Thanks for the response. Is there not a way to run a track fx in Vegas that will squash up my photos, then let a black parent track with the caption on it come through at the bottom? Just looking for a way to save time. I dont really want to have to re-edit all my photos again.

The only quick thing I can think of would be to just super-impose the writing on top of the picture, at the bottom, and fade it out so that the entire picture can be seen for a while.

If you use a dark shadow behind the text you won't need the black bar, and it will look more professional. Then fade it in and out as was just mentioned above.

Sorry, I have to bump this topic again cause I am having trouble. I have ruled out resizing my pics and now just want to overlay a thin black bar at the bottom of my video that I can put the text right into.

Unfortunately, I am having difficulty getting the correct compositing mode so the picture still comes through along with the black bar. Maybe I am creating the black bar incorrectly - I just made a still image that is all white except for a thin black bar at the bottom.

Please help.

tygrus, see if this works for you.
Create a text track above your images and put some of it on there for layout purposes.
Insert a new track below this track. Go to Media Generators, select Black and drop it on the new track. Enter desired length of time necessary and stretch it out for the length of your project.
Open the Pan/Crop window. Change the setting in the Move tab so that's it's "y" axis only. Select "No" in the "Stretch to fill frame" setting. Reduce the height of the box to the amount you want. Place the cursor in the shrunk area and position it as desired. Adjust height if necessary. Exit Pan/Crop.
Now move your cursor to the top of this black track so that it says "Opacity is 100% and drag it down to the desired level.
If you want to fade the black background in and out, the only way to do it is to split it at the desired points and fade it in and out. Remember to fade the titles as well
Hope this helps.

Mike

Mike thanks for the response. I have done some playing in the pan/crop window to make a caption area, the problem I ran into is when I do motion effects, the caption area gets lost because it is part of the pan/crop defined area. As you zoom in it goes off screen. I am not sure that will happen with your method above but I will try it out.
thx.

...when I do motion effects...

Ahh, you forgot to mention that :-)
Ignore everything I said previously and do the captioned slides in something like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. If all your stills are the same size, you could set up a template layer for the caption area and zip through creating them fairly quickly. Now, any changes you make with a motion effect will affect that slide only.

Mike

Mike I followed most of what you originally posted and got it to work. The caption bar stays in place when I zoom and pan on the still.

Thanks for your timely help.