Thanks Terry.
That defaults to "yes" - if I change it to "no", then zooming in on the image gives the effect I am looking for, but it also makes it where i have to manually adjust the width to keep the image's aspect ratio correct, which makes sense based on the option's name. And I'm nuts about keeping things in their correct aspect ratio.

I think I have tried every combination of "maintain aspect ratio", "stretch to fill frame" and "lock aspect ratio" - none of which make this work like I would think would be the normal operation.

I don't remember this being all that difficult when I did it way back when. I am on VMS7 now, and that could have been back on VMS6 - has anything relating to this changed from v6 to v7?

I can't help but think I have something else set wrong somewhere else - it doesn't make sense that a still image would behave this way when you zoom in to it. If it isn't wide enough to fill the screen to begin with, when you zoom in, shouldn't it normally fill out the screen as you go? This acts like the original width of the image sets the maximum width that you have to work with in the frame...

I am going to try the pro photoshow or whatever it's called (I saw it mentioned in another thread), but this project will end up with a random mix of still images and 3-4 second video clips - sounds like the perfect job for Vegas Movie Studio if I can just figure this out... (or have someone tell me what I'm doing wrong)

Here is a very small, rough example of what is happening. I hope it isn't agains board rules to post this link, but I don't know how else to explain what is happening.

http://webpages.charter.net/jeffwyatt/pixsample.wmv

Use track motion instead of pan and crop. One problem though is that there is more loss of resolution as you zoom - I believe.

"it doesn't make sense that a still image would behave this way when you zoom in to it."

I wholeheartedly agree. It does seem very wrong. I know why it happens and i understand the resons, but still it just doesn't seem like the most useful way to have it happen.

The aspect ratio switch that you need to worry about is accessed by right-mouse-button clicking inside the cropping frame in the Pan/Crop window. A menu pops up. Choose "Match output aspect" from that menu. That changes the cropping frame to match the shape of the project frame instead of the shape of the source image. The image will now fill the complete frame. You may have to zoom out a bit at first if you want the entire image to fit inside the frame.

I wish there was an option setting somewhere to tell Vegas to default to matching output aspect all the time. I almost always want it this way, and almost never have any reason to want to use the source aspect. So i end up having to manual set this for every image i add.