Any way to get exports without artifacts?

[nzot]

Basically every export I've made with either Videopad or its cousin Photostage has noticeable artifacts that are not in the source files. I suspect some may be related to things like text overlays and effects, as there seems to be residual bits of those showing on later frames in some cases, but that's just a guess, and there seems to be some apparent randomness to it, like not every single export artifacts in exactly the same ways or places, even though the export settings and most of the sequence remain the same.

Anyway, is there any way to get a clean result when exporting? It's aggravating going from a pristine image to distorted blotches showing on what should be a clean, single-color section of a frame.

For reference, I've mainly been using mp4 lately as the export format, though sometimes I've used AVI then converted to mp4 with other software. Almost a year ago I tried a bunch of different export options on a different project than the one I'm working on now, and nothing seemed to fix the artifacting, so I gave up, but figured it doesn't hurt to ask before I upload the next one, just in case someone knows how to fix this ongoing problem.

[borate]

Default Quality choice isn't always best.  Choose one of the many alternative bitrate presets or input a custom #.

Click the blue Default Quality/Filesize link, then the caret in the Video Quality/Bitrate field to access this drop down...

See if this occurs with the current release.  For licensed users upgrades are free for up to six months from purchase date.  After that, VP will continue to fully function but a fee will be required in order to register the newest.  Retain your old install file and registration info.

[nzot]

2 hours ago, borate said:

Default Quality choice isn't always best.  Choose one of the many alternative bitrate presets or input a custom #.

Does Default Quality correspond to, say, the Medium Quality option, or is it somewhere between that and the High Quality option as shown in the list, or what? And how do those phrases correspond to the number bit rates below them? It's all rather vague and hard to know what to choose if you don't know what it all actually means.

[borate]

For the High/Med/Low/Very Low you might have to examine the export to see the result.  Don't know what bitrate is used for the 'default' and perhaps it varies with content??

Check the result with MediaInfo to see.

The numbered choice below should output at those rates, if the codec can handle them.  Experiment.