Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 4/30/2005, 5:03 PM
Because its doing what its suppose to... maintaining the aspect ratio. You can uncheck, but then your source files may end up looking stretched or squashed.

There's a better way. To make your source file fill the frame size you selected for your project, Click on the Pan/crop button at the end of every source file. In the workspace that opens, right click within the workspace area you now your your source file in and select mantain aspect ratio. You source material will "jump" to fill the frame, but often to do so and mantain aspect ratio it will also zoom in. Use the bounding box to adjust to the portion of the source file you want.

If you don't want to crop and also want to maintain aspect ratio then your source material MUST be either the same width or height of the project you're putting it into. If not, something has got to give. Either the source file needs to be cropped or you need to accept not keeping perfect aspect ratio.
Spot|DSE wrote on 4/30/2005, 5:12 PM
Harwin,
On the media, right click and look at Switches. In there, uncheck the Maintain Aspect Ratio.
You can also do this in the Project Media/Media Pool window. If you do it here, you can right click for the properties of the media, and in the Media Tab, store the preference by clicking the small icon that looks like a floppy disk.
Harwin wrote on 5/1/2005, 7:40 AM
"but then your source files may end up looking stretched or squashed."

Well, what i do all the time when i work with Vegas...

First make the video, render it and all, get a 1 gb big file, then import it to Windows Move Maker and compress it there.

I guess Vegas video makes the video a little higher than 240 pixels? Becuse movie maker always resizes it to 320x240 no matter the videos size, so thats why.

And when i do that and maintaining aspect ratio, after "resizing" it with movie maker, the video clip gets slightly thinner and it gets 2 black lines, one on the top and one on the bottom.

If the video was just a video like that and you didn't see the black lines, It'd be fine, but as i usually in my videos use "flashing effects" and such, you can see the black quite well get brighter, and there i am busted.

I dont feel much like sharing 1 gb huge files either, and Windows movie maker is the only compresser i understand, Virtual Dub made me scratch my head, that's all.

Appreciate any help.

Edit: Another thing i noticed is in the Preview window, under it it says "Project: 320x240x32" What does the 32 stand for? Thats the darn lines annoying me?
BillyBoy wrote on 5/1/2005, 10:29 AM
What do you have your project settings at? (file/properties)

These setting will overide what you source file is and change accordingly, this is how you can end up with "black bars" at the top and bottom. So if you drop on a source file that's 320x240 but have your project settings set to 720x480, that's the rendered project frame size. In a similar manner which file type and template you pick determines the file size (how big a file, not the frame size) you project gets rendered to.

When exploring files you have on your system Vegas reports the size (diminsions)The first two numbers 320x240x32 while the last number reported is the color depth or bits used. If a video file it also reports the frame rate.

Example assume you have a still image with 24 bit color. All that means is the file's color depth is 2 times itself, 24 times or the number is the 24th power which is how you get to 16.7 million possible colors at 24 bit depth. Lessor or higher bit vales have less or more color informaiton. The higher the bit or depth, the more gradation and true to life the colors are.

For more on color depth: http://www.sketchpad.net/basics6.htm


jeff_12_7 wrote on 5/1/2005, 11:04 AM
Thanks for the link BB...I finally understand what the color settings mean. Lots of stuff there including Photoshop tutorials and Illustrator tutorials as well. I have Illustrator, but never really understood it.
Harwin wrote on 5/1/2005, 5:14 PM
"What do you have your project settings at? (file/properties)"

Template: Untitled
W: 320
H: 240

I guess thats the info you wanna know.
And when i render, i use

Template: Default Template (uncompressed)

When i clicked render now, i saw that a check box says
"Stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox)"

Do i need to check that? Sounds like it.
It is not checked now btw.

What is letterbox btw?
BillyBoy wrote on 5/1/2005, 7:43 PM
The idiom "the devil is in the details" seems appropriate to mention. Its always the little things that screw things up.

Letterbox can be confusing:

http://www.google.com/search hl=en&lr=&oi=defmore&q=define:Letterbox

If you check fill output frame size, then you'll get rid of the black borders. However, that can stretch the video. Try it and see if it meets your needs.

Generally you want to avoid the default MPEG template like the plague. Why Sony made it the default I don't know. If you're making a MPEG then prick the appropriate DV template.

If you're making something for the web, then try Microsoft's excellent format. There's two, one for video and audio. If you video has both, pick the video template. The file type is WMV (Windows Media Video V9.

CAUTION... again the default setting is set to a very low bitrate. While this will result in a small file size the quality is poor. Try changing the default to either 512 kbps or 1 mbps.
mfhau wrote on 5/2/2005, 11:25 PM
I am using the PAL DV(720x576, 25.00 fps) with PAR 1.0926(PAL DV) project template to input many pan and scan PNG stills plus some video.
In order to have the stills display properly (I am using a scan of CD to test this) I must change the PAR of the stills from 1.0 to 1.0926. Ok - then I hit the "Save settings to video profiles for future Auto-detection" but whenever I bring another PNG into the project it's PAR is 1.0 - what am I missing???
(I have ready every post on this subject but still no joy for me)