> Your PAR is 1.0926.
> 1.0926 X 720 = 786.672

That's what Grazie already said... he understands that it's the difference between square pixels and non-square pixels. The question he is really asking is:

Why would Copy to Clipboard and Save to Disc produce different results?

One would think that they should have the same behavior.

~jr

I've noticed this as well, very frustrating that it's not consistant.


The behavior of the save snapshot seems to have changed, maybe a concession to PS now handling PAR?

I can't answer why it's this way, only whoever coded it knows that.
I can GUESS. Being able to save in square means you're getting the exact image without Vegas doing any interpolation. For those taking a frame from Vegas, working on it in some other app and bringing it back this may yield more accurate results. Just my best and only guess,

Bob.

One would think that they should have the same behavior.

You'd think so but this is Vegas we're dealing with :-)
In NTSC, Copy to Clipboard gives you 720x480 while Save to Disc gives you 655x480 and 720 X. 09091 (NTSC PAR) = 654.552.

edit: Put an image on the timeline and use Pan/Crop to Match Output Aspect.
Do a Copy to Clipboard into a Photoshop graphic set to 720 X 480 (I've only got Photoshop 7 so no PAR correction).
Do a Save to Disc and bring both images back into Vegas.
The one from Photoshop needs to be corrected for PAR while the other one already matches perfectly.

Mike

Thanks John.

As I said I DO realise just WHAT is happening, what I want to be told is WHY? And, consequently, WHY make life so obdurate? I want to know "why"? I've spent not a small amount of time thinking it was me not understanding something.

Thanks to Bob too!

Grazie

The 787x576 version is a scaled version to adapt to the PC square pixel format. It's not native, but easy to handle.

When copying to clipboard this is the native way to export the pixel data. Scaling cannot be proceeded here because this is kind of raw data being copied. I can provide better quality.

Marco

Boggles my mind why they do save to file with a corrected PAR when what I want is actual pixels. Thank goodness the clipboard method gives me the actual pixels!

Boggles my mind that you don't get a choice.

My guess is that when you're doing things with the preview window that make use of your clipboard content, the clipboard content needs to be in actual pixels. Does that make sense?

Rob

For ages and ages the practice was to export actual pixels stills and then work with those in "whateva".

Conversely, if you had a scan to import to the timeline you were expected to size and crop it to whatever the manufacturer thought was the right size (say 787x576 in this case) and then disproportionately size it to your frame size (720 x 576 in this case again)

Vegas' habit of scaling an image for you as if it were square pixels and needed the adjustment was probably a concession to two things:
1. New users who expected it to "just work"
2. a concession to the fact that Vegas is a resampling NLE. Everything you throw onto the timeline gets resampled to fit the project as best it can. Throw a 79x58px image on the timeline and Vegas will try to make it fill the frame. Throw 32k audio in and it'll resample to 48k

Rob

Concession?

Sorry, Rob, but I am not letting this go at that. Hey this is "Grazie"!

I want to get more creative with my NLE work and that, at present, means Vegas.

As we ain't gonna get a Graphics editor in Vegas "next week", AND I want to be able to move freely in and out of Vegas to and from my Graphics editor, I do want that all important CONTROL over the CopyClipboard and SaveStill operations. One way to assist this process, and hopefully achieve my quest, would be to do this via scripting (Gilles has the script FOR this). This we DO have! So, consequently, I want to be able to approach script cognoscenti and present them with "script-worthy" ideas for their consideration, at with the knowledge that the overall "allowed" params are available to them. I don;t want to keep knocking my head against the "Nah, not possible. We don't have access to that part of Vegas". If we could nail this 787 or 720 "concession" then I can see a very wild option indeed!

Do you see where I am going with this? Do you? OK . . . . .

Rob & Mike, thanks for being more than gracious with your responses to my rantings.

OK, and just as a tempter, how about an "INSERT Still" Icon? Wouldn't that be great? Yes I know ALL about Stills and velocity Envelopes and Loop-offs etc etc . . But, here we are, using a tremendously versatile NLE, and the option that is oft called for - "Insert Still" - is complexified to such an extent that just 'cos we CAN do the Vegas thing, we really shouldn't/don't have too or potentially need too? Being creative, at least for me, is like "Catching Arrows" once the idea is gone it's l o n g gone, leaving me staring at the LCD screen wondering just what it was I was thinking about. Getting VEgas outta my face while I am "being" creative is, I beleive, the challenge for Madison and what the value Vegas has become to me!

We have Vegas AND we have scripting. Sometimes, methinks, a "concession" can be "constricting" too. The example I have taken several days to explore and mull-over, may very well "underline" what I was blabbing on about.

Just with a simple Icon Click - "Insert Still of Preview at Cursor Location" - think about THAT for a second? Neat huh?

Grazie


go on, somebody NOW tell me that this is already in place? I don't think so . . . lol . . .

"Just with a simple Icon Click - "Insert Still of Preview at Cursor Location" - think about THAT for a second? Neat huh?

Sorry, good idea but there's a couple of problems.
Where is this "still" going to exist?
Unless you actually save it as a file then all it is is a pointer to a frame in a video file. Delete the video it's taken from and the still you put into the T/L is gone.

You could solve the above problem by also having a Save As dialogue in the middle of the process but that kind of gets you back to what the current functionality gives us.

Even without the above there's the other problem of de-interlacing. Unless you're lucky enough to be shooting progressive you probably might not want to go straight from what's in the Preview Window back onto the T/L. I have spent some time fixing exactly this problem when a client had done exactly that using another NLE. It looked just fine on his LCD but was a juddering mess on a CRT,



"As we ain't gonna get a Graphics editor in Vegas "next week", AND I want to be able to move freely in and out of Vegas to and from my Graphics editor"

Here's a more expansive idea. You know how Vegas lets you specify the source project in a file as you render it?
Use that file in a Vegas project and you can open that project from the current T/L?

