IrfanView (it's free) is my preferred tool for things like batch conversion.
It'll do a format conversion and image resize at the same time.
No need to come up with an action and it's very quick.

Mike

Thanks guys.

Well, my project was a render of a partially completed project just to test and make sure things were okay (plus I wanted to test out the big jpg files).

I started the render at 10pm last night and this morning at 8am it was at 32% with no estimate on completion time (all zeros). The project was 9 minutes long- no track motion and no fx. so far only generated media and stills have been used along with audio. Page file usage was at 2.57gigs.

j razz

You've said the JPEGs are large in size but what are they in pixels?
If they're around 4,000 x 3,000, theres' a good chance that that's your problem.
In theory, Vegas shouldn't have an issue with them but the reality is that a conversion to PNG and a resize (unless you're doing extensive zooming) to about 2X normal (1440 x 960) should help a lot.

Mike

They are 3574 x 2406 in file size. I will resize them as well.

j razz

Regarding Photoshop and png files, Kent makes a good point about image mode. If the original file is in CYMK mode then you might not see the option to save as PNG. Also, if the JPEGs are in CYMK mode that might be part of your problem. This is a color space for print work.

If you're using photoshop regularly then it's probably worth while figuring out how to troubleshoot this, and also getting more familiar with Actions. Personally, I usually use photoshop's Save For Web tool to make a PNG, GIF, or JPEG. The shortcut for that is CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+S. I'm just used to the workflow of that tool.

Other than that, the pixel dimensions of an image are more important than the size on disk. Jpegs have to be decompressed into RAM when Vegas uses them and at that point they're probably using as much RAM as an uncompressed BMP file.

Rob Mack

It's stated above that 2x normal is 1440 x 960, but the Photoshop SD template for NTSC 4 x 3 is 720 x 540. Wouldn't you want to use 1440 x 1080 for images that you might want to zoom in with an SD project? Then, for HDV, would you want to save an image as 2880 x 2160 (2x 1440 x 1080)?

Rob makes a good point. Saving to png's from File/Save with Ps CS3 is only 8 bits total (index Color) not 8 bits/channel. Save PNGs as png 24 thru File/Save thru Web & Devices.

Ed B

..."File/Save with Ps CS3 is only 8 bits total (index Color)"...

Can't speak to PS3 but this isn't the case for PS2. I just saved to PNG in the normal Save As way and I got a 32-bit image complete with 8-bit alpha. It might be that if your PSD starts out in 256 color indexed mode then you'd get a 256 color PNG.

There's also no Web & Devices option in CS2 but the equivalent is probably Save for Web.

Fireworks is also a fine thing to learn. I don't know the program but there are people who swear by it.

Rob Mack

Maybe I confused you (on the original question) I was using the batch processing feature (although it is called something else under photoshop CS3 but it is under the file menu).

Because I could not find a template for exporting to png (only tif, psd or jpg) I went into Fireworks (which I am way much more :) at home in) and batch converted to png. Now I just need to resize.

I am sure CS3 phtoshop can do it, I just haven't found it.

j razz

"Can't speak to PS3 but this isn't the case for PS2. I just saved to PNG in the normal Save As way and I got a 32-bit image complete with 8-bit alpha. It might be that if your PSD starts out in 256 color indexed mode then you'd get a 256 color PNG."

Rob,

I don't know about CS2 but when you "save as" a png 8 (only choice) you are limited to 256 colors. The following is from the CS3 Help file:

"PNG 8 and GIF files support 8 bit color, so they can display up to 256 colors. The process of determining which colors to use is called indexing, so images in GIF and PNG 8 formats are sometimes called indexed color images. To convert an image to indexed color, Photoshop builds a color lookup table, which stores and indexes the colors in the image."

PNG 24 is available in CS3 in File/"Save for Web and devices..."

Ed B

Probably called File/Automation. That's where you find it in CS2. It can be set up to run an action that you have previously recorded in the Actions panel. So if you are recording an Action and step through what you want to do to save as a PNG then later you can run that action on a folder ful of images by using the File/Automation command.

But if you can do it quickly in Fireworks that's great!

Rob

Yes, sometimes the Adobe manuals are full of CrazyTalk.

We're probably looking at different things. When I have a PSD file open in RGB mode and choose File/Save As, one of the many choices is PNG. CS2 says nothing about the bit depth but the image saves in 32-bit mode (24 plus the 8-bit alpha)

The other option, and the one I usually use, is File/Save for Web. With the acquisition of Macromedia this probably changed a little in CS3. Maybe they're even using part of Fireworks for this now. Anyway, with Save For Web you have choices of GIF, JPEG, PNG8, PNG24 (which is actually 32-bit if you tick the "transparency" option), and wbmp.

Rob

I ran into JPG problems while the jpg's were at about 4 megs. I used photoshop batch processor to resize down to about 650K each and it worked fine.

AFIK, saving as PNG will not help the problem you reported (long render times and/or "freezing."). Still image file size, as already pointed out, doesn't matter either, since that can be changed by changing compression (for JPEGs).

The only thing that matters is pixel count, and at 3574 x 2406, your images have WAY too many pixels. You want images that are your project size, times maximum zoom factor, plus about 10-15%. Thus, for 720x480, maximum zoom of 1.5x, you'd want about 1650x800. That's 1.3 megapixels as opposed to 8.6 megapixels for your photos.