Pan/Crop on Large Image Very Slow!

dmcmeans wrote on 5/30/2003, 1:50 PM
Hey,

I'm making a high school graduation video wherein I transition from the graduate's baby photo to their graduation photo by zooming in the face of the baby photo so that it fills the screen and then zooming out to reveal that the baby photo is part of a photo montage of the graduation photo.

Obviously, I have to have a really large montage of the graduation photo to do this, and I do, but it's murderously slow to position the pan/crop guide on this large image.

However, at one point during editing, Vegas (40c) stopped showing me the image in the Pan/Crop tool. It just displayed a white background. Moving the guide became fast again, and I was still able to see what was going on using the Video Preview window.

Is there a way (trick?) to get Pan/Crop tool to not show me the image? I'm thinking this was a fluke because Vegas was low on resources or something, but it was exactly the behavior I needed to get the job done quicker.

How big is the image? 4752 x 5856. File size is 2.5 Meg GIF.

My box has only 128 Megs of RAM. That's, I'm sure, a big part of the slowness, but I don't have time to upgrade before this project has to be completed.

Any been down this road before?

Oh, you can see the affect I'm talking about at
. It's 30 Megs, though.

David


Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/30/2003, 2:21 PM
try saving your picture as a png, bmp, or tga. That might speed it up. Also, try using the track pan/crop tool. It just shows a big "F" instead of the picture (but then you need a track per picture).

Here's another tip (if you're going to do lots of these): make a veg file with your source pcitures. Render the transition as a NTSC (or PAL) DV AVI. Replace the pictures (by right clicking on the picture in the media pool) with the next ones. Render. Do this to everything. Now, when you're done with that, you can import the AVI's into a veg file that has everything else you need. When you render, it's won't actuatly render those files, it will copy them into the new AVI.
jetdv wrote on 5/30/2003, 3:19 PM
If you want to maintain the photo's resolution, DON'T use Track Motion.
kameronj wrote on 5/30/2003, 3:22 PM
Out of curiosity....why not use Track motion?

I use it all the time on still images and the resolution remains the same.
jetdv wrote on 5/30/2003, 3:46 PM
If you zoom IN using track motion, you are zooming in on the "video" frame instead of the actual picture. Pan/Crop zooms in on the PICTURE.

Look at it this way. Load a picture on the timeline and it will show up in the preview window where the largest direction goes edge to edge. Zoom in on a person's NOSE using Track Motion. It should become VERY pixelated as it is working ONLY on that original 720 x 480 (NTSC) image.

Now, do the same thing using Pan/Crop. The image should be MUCH sharper because it is working on the resolution of the original image. The big key to using Pan/Crop is to right-click the image and choose "Match Output Aspect".

Yes, Track Motion will work. But you will get a much greater loss of quality much sooner if you are zooming IN. Zooming out, that's a different story.
kameronj wrote on 5/30/2003, 4:21 PM
Jet,

Yup....I do believe I know what you mean.

I just did a side by side test of Pan/Crop and Track Motion. And to do this type of FX Pan/Crop is the way to go.

What I hadn't done (before) was use Track Motion to "zoom" in on the image. I just used it to move it from side to side (which, of course kept the same resolution).

Good lookin out!!

:-)

Kam
SonyDennis wrote on 6/3/2003, 3:57 PM
David:

I'd suggesting making a proxy photo that is half the width and half the heigh. Use that while doing your editing; it should be much faster. Swap it out for the full res one for the final render.

You can do this either using the Media Pool "Replace" function, or by adding the proxy as a "Take" to the event that currently holds the hi-res photo.

Pan/Crop should be used for zooming into an image.

Be sure to use "Best" for "Full resolution rendering quality" (project properties) when using hi-res photos, for the best downscaling algorithm.

///d@