Best file format for photo montage???

HeeHee wrote on 4/23/2003, 2:21 PM
Greetings all,

Just wanted to get opinions on what the best file format for photo montages in Vegas is. Quality vs Size.

I wanted to get the best possible quality and wasn't too concerned with file size so I scanned and saved photos as TIFF. However, when dropping 88 of these TIFF files onto the timeline I started receiving Virtual memory size warnings toward the end of the timeline as the files were being loaded. The system got real sluggish and even exception errored out of the program. Haven't had this problem with jpegs or Bitmaps or AVI, MPEGs, etc... This is the first time I used uncompressed TIFF files.

My system has the following characteristics:
AOpen MX34 mobo
Nvidia GeForce 4
PIII 933MHz CPU
256MB PC133 SDRAM
40GB 7200 RPM boot drive
120GB 7200 RPM project drive
Sony DW-U10A DVD±RW (DRU-500A)
Windows XP
Vegas 3.0c

Comments

FuTz wrote on 4/23/2003, 2:22 PM
Vegas is "optimized" for PNG files
jetdv wrote on 4/23/2003, 2:46 PM
Although some informal testing has been showing PSD files working slightly faster.
HeeHee wrote on 4/23/2003, 4:27 PM
Thanks guys! I will try converting them back to either PSD or PNG.

Have you ever heard of the prblem I am having? Could it be that I'm just low on memory or did one of the latest XP patches create a memory leak?
Paul_Holmes wrote on 4/23/2003, 4:56 PM
I get this every so often on my Athlon 1800 XP system, 768Megs Ram, like last night when I was compiling a DVD folder in the background, working on a Vegas Photo project, and opening large bitmap pictures in Ulead Photo Impact. I would occasionally get a low memory warning when I tried to cut and paste. Usually it would work on the 2nd try, but obviously my system was getting overloaded.
HeeHee wrote on 4/23/2003, 5:07 PM
Paul,

Like you said, you have a lot loaded in memory. All I have open when I get the error is Vegas. Very strange. Before I convert my files, I'm going to start systematically removing recent XP patches and hotfixes to see if one of them broke my system.

-Lee
vicmilt wrote on 4/23/2003, 6:29 PM
Before you go to all that trouble... TIFF files are huge.
Also, what resolution are your files? If they are 300 dpi there's your problem.
Convert everything down to 72dpi - you won't lose any quality for video. If you want to scan and animate the stills save them to a bigger image size (like 1000x1500 dpi, for instance). Let us know if this helps.
Paul_Holmes wrote on 4/23/2003, 7:44 PM
One other thought -- what do you have RAM preview set to? Sometimes I've forgotten and left it at 500M, then I open other programs, and Vegas is hoggin everything. As far as just Vegas open I haven't seen this problem, but I do have 768M.
HeeHee wrote on 4/24/2003, 1:11 AM
It turned out to be the TIF files causing the problem. I converted all the pictures to PNG and Vegas and my system ran fine. Strange because the file sizes are roughly the same between the two formats. I guess Vegas just handles PNGs better than TIFs. I suppose if I had more memory and horsepower, I wouldn't have a problem with the TIFs either.

Thanks for all your help!
jetdv wrote on 4/24/2003, 9:17 AM
TIFFs require quicktime to process - PNG and PSD do not.
riredale wrote on 4/24/2003, 10:48 AM
In my experience the DV format is such a low-quality medium (480x720) when compared to still photo resolution that pretty much any format will do. I used regular old jpeg when I did a still photo montage, and found that I could get away with surprisingly small file sizes before any artifacts showed up on the final video.