DVDA-Photoshop-Vegas work flow problems

biggles wrote on 9/1/2006, 8:52 PM

I am having a bit of trouble getting content out of DVDA into Photoshop (via the clip board), into Vegas and finally back into DVDA as a first-play clip.

Let me explain in a little more detail.

I decided that for this particular DVD I would have a short piece of 'first-play' media that would end up by fading to a still of the menu I had created in DVDA.

I built my menu in DVDA; previewed the project and copied the menu (at the highest quality setting) to the clipboard.

I then opened Photoshop, slected New, selected the PALD1/DV 720X576 (with guides) option and pasted the image into that.

I then saved this as a psd file, opened Vegas, inserted my first clip (a piece of looped media with text on it, and faded this to my saved psd file which was the still I had captured in DVDA.

When I previewed the result, there were black borders down the side of the screen when my clip got to the psd file.

I rendered this out anyway, and also rendered out another version with 'Maintain aspect' ratio turned off so that there were no black borders.

I then tried both of these clips as my first play media back in DVDA, but neither gave a good result. There was always a noticable change when going from the first play clip (which ended with a still shot of the menu) to the menu iyself.

I'm sure that I've got a setting wrong in my workflow somewhere. Can anyone give me a 'blow-by-blow' description of how to do this successfully?

BTW I am running Vegas 6 and DVDA3, Photoshop CS

Thanks
Wayne

Comments

bStro wrote on 9/2/2006, 7:05 AM

When I previewed the result, there were black borders down the side of the screen when my clip got to the psd file.

Are we talking little slivers of black just a few pixels wide, or big honking borders that take up most or all of the area just outside the safe zones? If the former, right-click on the still image's event in Vegas and and choose the Pan/Crop option. There, right-click the image and choose Match Output Aspect. This crops your image just a little bit and will fill the whole frame.

On the other hand, if you've got really large borders on the side (they're called pillars, as I recently learned), what you've run into is a pixel aspect ratio issue. Whereas still images have square pixels, DV is made up of rectangular pixels. What makes this even more fun is that it varies between DV formats -- NTSC pixels are wider than they are tall. PAL pixels are taller than they are wide. (Or haven't I got this back asswards, anyone?)

Anyhow, Vegas assumes that any still images added have a 1.0 pixel aspect ratio (rightly so). On the other hand, I think Photoshop's DV templates also compensate for for the PAR difference. I don't have Photoshop, so I'm not sure what it does -- either it uses a different picture aspect ratio, or it actually adds pixel aspect ratio information to the file, which some programs can use but others (ahem, Vegas) cannot. At any rate, the image you make in Photoshop may not be what Vegas is expecting for a fullscreen PAL image.

So, in Vegas, right-click on the still image's event and choose Properties, and then go to the Media tab. Near the bottom, you'll find an option for Pixel Aspect Ratio. It's probably set at 1.0 square pixels. Try changing it to 1.0926 PAL DV and hitting OK. If that works, you might still have little slivers of black on the sides, so refer to previous paragraph. If it doesn't...well, report back and tell us what happens.

Rob

biggles wrote on 9/3/2006, 1:39 AM

Thanks for the reply Rob. Unfortunately I am about to head off on a school camp to the Flinders Ranges (South Australia) for a whole week so I won't be able to try any of your suggestions until next week.

Very frustrating! But I certainly want to get this sorted as I have read about this effect and want to nail it!

Wayne