Cool, but I'm using track motion and pan/crop on all so I'd like to preview everything as it will look later...no?
Randy

If you do decide that you need to change aspect ratio, this script may help (I haven't used it myself, so I don't quite know what it does):

ChangeMediaPoolAspectRatio

Description from the Sundance site:

"This script will change the aspect ratio of all the video media in the project's media pool to match that of the project. This could be useful when shooting anamorphic. "

Actually that's different than the ratio I was talking about John. That crops the still to fit the output aspect...I'm talking about square pixels vs. NTSC. But thanks anyway!
Randy

I knew it was different, but thought you might be able to adapt the script.

Well, (head scratching mode on), still pictures are 1.0 PAR and Vegas will import and use these properly, stretching the pixels out as needed for proper proprotion at all times, no matter what the project's PAR is. This applies to viewing them on the timeline, in the preview window, in the Pan/Crop & Track motion windows, in effects windows, on external monitors, and in rendered files. So, if you need to fix them for any of these, you need to fix them for all of them. However, i suspect that there is no need to fix them at all because Vegas already knows how to handle them properly.

True, the preview window defaults to a wider stretched view because it shows the project pixels 1:1 with screen pixels. If you right-mouse-button click on it and select "simulte device aspect ratio" then this will take care of it.

The only issue i could see you having is if for some reason your pictures are lying about their pixel aspect ratio. For example, if you, for whatever odd reason, thought you needed images in 4.090909x3 size and cropped them that way (eg 654x480) AND then s t r e t c h e d them out to 720x480 in your photo editor 'cause that's DV's NTSC size, and then saved them in the photo editor, they would end up still saying they had a PAR of 1.0 when in effect they are now 0.9090909... But, i would think you wouldn't have gone to all that effort. You probably just cropped/resized the pictures without any stretching. If that is the case then they are still truly 1.0 PAR and Vegas will use them as such with no fixing necessary.

I need the exact same script, anyone can help ?

>>I knew it was different, but thought you might be able to adapt the script.<<
Unfortunately I don't know jack about scripts other than running them John.

>>If you right-mouse-button click on it and select "simulte device aspect ratio" then this will take care of it.<<
It doesn't seem to change anything when i select this Kelly, neither on the preview window or my external monitor ...however you're right, if I render it out, V4 corrects it.

>>But, i would think you wouldn't have gone to all that effort.<<
No sir, I did scan several (4-8) at a time as .bmp (it's the best choice with my particular scanner)and then cropped in Roxio Photo Suite (consumer app) and then saved as .png but that's it (I tried to crop in V4 but it was hard to tell what I had and hadn't used).

You know Kelly, while you're here ( and this might be relevant to my not understanding about this aspect ratio thing), can you tell me why I sometimes get the black bars on the sides or top and bottom when using pan/crop (even when zoomed all the way in)but not when using track motion? I have a feeling I'm about to be embarrased but other people here have also elected to just use track motion instead of trying to figure it out.
Thanks guys,
Randy

I wrote the ChangeMediaPoolAspectRatio script that Johnmeyer pointed you to and it absolutely does NOT crop the still to fit the output aspect. It simply changes the aspect ratio attribute of the media, which is what I think you asked for. You might be thinking if the AspectRatio.js script which I use all the time to get rid of the black bars, but didn’t write. :(

The bigger questions is, “why are you doing this?” Unless your still camera takes pictures in DV aspect ratio they really are square and you should not lie to Vegas and tell it anything different. I wrote that script for someone who was shooting anamorphic and Vegas wasn’t recognizing the media correctly and so this script corrected the problem for him. But if your stills really are square, then you should leave them that way and Vegas will do the right thing when rendering them. Otherwise they will be distorted.

If, however, you manually converted your images to 655x480 (which you didn’t need to do) and want Vegas to treat them as DV aspect ration to view them as 720x480, then ChangeMediaPoolAspectRatio is absolutely the script you want to run to designate them as such.

~jr

Thank you very much for your patience JR!
Here's my scenario: in V4 I take a .png and put it on the timeline. It's distorted (stretched wide). I render as an .avi and it's still distorted. I take the same .png and change it to NTSC (properties/media/pixel aspect ratio) and it is not distorted. Also, the borders change. What am I not understanding please.
Thanks again VERY MUCH!
Randy

Randy, What are the dimensions of the PNG file? DV NTSC is 720x480 0.9091 pixel aspect. That is the same as 655x480 1.0 pixel aspect (square pixels).(654.552 to be exact but 655 is close enough)

So if you created an image that was 655x480 square pixels and placed it on the Vegas timeline in a project that was DV NTSC 720x480 it would display perfectly. If, however, you created an image that was 720x480 square pixels and placed it on the Vegas timeline, you would see slight black bars on the top and bottom until you went into media->properties and changed the aspect to 0.9091.

The question is, what are the dimensions of your images? If they are scanned in, then they are square pixels so you should crop them to a multiple of 655x480 to get the right aspect ration by default (square) or change them to a multiple of 720x480 but then you have to change the aspect ratio to 0.9091. Does that make sense?

~jr

Yes sir, that does make sense (even to me); however, I once read here at the forum to not worry about cropping scanned images regardless of the size, but to simply crop them in V4. This is not a problem except for the fact that they are all square pixelled. I have never worked with this many stills in a project before so it was no big deal to just change them to NTSC via properties/ media/ pixel aspect ratio. With 150 something stills (with lots of pan/cropping) it's a pain and I was hoping for a simpler solution than to change all of them individually. If there's not a simple solution then I'll just do what I gotta do : )

>>If, however, you created an image that was 720x480 square pixels and placed it on the Vegas timeline, you would see slight black bars on the top and bottom until you went into media->properties and changed the aspect to 0.9091.<<
It's easy enough to crop the bars out with either pan/crop or track motion (or just leave the bars) but the distortion is not acceptable.

Thanks JR,
Randy

> I once read here at the forum to not worry about cropping scanned images regardless of the size, but to simply crop them in V4.

Don’t take my post wrong. I was trying to explain what I thought you were doing with pixel aspect ratio. I never crop my images before bringing them into Vegas. That’s why I use the AspectRatio.js script that DOES really crop the event to the output aspect ratio.

So I just drop a bunch of images of all shapes and sizes on the timeline. Then I select the first one and right-click and click Select all events to the end. Then I run AspectRatio.js and all of my images are automatically cropped to the output aspect ratio. Then I just go in and adjust any that zoomed in on the wrong spot and I’m done.

The only time I’ll pre-process images is if they are too big because that eats a lot of memory. I try and keep my images below 1800x1200 just to be safe. You can find AspectRatio.js on the Sundance Media Group site Automated Scripts section (toward the bottom).

~jr