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Felix5CE0
Participant
January 25, 2021
Question

Bad image scaling quality with high resolution images

  • January 25, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 3356 views

Hi,

I have the problem that high resolution images look very bad if I scale them with premiere elements 2021. Steps to reproduce:

  1. Add high resolution (e.g. 14 megapixel image) to timeline
  2. Zoom in a little (e.g. to avoid black bars)
  3. Export Video

 

Result: The image looks blurry and pixelated

 

After a lot of searching I found out that this is a "feature". By default video/image clips are scaled to the frame size of the project. If you then rescale the image you'll upscale an already downscaled image. You can avoid this if you:

  1. Select the clip in the time line
  2. Choose Clip -> Video Options
  3. Deselect "Scale To Frame Size"

 

You have to do this for every clip and there is no way to change the default setting. In my opionion this is a bug or at least a very bad user experience.

I would really appreciate if you could fix this

1 reply

Ann Bens
Community Expert
Ann BensCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 25, 2021

Scale to Framesize is default on in the Preferences.

Unchek this featuere. This will take effect only on newly imported images.

For image already in the project: select all images in the timeline, right click>clip>deselect Scale.....

    F
    Felix5CE0Author
    Participant
    January 26, 2021

    Thanks! I must have missed the option in the preferences.

     

    Wouldn't it be much more useful if there would be the option to set the scaling in the fx tab automatically? At the moment there are two different kind of scaling methods:

    • "scale to framesize"
    • scaling under motion in the fx tab

    and if you use them together you'll end up with a low quality result. I think this isn't a great user experience.

    Ann Bens
    Community Expert
    Ann BensCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    January 26, 2021

    >and if you use them together you'll end up with a low quality result. I think this isn't a great user experience.

    That depends on how you use the feature. Scaling down does not reduce image quality.

    In video all that matters is height and width in pixels.

    If you want to do some panning and zooming best is to make the image no larger then twice the framesize. After export the image will be scaled down anyways and loosing image quality.

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