images for slideshow

Rv6tc wrote on 2/8/2007, 4:50 PM
Sorry to re-hash this, I know it's been covered, but I'm a little confused.

I'm doing a pretty big (for me) project and it will include a portion that's slideshow and some video. For the slideshow portion a have a bunch of pictures all different sizes. I'm trying to figure out if I should re-size them with Photoshop. I've read previously on this forum that you can just drop them on the timeline and Vegas will handle it, but I've also read that if they are too big, then you will have issues when you pan/crop. I have some pictures up to 3579x2402! So should I resize them? Use 720x480? 900x600? It seems to me the higher the resolution the better, especially if you are panning or zooming. But I'm reading that anything over 1440 (720x2, I'm assuming) reduces the quality.

Also, all my pictures are .bmp's and are pretty big, 14-25 MB each. Should I convert them to JPEG or PNG before I drop them into Vegas?

Sorry for the Noob questions, but this is pretty important and I really want to get the best quality out of it that I can.

Thanks,

Keith

Comments

DJPadre wrote on 2/8/2007, 5:19 PM
hmm... bmp and png is ur best option for image file types due to compression (or lack of) but i use png overlays sometimes and theyre just as fast as bmp. jpg is a lil slower, but v7 has bought it up to speed.. DO NOT use tiffs as they require QT and will run like a bag of crap..

for resolution, be REALLY careful with how its interpolated during the dimension change..

typically, if im zooming and panning a picture i request a clietn to provide their images at 150dpi (in case i need to retouch it) and 3000x2000 (if im working HD) and 2000x1000 if im working SD
the dimensions flip if teh image is portrait orientation.

i havent had a problem in doing this.. in the past, with huge pictures or with pics using high DPI i used to get image distortions as the scaler in vegas jsut couldnt cope.. that may have changed since V6 and V7, as i really only had a prob with V5... (happened once in my lifetime... )

apart from that, you shouldnt have a problem
randy-stewart wrote on 2/8/2007, 5:35 PM
Keith,
I would recommend saving them in either .png or jpeg format and resizing them to 720x480 (assuming your displaying on a 4:3 TV or screen). This will help when you pan especially when using a plug in like Ultimate S. You'll have to watch the sizing to make sure important content of your pictures is positioned properly. I have several slide shows with and without video here: http://www.cr-home-videos.com/samplevideos.html as examples. Hope this helps.
Randy
dand9959 wrote on 2/8/2007, 5:58 PM
Yes, resize them, and save as png if possible.
If you plan on panning and/or zooming on the photos, you'll need to resize them to a bigger size (800x600, for instance) to accomodate for the fact that NO MATTER WHAT the size of the total image, the part that is displayed on the screen will be 720x48...given that your project is 4:3 NTSC.
Paul Mead wrote on 2/8/2007, 7:06 PM
And do not go for straight 720x480 -- video aspect ratios are different than still picture aspect ratios. This is described in the Vegas docs. Make sure your still pictures are bigger than that.

In general, I suggest no dimension greater than about 2000 pixels. Why? For one, because Vegas does a poor job of managing its buffers when rending hi-res photos and you run a high risk of hangs during render if you have a lot of hi-res photos. Also, for some reason I find that I get better results (clearer rendered stills) when I downsize the photos -- doesn't make sense but that's the way it seems to work for me.

If you don't want to slog thru Photoshop there are a number of tools that make resizing quick and easy. For example, Microsoft has a "powertoy" plugin that you can download that allows you to go into Windows Explorer, click on the pics you want to resize, right click, choose resize, select any resize options you want, and presto, you are done. Just browse the MS website for "powertoys image resizer" and you will find it.
johnmeyer wrote on 2/8/2007, 8:28 PM
Click on this link:

Still photos in Vegas

related topics:

Scanner questions (for photographs) (very complete thread with lots of scanner/photo info)

4110 wrote on 2/9/2007, 1:23 PM
I have been working on a slide show and I have images in tiff format. I can confirm that they run like a bag of crap. Now that I have read this thread I know that the problem is the tiff file type. I can use Photoshop to change the pictures to another format. But if I do that the the file names in my project will be wrong. They will have a .tif extension rather than jpg or png. Is there a way to have Vegas modify the picture filenames so I don't have to start the project from scratch?

Thanks,
Chienworks wrote on 2/9/2007, 3:17 PM
If you don't have a horrendously large number of images, you can right-mouse-button click on the "broken" image event on the timeline, and use the replace media function.
nolonemo wrote on 2/9/2007, 3:29 PM
Just speculating, what happens if you batch convert all the images to jpegs, and then use a batch renamer (not converter) to change the extension to .tif (so they had the same filenames as when put on the Vegas timeline)? Would Vegas just open up all the mis-extensioned jpegs without a problem? I'm at work so I can' t test this idea out....
genie wrote on 2/9/2007, 3:33 PM

Hmmm.. I don't get it. If you want to pan why would you downsize your images to the video output size, such as PAl or NTSC.
I thought the idea was to keep the images larger so that when you pan within a picture it still maintains maximum pixel clarity.
What am I missing here?

thanks Genie
johnmeyer wrote on 2/9/2007, 4:01 PM
If you want to pan why would you downsize your images to the video output size,

You are absolutely correct: You don't want to downsize to project resolution if you are then going to zoom in further. I think you misunderstood the post I linked to.

The whole idea is to scan (or downsample) to the project resolution, such as 720x480 for NTSC DV, TIMES the zoom factor. So, if you plan to zoom into the image so that your pan/crop box is 1/2 the size in the X and 1/2 the size in the Y direction, then you need an image that is 1440x960, or larger.

You can always scan at much higher resolution than you need and then import this into Vegas and use it without any further work. The only reason for all this discussion is that, with lots of super-hi-res slides on the timeline, the performance may decline, especially if the files are in certain formats (PNG is the preferred format for Vegas). Also, if you have strong, contrasty "lines" in your image, you will almost certainly get "shimmer" in the image as you zoom. Reduce Interlace Flicker will reduce this somewhat, and you can mask it with blur, but the blur will degrade the image, even with 0.01 applied only in the vertical direction. Therefore, without a doubt, the "best" way to handle stills, if you have the time and the software and the know-how, is to change the resolution as described.

If you don't know what resolution you need prior to starting, you can do a rough draft and then go back and down-res the images in an external application based on the zoom actually used. When you return to Vegas, it will display the lower-res image. Rather amazingly, Vegas will display exactly the same portion of the image as before, so no further work is necessary. Pretty darn neat!