Well Vegas isn't the only program that does this.
I'm thinking if we could get all the codesmiths in the one room with a few pints we could really get something cooking. RClick any media on the Vegas T/L and open the source project, be it Vegas, Acid or After Effects or Photoshop or whatever your graphics editor of choice happens to be.

Bob.

Sorry, good idea but there's a couple of problems.Kill-Joy!

Where is this "still" going to exist?Scriptors JR and others have already GOT the necessary solutions for this.

Unless you actually save it as a file then all it is is a pointer to a frame in a video file. Mere detail . .. detail . . . How about Add Still Back At Cursor move video along . .

I really don't see an issue here? And I don't even understand Scripting?

Grazie

"I really don't see an issue here? And I don't even understand Scripting?"

Nothing to do with understanding scripting, it's to do with what a Vegas project file contains. It is just a recipe, no ingedients. That's why they're very small files.
By comparison a .PSD file contains the recipe and the ingedients hence they can be huge files.

You'd think as I did that you should be able to do what you want even without a script. Copy Preview to Clipboard and Paste that onto the T/L. Heck I can paste what Vegas has copied to the clipboard into a layer in Photoshop. Yeah, I too got frustrated that I couldn't do that. It took me a while thinking about it to realise why I couldn't / shouldn't do that.

If you look at a DVDA project it does something like what you want. It'll create a button thumbnail from the video. Brilliant and drop dead easy. Thing is it's only a pointer, the name of the file and the TC.
Change the media and the thumbnail changes, shite, been caught out by that so many times. Worse, render a new version of the movie out of Vegas with a new name and replace that media in the DVDA project and the thumbnail stays the same because it still references the old movie. Then delete the old movie, open my DVDA project and it starts complaining about missing media and all my thumbnails are GONE. First time that happened to me years ago I was in a tailspin for a while.

Now on the positive side. It might be nice if you had a function in the preview window or a script that saved what was in the preview window to a file and copied that to the T/L at the current cursor position. That is goof proof because you have created the 'ingedient' (a physcial file) for Vegas to use in its 'recipe'.

Bob.

Yes! - JR has a part of his UliS pro that does snappies to directories - this can NOT be brainsurgery - I WONT believe it!

Me want it NOW!!

Grazie

Hi.
Just thought I would chime in a bit on this as I may be working with a 1,000 count slideshow and I am trying to figure out if I should get them as digital stills or as screen saves from the Preview in Vegas. (My media card may not contain 1,000 stills even at a low level of resolution so that issue may be moot.)

I work with a lot of images and "loosing" them this was one of the reasons I dropped Pinnacle Studio 12 and migrated to Sony Vegas. At least Vegas has been able to find and replace the stills the few times I have lost them to date.
So far so good.

One of my working methods is to establish a MASTER/DO NOT MOVE folder in with my general Media files for each video project. But first I'll save them somewhere else and pull from there in case I use them for other graphic jobs.

In this future project (SD – 1.33 MP JVC / DV Tape) of 1,000 I'm hoping to keep them wherever Vegas first places them and use them "as is" since they will be clicking by at 8 images a second – 4 as images and 4 as numbers media from Vegas intermixed. I don't care about widescreen either at this point. Just need it to be as easy as possible. The interlacing issue however may be a problem but I am not a purist and will just try to pray that the time-lapse aspect will create its own artistic blend of what this will look like as a finished artistic product.

Thanks,
Bill

Hey Grazie, sorry if I sounded like I was trying to explain why it couldn't be done. I didn't realize there was something you wanted done.

Between you and Bob, you've pretty much laid out the requirements but let me try to put them in order:

--A script that can be triggered with a button
--must cut a hole in the current track to drop a still into (or maybe jut drop it on top of existing footage)
--must grab a still from the preview window and save it as a file
------Must deinterlace and set preview quality to preview/best before saving the still (afaik this is usually accomplished by temporarily changing the project properties to progressive and then changing the properties back)
------must allow user to pick the location to save the still. Should be able to just auto-increment file names and keep the button clicking to a minimum
--must place the still in the hole that was created on the timeline

Seems doable. Not by me, but I've seen most of this in other scripts.

As for the "Copy to Clipboard" feature, I can't think of a single place in Vegas where you could past that content into anything. The only place within Vegas where it's useful is in the preview window in views like Split Screen or Clipboard view. There you can use it for color matching, and that's all that SCS ever really had in mind, I think. So the clipboard has no bearing on creating stills for use in your project.

Rob Mack

Rob, thanks for adding clarity to my "wanderings" and general ponderings. How on Earth were you to know and how to respond to something that I was truly unaware I wanted from the start?

My opener was about the differential of the "widths" what I wanted and always have seen a need for was a more flexible use of the Copy to and Save As option . . My thoughts was that I wanted to be assured that I wasn't seeing a "bug" or feature.

Rob, thanks for "putting" up with me and for putting boundaries and shape to my more whimsical chatterings and natterings.

Cheers,

Grazie


ps: I still want this to happen!!!! . .and as you remark: "Seems doable. Not by me, but I've seen most of this in other scripts. " and THAT is what is so seductive . . .

What the heck has Grazie started here, blimey limey.

In DVDA's Preview do a Copy to Clipboard and I get 786 pixels wide!!

Years ago there was much debate about as to which was correct, 787 or 786. Kind of depended on how you rounded the numbers from memory. Well whoever wrote DVDA decided differently.

To add further MAJOR confusion I also found this article some time ago. I do NOT recommend reading it if you want to stay sane.

Bob.