows Movie Maker Causes blur, How can i stop this?

Im making a film using screenshots in Movie Maker... However, it turns it into **** as i put it in, adding an unwanted blur, anyone know how to stop this?

If it's unstoppable, can you recomend a program that won't screw up my PNGS into a JPEG like state?

You're really doing me a favour if you can help.

Couple of possible issues here:

- Preview is not the actual quality of the video, sound is usually off, images look messed up, etc. So don't sweat the preview
- When you export the movie, use the advanced options; and produce it with settings that will put emphasis on image quality (since that's what you seem to be worried about). If this is a movie 'gallery' of your work, don't worry about the framerate, if it's 15 FPS most people won't even care anyhow, you want a higher bit rate, produce it in "Video for local playback 2.1Mbps bit rate", and you should be happy with the result

Oh one more thing, make sure your screenshots all match in resolution, scale them up manually in Photoshop or some other program with a smooth resize algorithm to 320x240, or 640x480 (or whatever resolution you're producing the movie in) by default images can be stretched to fit the frame, and that will definitely result in blur

This post has been edited by Nightwing on May 15 2007, 02:27 PM

So set export to "High Qaulity video"?

Also, do the dimensions have to be what they say? (if it stretches it to fit the size it says, i'm gonna have a fit.)

Images will stretch, so open up Photoshop, create a 320x240 blank canvas (or 640x480, whatever), paste the image on there and frame it up yourself to eliminate scaling, it's stupid but yes Movie Maker is fairly limited. Final Cut Pro has a few better options, but naturally that's some multi-hundred dollar multimedia package

This post has been edited by Nightwing on May 15 2007, 02:31 PM

I'm not in possesion of Photoshop... kinda... stranded then, aren't i?

No you're not completely boned =)

Open up Paint, under Image on the menu, click Attributes... you can set the canvas size that way. Use the selection tool to resize your images to fit the canvas and you're good to go

This post has been edited by Nightwing on May 15 2007, 02:46 PM

Done so... for trimming, so it shouldnt Stretch now then?

Yeah, basically the thing is that Movie Maker will take whatever image (say a 200x200 image) and force it to fit 640x480. So this automatically means it won't be viewed properly, and will be stretched. But if you just fill your image with a blank/black background or whatever color you want, that is technically image space, so you'll still have your centered image, at its normal resolution