Well, you asked for it!! The barage of questions commences!!

I know from reading the forum that my pix should be cropped at 655x480 for best viewing when burned to a DVD ( which I will be doing ). Just a curiosity though - different video editing products suggested different dimensions of crops - even though the output is always the same (NTSC). Premiere suggested 720x534 - I've seen 720x480, etc. etc. This is the first time I've seen 655x480 so I'm very curious if someone knows why the discrepancy? Also, should I resample my stills to 72dpi, or let VF do that when it renders. I'm trying for the best quality of my end result!

Thanks much!

Hi Kim!

First of all, forget about dpi. This concept has no meaning whatsoever in video. The only time you would ever have to worry about it is when scanning in order to make sure you have a picture large enough to use in your video project. But once you have the file, all that matters is the size in pixels; the dpi makes no difference at all.

655x480 (actually 654.545454...) comes from the fact that television isn't really a 4:3 ratio, but actually just slightly wider at about 4.091:3. Other software "cheats" and stretches 640x480 out to the right size. Sonic Foundry's software works with the correct numbers. As far as the DV frame being 720x480, this is because the pixels in DV are slightly narrower than they are tall so it takes more of them to fit accross the frame.

Now, ... don't worry about any of this. You don't need to know any of that at all to use the software successfully!

The important thing is to make sure your image files are large enough so that VideoFactory doesn't have to magnify them. If you're not planning on zooming in then scanning a 4x6 photo at 150dpi gives a 900x600 image which will work fine. You don't want it much larger than this because that just wastes drive space and takes longer to render the video. On the other hand, if you want to be able to zoom in on someone's face in the picture that is about an inch high, then you should scan at 450 or 600dpi to make sure that small part of the picture is at least 480 pixels high. (Note that the dpi is only important in the scanning step; after that it's ignored.)

Once you have the picture on the timeline, you can let VideoFactory resize it for you. If the picture is too tall, you'll end up with black bars on the left and right. If the picture is too wide, you'll end up with black bars on the top and bottom. What you can do then is crop in slightly (make sure "Stretch to filll frame" is checked) to choose the section of the picture that you want to show so that it does fill the whole frame. Or not. If you really want to show all of a portrait-aspect picture and leave empty space on the sides then that's ok too. The important thing is not to get hung up on the technical details but instead to concentrate on showing the images you want people to see. Let VideoFactory handle the details for you.

If you've cropped as close as you can to making the picture fill the frame exactly and you still have some black space you want to get rid of, you can uncheck "Maintain aspect ratio" and VideoFactory will do whatever stretching is necessary to make it fit perfectly. If it has to stretch too much then your picture may look distorted. Don't worry about this too much though. Since you're primary output is for television display, keep in mind that the edges of the frame aren't shown on a television screen; they're hidden due to picture overscan which makes the picture larger than the front of the tv screen. Any narrow black edges you have will probably not be visible anyway.

We can go on and on with lots more tips, including ways to get a fancy background behind your picture instead of empty black bars, but we'll see how you do with the basics first and let you decide what you want to ask about. Have fun and let us know how you're doing :)