found the problem, it was the third party chroma key plugin that was the problem. I did the same thing with the native plugin and works fine.
Thanks so much I might not have tried such a simple solution as using the native fx without you backing up the way I thought it should be done.
I still need to know how to keep the quality of a photo being saved in sony vegas

When you talk about saving the photo with Vegas do you mean the "Save snapshot to file" button? If so, Vegas uses your project size for the image dimensions. You could try temporarily increasing the project dimensions and then saving the image. As you have already mentioned, your settings should be best/full for the preview window.

Peter

Snapshots are saved at the current preview resolution. Set your project to the desired resolution and the preview quality to "Full" before saving the snapshot.

everything is set at its highest. My project is usually at 1080 60i, this is what I shoot video in. I did go to the highest setting available but no difference. preview is set to best full. A year ago on a different computer I replaced the greenscreen with a different back ground without any quality loss, now I go from 8 megs to less than one.both being jpeg. I know there are other programs out there for still photos greenscreen but I like some of the other effects in vegas too.

So your concern is image compression (as opposed to image resolution)? By default, Vegas uses a JPEG quality of 95%, which should be enough for most applications. Chances are that either your source image was using a lot more bits than necessary or your processing withing Vegas vastly reduced the complexity of the image. If you're still concerned about visual quality, you can use lossless compression by selecting the file type "Portable Network Graphics" instead of JPEG when saving the snapshot.

png made it even smaller. I'm a pro photographer, that is why I can't go from a 8 meg photo to less than one meg. As I said before I was able to do this a year ago on a different machine so I know its possible.

There is little point in increasing the file size beyond what is necessary to exactly reproduce an image. Your processing most likely reduced the resolution of the original image from a multi-megapixel photographic still to an HD frame, which is why the result needs much less disk space.

If you don't know the answer just say you don't know. I have done it before and yes as a pro I need to keep all the photo intact. Try blowing up a one meg photo to a 18 by 24 print. Thanks for your input but I really need to know how to keep the file intact without reducing quality or size. I've done it before so it can be done. Is there anyone out there that actually knows how to do this?

I don't know what you did in the past, but Vegas will save an still image at the project's resolution with an equivalent of 92dpi, so if your project is 1920x1080, then you get a jpeg of 1902x1080.

Depening upon the picture, the file size will vary, but I don't think you will get an 8meg pic out of it. It has always worked this way.

Dave T2

Like DaveT2 says, Vegas saves at the project's resolution etc., so maybe do what TechDiver says plus save .png.
The newer versions save the snapshots at best/full by default.

As I stated before png is even smaller. From 8 meg to 350k. vegas did not always save it this way because in the past I have saved it the same way but it stayed the same size. When I moved from one computer to another is when it started reducing the size. I'm pretty sure I could hook a monitor to the old computer and it would still save it to the original size as it did before. If I remember correctly both machines were running the same version of vegas too.

350k defiitely sounds way too small. My snapshots are roughly 5 to 7 MB in png format at 1920x1080x32. Can you give us some details about your "bad" image such as its dimensions, number of planes, and the number of bits per plane? Please supply this information for the png format if possible, as jpg is too variable due to compression. As an alternative, it might help if you could post the image somewhere like Dropbox, etc. so we could analyze it.

Peter

"an equivalent of 92dpi"

Slight nit here, but no, there's no such equivalency. The actual value Vegas uses is 72dpi when it saves the photo, but it doesn't matter if it's 72, 92, 300, 1200, or 15. It's an absolutely meaningless value and there's no reason to even care what it is. All that matters is the size of the image, as in 1920x1080.

likes2fly, when you get that 350Kb PNG file, is it really 1920x1080?

While Vegas in all likelyhood is going to save a smaller file than your original since it's outputting 1920x1080 (2 megapixel) instead of your original 15 megapixel (or whatever) image, 350Kb does sound too small. I'd bet that somehow it's really saving it at your preview window size.

350KB for a PNG might depend on what's in the image. A 1920x1080 PNG that's entirely one color value could be much smaller (in MBytes) than its jpeg version. It's a different compression scheme.

For Likes2Fly, the bigger issue is the pixel dimensions of the image you get out of Vegas. That's much more relevant than the image size in MBytes. Once you determine that the pixel dimensions are what you want then you can start to fret over the MBytes.

BTW, the still you put into Vegas is progressive. Your project is interlaced. Vegas will force some deinterlacing on you when you export a still. It doesn't offer you a choice in that (and ignores any choices you try to make, as far as I know.). That could be reducing your file MByte size - maybe. The way around that is to work in a 1080p template when exporting stills, but that will cause other issues if you've got 1080i video in the project.

Rob