I am waiting for a render, so just to amuse myself, I opened a second instance of Vegas, dumped 87 1200x1800 JPEG files on the timeline. It took about fifteen seconds to load them all (because of the background render). I did a few pan/crop keyframe zooms, played around on the timeline, etc. No sluggishness. I have done many, many still photo projects in Vegas 4 and never noticed any sluggishness. This brief test was in Vegas 5.

I use JPEG almost exclusively. I understand that TIFF can cause problems because they are imported through Quicktime. I have used TIFF occasionally, and never noticed any problem, but I never used more than 2-3 images. The largest number of images I have ever used in a project is about 100.

yup,
Just did the same thing using a PSP script, and batch process..

... a nice app that really works like a charm for batch processing like this AND that is *free* is Irfanview. Lots of parameters to play with; saturation, gamma,contrast/brightness,sharpness, you name it. Plus boxes where you can put the resolution you wish to have at output, like in PhotoShop (choice of inches / cm / pixels / % if my rememberance is right).
And a bUNcH of formats to choose from...

www.irfanview.com

Don't convert to PNG from JPG - there is no need. PNG is a lossless compression format (with alpha) so it makes sense if you are coming from a scanner or another lossless (like TIFF - which, as has been said already, Vegas does not handle natively). JPG, however, is fine for Vegas. Go ahead with your project as is - if it becomes sluggish (I think it will not), downsize the images (except the ones you want to zoom or pan). You will not gain anything mentionable by changing the format.
Tor

thanks for the suggestions. if i do downsize the images, should i save in PNG so they aren't compressed twice? maybe for video, saving twice as JPEG wouldn't be noticeable unless i highly compress them?

Probably best to avoid second compression although if it's for video you probably will not notice it.
Sorry abou the bum steer re JPEGs, my problems were with very hi res tiffs, had about 12 in a project and Vegas just ground to a halt.

TorS nailed it- there is absolutly NO reason for PNG at all. The whole point of PNG is the fact it uses lossless compression and supports alpha channel. If you ALREADY have an image in JPG format there's no reason to convert to PNG- your not going to GAIN anything. Maybe, say, if you created a composite in photoshop with a bunch of photos and layer effects...yeah, sure- THEN output it as PNG. Either your media has to be created AS png from the start or there's no benefit (short of alpha channel support).

Why downsize the image? Let Vegas do it. Downsizing is a waste of time.

>Why downsize the image? Let Vegas do it. Downsizing is a waste of time.

...unless performance is killing you. Whatever you decide, make sure to use the "best" setting in the video properties, since that tells Vegas to use its best quality resizing algorithm.

Just be prepared for Vegas to run at a snails pace. Make sure you meditate before working on your project. I did one project with 300 PNG's and I never want to do another one. You feel like you can't even get anything done because Vegas takes so long to draw out each timeline thumbnail preview for each event every single time you scroll along the timeline or open up the media bin. I've cursed more in the last month than I have in my life. There has to be a better solution for this kind of project. I just don't know what it is.

[Probably someone else can explain the "technicalities" of this, but I'll pass this along]

I think you 'may' want to convert from JPEG. I am working on a project using high resolution stills that are JPEGs (something like 2400 x 1300). Anyway, when I used them in this format and did some moderate zooming, I would get all sorts of jitters, especially in fine details like the bride's hair. This drove me nuts and I tried blurring areas of the photo in photoshop, but it didn't help much....until I read the post you see below. Resizing the photo to 1310 x 960 and 150 ppi made all the difference. I used an action in Photoshop, which was very easy to use once you know the basics of actions. Now I can convert any number of photos in seconds, bring them into Vegas and get smooth zooms. The action I use saves them as Photoshop (psd) files, but I could save them as PNG. I prefer saving them as psd in case I want to tweak the photo after I've brought it into Vegas. I haven't compared the difference between having the photos as psd or PNG.

HTH

Mike


Subject: Re: jittery still

I have hade the same problem and found what fixes it. at first I scanned all my pictures in at 600 dpi because of better quality but found out in vegas(and premiere) the picture flickers or appears wavy when you apply motion. What I have found thanks to the awesome people at dvxuser.com is that the pictures were to high of resolution for ntsc tv's even with deinterlacing and blur. Take the picture into photoshop and change the image quality to 72 or 150 dpi and I am sure this will fix it. I am working on a project right now that I had to go and change about 100 pictures to 72 dpi. after I did this the problem was gone. I am working on another project today and I am going to use 150 dpi. You won't even notice a difference unless you are trying to zoom into someones freckle or something.