Decrease in Still Image Quality After Export

Report · Jan 31, 2022

Hi, everyone!

I've been wrestling with this issue for an entire day without being able to find the answer and it's starting to become seriously frustrating; especially since there seems to be no logic to it at all.

The problem I'm having is that after exporting my video (as a YouTube 1080p Full HD export) I see a decrease in quality in the still images—specifically the title images which I created in Photoshop in 300 ppi—that wasn't there with the original export. I made the first draft of the video back in December of last year and while that one wasn't perfect (hence my working on the "improved version now"), the quality of the text in said images was knife-sharp; now, however, there is slight blurriness in the text and certain parts of the traced figures are somewhat pixelated. Yet the version I created now is the same as before, except with a few effects changes in the slideshow itself (the quality of which, funny enough, remains perfect); and the export settings are the same: H.264; YouTube 1080p Full HD; VBR, 1 pass; Use Maximum Render Quality.

The video is basically just a photo montage/slideshow with music playing in the background, and the imagery consists, as mentioned, of photographs (JPEG) and graphics created in Photoshop at 300 ppi (and imported as PSD files for maximum quality and easy manipulation in case of corrections or changes needing to be done); and the total runtime of the video is a mere 3 minutes and 12 seconds, and only of a 269 MB size. So there is no particular "strain" being put on the production of this video; and as mentioned, the very first one exported in December last year, and again in mid January of this year, was perfect in terms of image and audio quality. So for no apparent reason, the video now exports—with the very same settings used again—with this inferior quality in the Photoshop images. I even tried to import PNG versions of those images to see if that would change anything, but it was still the same outcome.

Has anyone else been experiencing this? And if so, do you have any idea as to what the issue could possibly be? Granted, it's not the end of the world, but if I create a video in HD, I would like the interior quality of the video to actually reflect that. It seems silly to post an HD video on YouTube of poor quality imagery.

I hope someone can help.

Report · Jan 31, 2022

PPI means nothing in video. All that matters is height and width in pixels.

If you want to do some panning and zooming make the still twice the size in pixels of the sequence. Other wise the same size as the sequence.

Make sure the image are set to None or Set to Framesize.

Post screenshot export settings with left tab to output with an image (not black).

Report · Jan 31, 2022

Did you try different export settings, like using Prores? In some cases h264 VBR does not work well, and CBR fixes it..