file format question

newvidder wrote on 11/30/2004, 9:45 PM

I have Vegas Movie Studio 4.0a and DVD Architect Studio. I made a video using still photos (scanned jpegs, not digital, different sizes) using transitions and with a music track. I burned a DVD but the pics are stretched and the video fills the entire screen. What should/could I have done to make the video framed with black so that the pics would be smaller and clearer? I saved and rendered the VF files in mpg1, mpg2 and .mov formats and size is the same. The video on DVD was a bit twitchy too.

Thanks for helping this newbie.

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 12/1/2004, 7:28 AM

When you say your pictures were "stretched," do you mean they were of the wrong proportion, i.e., too wide or too tall?

A photo with the proportions 655 x 480 pixels will perfectly fill a 720 x 480 video screen. (The difference in those numbers has to do with the fact that video pixels are actually 90% narrower than they are tall.) If you aren't already, try to think in terms of pixels (the little squares that make up a scanned or digital picture) rather than inches. Using Photoshop or PaintShop or whatever graphic program you are using, check your image size, in pixels, and make sure you have enough resolution and your pictures should come in perfectly clear.

(Naturally, if you plan to do any panning-and-scanning around the picture, you'll need a little extra resolution to allow for it.)

If you're photo is any proportion other than 655 x 480 pixels, Vegas will leave a margin around the shorter edges.

To resize your photo on the timeline, click on the FX button in the corner of your clip and choose Pan/Crop. You can also set motiion here. Make sure your aspect ratio for the picture is locked, though, or you may end up with a photo that gets stretched to the wrong proportions.

newvidder wrote on 12/1/2004, 2:08 PM

Thanks for your help! As it turns out I forgot to change the default setting to 720x486! It's looking good now, especially after I rescanned some pics at 300 res and saved them as bitmaps and resized them to 600 x ? pixels.

Thanks again!

Steve Grisetti wrote on 12/1/2004, 2:17 PM

Glad it worked out for you, newvy.

hbwerner wrote on 1/18/2005, 5:59 PM

I find that if my picture proportion is different, when I paste it on the timeline it may come up with a distorted aspect ratio. How to fix?

hbwerner wrote on 1/21/2005, 5:14 AM

Anybody?

gogiants wrote on 1/21/2005, 4:53 PM

If you haven't tried these, then do so.

1) For the picture in question, click on the "FX" icon on the lower right of the event on the timeline. Then go to the "General" tab. Then try checking/unchecking "maintain aspect ratio" to see if it makes a difference.

2) Go to the Pan/Crop tab. Right click on an empty area in the pan/crop window. Experiment with the "match output" aspect and "match source aspect" options.

Both of these may well result in "black space" around the photo but at least it won't be distorted.

Otherwise, see what you can do to crop your photos to the sizes mentioned earlier in this thread.