I thought of that too, but then that makes my 3.2 mega pixel camera seem over kill if I have to down size its images. I sure hope there is a better way. BTW my computer has 512 MB of memory. Do you really think I'm tapping the memory out by this process?

What are your system specs? I've experienced heat issues freezing up my pc (there's an oxymoron...) while rendering from the timeline direct to mpeg. I've had MUCH better luck rendering to an avi first, then to mpeg. Vegas CAN do this, but mpeg renders are very cpu intensive...

Frenchy

The PC is a Sony Vaio laptop, 2.4 Ghz with 512 Ram. I've created many MPEG1 as well as MPEG2 videos using firewire and DV, but this is the first time I've tried to make a slide show using the output from a 3.2 megapixel still camera.

Well, when the final file is rendered it's going to be whatever frame size you specify anyway, probably 720x480 or 640x480, so if you don't resize the images down to this then Vegas will. Starting with larger images doesn't make any difference unless you want to zoom in on a smaller section.

Chienworks is right - for a full frame image, all that additional data is wasted.

I know it seems like you're throwing away a lot of resolution, but there's really no point in maintaining such large image sizes in a slide show.

Dither them down to 720 x 480 (depending on what country you're in this might be different) using a photo editor app. If you gave the smaller file another name, you'll be able to put that in the timeline with the original (big) one and just click one, then the other, so you can see the result in the preview window/external monitor. Any differences are likely to be subtle.

Actually it's 654x480 (for NTSC) instead of 720x480.

I'd explain it all once again, but ... it's a whole lot simpler and easier if you just do it and see that it works than to try to understand why. ;)

You mean because of non-square pixels? Just tryin' to keep it simple...

Ok, I tried lowering the resolution and Vegas does not lock up anymore. However, I hate the fact that I can't retain the orginal picture's dimensions. Maybe my best bet is just to go with DVD and an MPEG2 slide show. At least that way I can make the sound track DD5.1. Thanks for the help. Peace! Out!

Sorry - my mistake. I guess you're not trying to create a slideshow for DVD then.

You're going to need a pretty hefty chunk of memory and/or temp workspace to render that.

What's your target medium?

You couldn't have kept the original dimensions anyway. Standard video is much smaller resolution. Even HD is about half the resolution of your digital camera. You'll find very few video displays other than computer monitors that can display even that resolution faithfully.

Ok, I said peace out, but I had to come back to answer your questions. dvddue I mentioned MPEG-1 several times, so I wasn't considering DVD. Believe it, or not my personal web site is the end medium. Most of my family has broadband and a 20MB MPEG-1 file isn't out of the question for us. Chienworks I have several programs that'll create an html slide show and mantain the digital pics native resolution. Granted if you play back the slide show on a 1024 x 768 monitor you've got a lot of scrolling around to do for a pictre of 2056 x 1564, but never the less you see the picture as it was taken and not scaled back. I had originally chose an MPEG-1 slide show because Vegas makes a normally bland static slide show come to life through keyframes. I can't get that with my html slide show generator. Unless you have more questions, peace, out, take 2.

So what you're trying to create is a high def mpeg-1 video right?
If you just have your project properties set to the NTSC or PAL template then truly the extra res on you stills is doing nothing for you.
You'd need to set the project properties to a much higher res to get any advantage, 720p might be a good compromise.
Your other issue might be how to get the encoder to encode at that res. I'm thinking that neither mpeg-1 or 2 are going to do it for you, even at 720p the file size at that res will be huge. Have you thought about WMP9? If the still are static for the most part then the encoder should be able to get the file size down and hence the bandwidth requirements.