Yes, "maintain aspect ratio" is checked.

Can you be more specific on your files? I.e., what are you pixels/inch scanning properties. FYI, the problem does not sound like it's Vegas, I've scanned and pan/cropped many images with no problems. Something is deforming your images prior to Vegas editing. DGrob

The images were scanned at 100 and 200 dpi with dimensions ranging from 2500x3500 to 4000x5000. I've scanned the pictures and saved them in different formats as well. I've tried JPG, PNG, and TIFF.

They look absolutely fine as a still shot and even when zoomed in they look fine.

The problem occurs when I focus in on a particular area and pan to another within Vegas. The problem seems worse when the picture includes horizontal lines.

Without knowing more specifics about your problem, check this out. Is the aspect ratio of your first key frame the same as the last one? On other words, do you start with a rectangle but end with a square? This can cause the warping you describe.

Ideally you'd want the lock aspect ratio button on. Also, if you right click inside the bounding box, there's a choice that says "match output aspect". If you change that on a keyframe other than the first one, your photos will warp.

Let us know more details so we can help you out.

Mike

The "aspect ratio" is locked with first and last keys being the same. My previous post included additional details about scanning method.

Possibly is a "moire" effect. put a little blur on your images to prevent this effect. Or scan with a little angle to avoid moire effect if the images went from a printed image not a photografic image.

Josaver.

I did try adding "motion blur" withing Vegas, but, that did not look very good. I've also fiddle with every "blur" effect within Vegas and that did not correct matters either.

As for rescanning, how does one scan with "a little angle"?

If you scan a picture from a newspaper or a printed source there is a pattern that must be removed , you can rotate the picture between 15-30 degrees and the patern is removed. some scanning programs have an option to do this, they have an option for 170ppi, 120 ppi, etz, it removes this effect.

Normally I scan this type of images with an angle of 30 degrees, and after I rerotate with photoshop to put in the correct way.

Josaver.

Hi,

This is not much help, but I can at least offer that I've seen similar problems.

I recently did a short video built around scanned photos, with pan and zoom happening almost constantly. During Preview things always looked bad, with wavey ripples and artifacts everywhere much of the time. However, most of these artifacts disappeared during render (done at Best quality). In fact, Vegas rendering was nothing short of amazing most of the time, truly great.

Even so, there were some problems that remained. When zooming, several spots had artifacts in a portion of the picture. For example, a small portion of one picture in which there was a brick wall exhibited wavy lines. And a small window in another picture had waves rippling through it. I saw flicker in a number of other spots.

The artifacts are annoying, but it's hard for me to get too upset. I was zooming in very, very far in some photos, and the clarity was still fabulous.

As I said, I am not offering much help, but I can at least offer some corroboration for the problems you've seen.

Dean

It's not clear to me, after reading all the posts, whether the problem only shows up when playing the video (i.e., while things are moving) or do you also see the problem when you stop on a given frame? Another way of asking this, if you stop on the first frame of your pan and look at the preview window, does the picture look O.K. (i.e., nothing is "warped")? Then, if you move to the last frame of the pan, stop the video, and look at the prview window, does the picture look O.K., or is it warped?

The effect you describe, "looking through warped glass," does sound as though the picture was squished by not locking the aspect ratio. However, since you've already checked that several times, the other thing to look at would be the effects. Does the event that contains this picture pan have a green effects button in the lower right corner? This would indicate that some sort of effect has been applied. Perhaps you put an effect on this event. This could also be the case for the entire track. You should look at the track header (at the far left of the screen) and look for any green buttons to see if an effect has been applied to the entire track.

Finally, if this only showing up after you render the video, and not while you are playing it, you should make sure that you are using one of the standard templates. It seems unlikely, but I suppose you might get some strange effects if you were to render to a highly unusual output aspect ratio.

Thank you for your input, johnmeyer,

However, the problem only occurs during "moving" video. Still shots are absolutely fine. drichards' post well explains what I've been experiencing. Here's his quote:

"Even so, there were some problems that remained. When zooming, several spots had artifacts in a portion of the picture. For example, a small portion of one picture in which there was a brick wall exhibited wavy lines. And a small window in another picture had waves rippling through it. I saw flicker in a number of other spots. "

My particular problem occurs in the "preview" pane as well as after it has been rendered. I've added NO effects to the track whatsoever.

