Comments

Elmo27376 wrote on 11/9/2006, 6:25 AM
This may not address your immediate problem but it may shed some light on what you might do with stills that don't need to be large. You said the pics were in hi res but didn't give a figure so whether this will apply or not is a question.
These comments have come from a number of postings here on the forum.
I hope it is of some help.

DPI settings and size of stills for video

The picture's dimensions should be at least as large as the video frame. If you're working with NTSC then you need at least 654 X 480. If your pictures are 6x4" then you'll have to scan at 120dpi or greater. If they are smaller you'll need to scan at a higher resolution. 8x10 prints will only have to be scanned at about 72dpi.

There isn't any simple "scan at Xdpi" setting that works in all cases. You'll have to do a little math. In general, it's ok to have more pixels than you need, so you could scan everything at 2400dpi and be done with it. However, if your image files are too big it will slow down the editing and rendering processes to a crawl, so don't go overboard.

On the other hand, most of us aren't content to just leave a photo sitting still on our screen. We pan and zoom. So you've got to make sure that the area you plan to zoom into is at least 655 x 480 pixels.

That said, some sizes seem to produce a “glittery” effect so some experimentation is needed and a picture size of 900 X 600 seems to work quite well.

If the stills come from a digital still camera you might consider importing those that don't need to be at a hi res into a program like Adobe Photo Elements and change the resolution. It is slow but I have done this where the sparkel artifacts were a problem and it helped even usinggaussian blur to improve the situation.
Ken
womanmarine wrote on 11/9/2006, 7:23 AM
Elmo:

Thanks. That doesn't really help, LOL. I have been doing this for a while with other programs. I zoom in close, these are OLD family photos that are scanned at 300ppi, I need to have these be clear and not fuzzy.

I invested in this software because I could do more with it, but can't believe it is choking on these.

I hope there is a definitive answer regarding a maximum size, i.e. no bigger than XMB.

Thanks for your post, I will watch for that sparkle that you talked about. I have just started with this software, so have much to learn, and I really appreciate experienced users!!
IanG wrote on 11/9/2006, 3:27 PM
I've just made a short video (MPEG2) using a mixture of jpg stills up to 10Mbyte (3888 x 2592) - no problems! What format are your images and how big are they (file size & image size)?

Ian G.
womanmarine wrote on 11/9/2006, 6:05 PM
Hi Ian:

My stills are TIF files with an alpha channel, from 10mg to 20mg in size.

I seem to do video just fine, but the stills are giving me errors, program not responding, and once it just shut down. I have no idea.

I have 2 gig of ram and plenty of hard drive space, so I am at a loss.

Thanks.
Chienworks wrote on 11/9/2006, 6:58 PM
TIFF could be your problem. Vegas uses Quicktime to decode TIFF images. Try resaving them as JPEG or PNG instead.
womanmarine wrote on 11/9/2006, 7:18 PM
You can't save an alpha channel with a jpg. Can you with PNG? I've never used it before, I've always used tif. Can I use TGA?

And why would it treat it as a quicktime file anyhow? What difference does that make?
IanG wrote on 11/10/2006, 1:16 AM
Both PNG and TGA work in VMS, and they both support alpha channels. If you want transparency you might be better off using chromakey in VMS - as well as removing the dependence on having an alpha channel you can use both stills and video.
Ian G.
womanmarine wrote on 11/10/2006, 6:18 AM
Thanks Ian:

I don't relish the work or time to fix them for chromakey, I will try TGA and PNG. It will be easier to batch them, and faster.
womanmarine wrote on 11/10/2006, 10:35 PM
I just want to thank everyone for their kind help.

PNGs are working great!!!