Chienworks,

Thanks a lot for your detailed description. This helps a lot. Now I will wait for someone to answer my second question :)

Have you tried Chroma key? That may do some of what you want.

That sounds very interesting, however I am sorry to say that I dont know what is Chroma Key or how I can use it. I would appreciate some more tips

Thanks

As Chienworks says, 655x480 stills are generally good in Vegas. The program will adjust the image to fit the project's pixel aspect ratio.

Vegas seems to adjust any image for "best fit" in the video frame. If you place an oddly proportioned image into a project Vegas normally scales it up or down until one of the dimensions fills the frame. This can be really confusing if you import an image that you think fits in the frame because it may not do what you had imagined. This is usually the source of "my pictures look stretched/squashed" complaints.

It's possible to coax Vegas into applying a 0.9091 pixel aspect ratio to a particular file format. I like to set photoshop PSD files to work this way because I sometimes move stills between Media100 and Vegas. I chose PSD files "just because". This gives me a couple of useful options-like starting with a 720x528 still and then squashing it to 720x480 and using it that way-with Vegas treating the pixels as "non-square".

I do all of this because I'm working with stills of circuit boards and the fine details can turn to mush (particularly if you export a frame as a PNG still and then use that for a freeze frame). In the end, DV compression may wipe out that detail anyway.

To set a particular file format to 0.9091 PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio):
1-Right click any file of that format in the media pool.
2-Select "Properties"
3-Select a Pixel Aspect Ratio from the list
4-click on the little diskette icon next to the "Stream" dropdown
5-Select "OK

From now on any imported file of that format should be treated as if it has the PAR you specified. Files already in the project may not change.

I try to avoid making Vegas correct an image to fit the screen-especially taking a 720x480 image and making Vegas resize it. The reason is that I would assume that vegas will fit the width of the still to the frame (reducing the image to 655x437) then pad the height back up to 480 and then when it renders out to DV pad the still back out to 720.

I don't think I want that. At that rate you should have started with a 655x480 still.

Pixel aspect ratios are worth concentrating on for a while to get it all clear in your head.

Rob Mack

Thanks Rob, thats really helpful. I learned something new. as you said 720x480 might resize the image and makes it lose some of its details and I guess I will stick to the 655 x 480 unless I want smaller images (which doesnt fill the frame)

I am still waiting for Chienworks to teach me how to do the Chrome Key or bluescreen effect in Vegas

Sorry Trex, but i was waiting for you to at least look at the Chroma key effect or glance at the help screen topic about it. ;) It's often much more instructive for you to dabble in something and experiment with it on your own than to be told what to do.

Chroma key is a video effect that can be applied like any other effect. Click the little effects icon at the right edge of the clip and double-click Sonic Foundry Chroma Keyer then click OK. You'll see a window showing various options for keying. Probably the most useful is the eyedropper tool. You can use this tool to click on the background color (blue screen area) in the video clip and select that as the keyed color. Now wherever that color appears in that clip will become transparent and lower tracks will show through.

You can put your subject on a blue background on track one, put a clip of pretty scenery on track two, use the Chroma Key to select the blue on track one and your subject will appear to be in the scenery.

Chienworks,

Thank you very much for all your help. I felt really sorry after I asked you I found it in the manual so I am reading it now and I will play a bit with it. If I have more specific question I will get back and ask it.

Now just a quick tip. For a large project lets say I am doing something for my baby. Intro, Video for Home tour, Family videos, slideshow. Lets say the whole project is about 50 or 60 min. Should I create different projects render them differently and then combine them all at the end with effects in between to one video or create one big project in Vegas

What's your capture system, miniDV? What's your final product going to be? VHS tapes, VCDs, SVCDs, DVDs ??? How you assemble the project can largely be a function of what you have hardware-wise and where you're going. For example, if you're going to VHS tapes you might Print-to-Tape (PTT) the final project to your miniDV camcorder and record from that into a VHS player. Vegas will allow you to add several rendered files to it's PTT menu and will SEAMLESSLY record them back out.

A little more info will help with advice.

Welcome to the best forum on the Web. These people have patiently helped me waddle through my learning curve for many months.

DGrob

It is indeed the best forum on the web. People here are super friendly and the response time is better than any paid customer support out there.

You are right, I forgot to provide more information. My idea is to have the following
- Intro
- Video of the house
- Video of the baby's ultrasound
- Video of the baby's at hospital
- Video of baby's party
- Slideshow of images

I am capturing all the videos from miniDV so some of the files are fairly large about 300 MB or something for 3-5 min. I want to edit them in Vegas and then wondering whether I should include everything which would be Gigs in size or should I put them in different projects

My preferred output would be either MPEG, VCD or DVD (I dont have DVD writter for now)

Thanks in advance for your help

It really doesn't make much difference if you have one giant VV project or lots of little ones. You can render out each part and then bring it all back into one final project for output. I certainly started out that way, if you are new to this game it's a safer way to go. The downside to having one big project is inadvertantly changing something at the beginning and not realising thats left gap at the end etc. The upside is using less disk space. If you don't apply any effects to the rendered files when you bring them into the final project there's no quality hit.

Hint, give your files names you'll remember, save your prpject(s) regularly with names like Baby Party-01, Baby Party-02 etc and put them somewhere other than the VV default. I put everything into one folder with other folders beneath it. That way when I'm truly finished with the job its easier to get rid of all of it.

As you don't have a DVD burner could I humbly suggest if you're not going out to VHS or some other tape format then I'd create a SVCD rather than VCD. Much better quality and it will still play in almost all DVD players. Just need to render as mpeg-2 and use something like Nero to author it.