In the meantime, I'm reseaching the web under "moire" and it seems to provide some workarounds. I have to try them and see what happens. I've also found a program called "VUESCAN" that seems to incorporate some default settings for getting rid of such things. Again, I have to try and see what happens.

Thanks for the complete reply. It does sound like moire might be the culprit. If this is the case, you can sometimes change Vegas' sampling behavior (which causes the moire patterns) by playing with sampling. Try doing this on a section of the video that displays really bad results. Right click on the video event, select "Properties" and select "Force Resample." Try rendering and see if it looks better. If not, try the opposite ("Disable Resampling") and see what happens. One way or the other should make a significant difference.

I have used Vuescan extensively (in excess of 30,000 scans). I'm not aware of any magic that it has, although if you are scanning from newspapers or magazines (which of course display photographs using the halftoning method used in the printing process), it does have a mode that will reduce the effects of the halftoning dots.

If your pictures were halftoned, you will get moire. Also, if your photographs have a pebbled, glossy surface, the reflections from those pebbles will give you a similar effect to halftoning, and you will have problems. There is not easy solution to scanning photos with such a surface (I've spent lots of time asking questions on forums such as this). If this is your problem, let me know, and I'll give you the few pieces of advice that I've gleaned.

I have recently completed a project in Vegas that consisted of over 600 still images from 35 mm slides scanned in at 2700 dpi using a Nikon 4000ED film scanner. For those cases where I did not scan or zoom the image, I used the image at a resolution of 600 dpi (PNG), but for those images where I was doing a tight zoom and pan I used the full 2700 dpi PNG image. I, too, discovered the kind of artifacts that I believe that you are describing. The artifacts are most visible when there are sharp horizontal edges or vertical edges in the image (e.g. a stair railing) or a brick building and appear to be a wavering or swimming of the edge during the zoom or pan.

I found that the following measures significantly reduced (but did not totally eliminate) these artifacts: (1) Apply a 1-2 pixel Gaussian blur to the image. It is important to use Gaussian blur and to keep the amount of blur very small. Other types of blur filters do not work. Images that have been overly sharpened are especially prone to artifacting on the edges as the pan or zoom occurs. (2) Slow down the camera movement to a very very slow rate. Typically when I am doing tight zooms or pans and zooms I keep the still image up for 30-45 seconds or even longer depending on the pan or zoom. The faster the pan or zoom, the more obvious are the artifacts. (3) Adjust the contrast of the image downward slightly. Contrasty images having sharp edges are escpecilaly prone to showing edge artifacting during pans and zooms. (4) When rendering make sure that "Best" quality setting has been checked. Also it helps to right click on the image and select "Reduce interlace flicker".

Using a mix of the above measures, I was able to obtain very nice zoomed and panned images within Vegas that show minimal artifacting when viewed in my home theater on a 16:9 76 in. X 43 in. screen. I am playing back the video DVD created in DVD Architect through a Faroudja DVP-4000 video processor feeding a Runco 980 Ultra projector. These conditions will show any artifacts that are present and are quite demanding conditons for video. Uisng the above procedures, I can still see a little edge artifacting (which you might be calling warping since the edges look like they are waving or swimming) but it is very minor and would probalby be invisible on a smaller screen. The images look quite nice.

Incidentlaly, I have tried other encoders inlcuding the encoder in DVD Workshop and TMPGEnc at the highest quality settings and the artifacts are much worse than those from the DVD Architect/Vegas encoder. I have also worked with these same images in the real time Video Toaster [3] NLE system, and my results do not begin to compare with the quality produced by Vegas 4.0d.

I hope this helps.

Tom

Great post Tom!
Thanks,
Randy

Randy,

I appreciate the compliment. I have gotten so much out of monitoring this forum that I thought it time to try and post a little hard earned experience that might help others.

Tom

Ditto. I'm learning volumes too. Keep it coming!
Randy

Well, tw2933, here's what I've found as per your suggestions.

I fiddled with various settings and combinations with the same problematic scanned file. Here's what worked for me:

I added the "Gaussian Blur" with a horizontal & vertical setting of .002.

That almost eliminated the problem. Certainly not as visually disturbing anymore.

Thanks you very much.

I've got to say, as many already agree, that this forum is an absolutely fantastic asset for anyone using SOFO products. The vast majority of the user base are a tremendous resource of knowledge willing to take the time to share their experience with others.

Once again, thanks.

Brian