Spaceman wrote:The video look good enough but i think that stars are a bit too dim and for some reason, Earth look like a watermelon.
Excluding the stars, the video was excellent. Some things that might help:
1. Make the stars shown as scaled discs (under the Render menu, or CTRL-S to cycle)
2. Increase the Magnitude Limit to where you get more background stars than usual (use the "[" and "]" keys to go up and down.)
What I am about to tell you is based on my experience alone -- I am no expert.
There are 3 things which seem to have the most impact on the quality of videos created using Celestia:
1. Speed/Abilities of video card (to include S-Video/RCA outputs if to external recorder)
2. Processing power of computer (speed/operating system)
3. CoDec used to record (or quality settings on external recording equipment, such as Digital Video Recorder)
Of course, resolution/detail of the textures used, background programs running, and other computer-specific items can affect overall quality, especially if recorded entirely live.
For DVR recordings, make sure you are using the highest quality settings the recorder can handle.
If you are recording direct to disc on the same computer, try the different CoDecs to see which one seems to give you the best quality. Uncompressed isn't really an option, especially if you want high-resolution, as hard drive speeds (on computers more than a few years old, like mine) are simply too slow to keep up. Xvid (
http://www.xvid.org/)seems to be the best Open Source video CoDec available, but that is my opinion based solely on this 2001 dinosaur I'm using.
As with virtually any program, trial and error is generally the best way to find out what works best for you. Very few people actually have the exact same hardware as the programmers and testers, so you gotta experiment....
Earth didn't look bad to me -- it just needed more visible stars in the background (for definition contrast.)
- Danny
Anyway, be well....
