Problems with Vegas and ParticleIllusion

kdi001 wrote on 6/2/2006, 9:32 AM

Hi,

I'm importing a 720 x 480 10-second clip into ParticleIllusion (PI)
as a background, adding my effects (in this case, snow),
then removing the background and rendering only the snow as
a TGA with alpha channel.

In Vegas, I am importing this TGA file as an image sequence and placing it above the desired footage on the timeline--and now it is snowing on my desired footage. Here are the problems:

1) the TGA file sequence has a size of 598x480x32, even though the project settings in PI were set to 720x480.

2) For whatever reason, the snow effect is at least twice as fast as it was in PI. In other words, after rendering it in PI, it is now snowing twice as fast as intended, plus what looked like snow in PI, now looks like square snowflakes;

In Vegas, I right click on the PI created file, select properties/and have these settings:

attributes: 598x480x32
format: Targa RLE
frame rate: 29.970 NTSC
field order: none (but I have tried changing it to lower field first with no success)
pixel aspect ratio: 0.9091 (NTSC DV)
alpha channel: pre-multiplied

When I right click the video file/properties/I have these settings:

720x480x24
format: DV
field order: lower field first
pixel aspect ratio: 0.9091 (ntsc dv)

For whatever reason, I'm still getting the special effects (snow) at what looks like twice the speed--maybe even faster than that--from what I created in PI. Yet the frame rates show they are identical.

And despite setting my settings for 720x480 in PI and hitting alt +3 before rendering, the size--as you can tell by the properties--is different.

Any help greatly appreciated!

--Dale

Comments

Former user wrote on 6/2/2006, 9:46 AM

Two things:

1. PI uses the actual viewable stage to render -- not the project settings. So increase your stage size (drag the edges) to accomodate the 720x480 scene before rendering. There is an exception to this, if you render using the stand-alone pillusionRender application. Then you can render to a much larger stage size than you can fit on your screen.

2. After you import your sequence into Vegas you need to right click the media thumbnail / filename and set the frame rate to match your project BEFORE placing it on the timeline. But, you can also change it directly on the timeline, just be sure that you are setting the frame rate on the clip that is on the timeline (not just the media bin).

2b. You also might be assuming that the particle playback in PI is actually 30fps. If you have quite a few paticles going at once (like snow) your graphics card / cpu may not be able to run at that display rate -- in fact, you are probably only seeing 10 or 15 fps. But, in Vegas it IS playing back at 30fps. If that is the case, then you need to either slomo the clip in Vegas, or slow down the particles in PI and re-render.

Jim