Set Pixel aspect ratio to 1.00 for stills?

PDB wrote on 6/1/2004, 4:55 PM
Hi everyone,

Hoping someone can shed some light on another basic question...

ok, I am working on a project which is basically a set of stills. Many of these have odd width/height ratios so I thought I'd try a shortcut by setting the project properties to PAL DV with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.00 (square) to avoid the hassle of doing all the stuff in a photo editing programme ie comensate for the square (stills) vs rectangular (dv) pixels. Unfortunately I now have to include video...which means one or the other will have the wrong pixel aspect ratio (square vs rectangular).

I have thought of rendering out the stills bit to DV - using the 1.00 pixel aspect ratio properties setting -( I am assuming that will create a normal avi file without messing up the actual proportions/ratio of the stills, am I correct??) and then import the avi into a new project to finish the whole thing off adding the video at the end - this time the project's properties would be set to standard dv- . Does that make any sense at all? Is there an easier alternative (hopefully not involving having to redo the ratios of the stills for them to maintain their proportions...).

Many thanks in advance for any help on this...

Regards

Paul.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 6/1/2004, 8:58 PM
Paul, Vegas does this automatically for you. And if you need to match aspect ratio, just use the Match Aspect ratio script found free on the Sundance site, or use the Neon scripting tool available from Vegastipsandtraining.com. It's around 50.00 or so. Very useful if you do a lot of still work.
No photo editing app is necessary with Vegas.
PDB wrote on 6/2/2004, 1:00 AM
Ahhh....Thank you Spot for that little gem of info...

Does that mean I can leave the whole project at the PAL DV project properties setting for video (I forget the exact number ...) to match the video media I will be adding and let Vegas take care of the stills for me? I was under the impression that this would render distortion to the stills (I seem to remember from your book that your advice was to set graphics and stills to 704x576 ratio when importing into a project to keep the proportions right : I can't check right now...)

I do have Neon (bought it this weekend) to help wth the pan/crop but I confess I have not explored it in depth yet...

As you can see, I'm a little confused by the square vs rectangular pixels and the implications behind keeping proportions if both types are on the same timeline project...

Many thanks again for your help,

Paul.
Sol M. wrote on 6/2/2004, 3:21 AM
I just did a slideshow with about 300 stills all of varying resolutions. I basically threw them up on the timeline, used Neon's PBS feature and made a nice slideshow that zoom in/out of each picture. Looks nice.

This wasn't really all that important of a project, so I didn't really even take any time to prepare any of the images before importing.

I then rendered an MPEG2 file from the timeline and burned it to a DVD. It looks and plays great!
Spot|DSE wrote on 6/2/2004, 6:30 AM
Vegas 'sniffs' the kind of media you're putting on the timeline. If you are working with any other NLE, you must worry about PAR (pixel aspect ratio) but not with Vegas.
Vegas won't distort the stills unless you specifically instruct it to.
PDB wrote on 6/2/2004, 6:39 AM
Thank you again Spot...Just that little clarification is going to save me loads of time, literally...

I do wonder however why this particular Vegas strength is not highlighted in ads/commercial documentation...Sounds like "Unique selling proposition" type of material to me...but anyway, glad I can enjoy it!

All the best,

Paul.
Chienworks wrote on 6/2/2004, 6:48 AM
Add to that feature the ability to blithely toss just about any media type on the timeline at all ... avi, mpeg, mov, wmv, wav, mp3, wma, bmp, jpg, tiff, targa, gif ... etc. without having to tell Vegas what you're doing or convert to a different format. Vegas just takes care of all the details for you. This is the way NLE should be!