Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 4/10/2005, 9:18 PM
Generally, tga is preferred, but png is a close second. The compression of png can sometimes mess with colors. Somewhere in a thread here, you can find some stills posted, but it's about a year or so old.
you're correct: tif requires quicktime to read the file format, so you'll want to avoid tif's where you can.
stepfour wrote on 4/10/2005, 10:44 PM
I started using .png about 2 yrs ago after some jpegs had some problems with jittering. Reduce interlace flicker had no effect. The .pngs have been very steady. I also use .tga sometimes but not often. I haven't found a way to get Windows 2000 to show me a thumbnail of .tga files when using explorer. That comes in handy with .png and other formats.
Grazie wrote on 4/10/2005, 11:19 PM

PNGs here. But I'll take what Spot says and think again.

Grazie

B_JM wrote on 4/11/2005, 5:53 AM
if you go on the png website - even they say dont use png's for high quality photos ...

they recomend jpg at low low compression .... I find tga's preferable (in addition) .. i use both xnview and infraview for thumbnails ..

I also get a lot of tiffs from people for projects (from macs) ....
logiquem wrote on 4/11/2005, 6:47 AM
> if you go on the png website - even they say dont use png's for high quality photos ...

I think this is a file size issue, not a quality issue. PNG uncompressed format is as good as bmp, psd or pic and always superior to jpg in term of quality.. File size aside, there is no reason not to use it in Vegas IMO. And transparency is cleanly and perfectly managed for 32 bits files.

A vaslty underused application of PNG format is in color indexed images for the web. For many reasons, it is a really better, more flexible and efficient format than gif, but it slowly gained acceptation at first as a supported format in IE (shame on MS for that!). The same is true for jpg2000 format but that's another story...
B_JM wrote on 4/11/2005, 7:45 AM
xnview reads 483 formats (i assume you mean photo formats , not video formats)

it reads all the ones i use anyway ... i use xnview because of the auto-crop batch mode feature ..
B_JM wrote on 4/11/2005, 8:52 AM
I see what you mean - well I always start in black anyway most of the time, so never worried about it .

maybe you need a program like FrameShots (you can do this also with other programs of course )

BillyBoy wrote on 4/11/2005, 8:59 AM
AFAIK there is no viewer that shows thumbnails of all still/video file formats without sometimes crashing in the attempt. Every one I've tried and I've tried everything from high end stuff to shareware to freeware stumble on one or more formats every once in awhile. If somebody knows of one that can show various types of AVI, MPEG including DivX, Real and other common video types, without crashing in attempting to open them, tell us about it.

Another issue is of course many vids start out fading in from black, which makes the thumbnail useless, unless you like a totally black frame as a thumbnail. While a pain to keep up I open whatever in Vegas, then make a thumbnail of a representative frame, then save in a database. I mentioed the one I use several times already in other threads.
cbrillow wrote on 4/11/2005, 9:06 AM
Well, I'm sure that those with more experience have very valid reasons for stating otherwise, but I'm surprised that nobody's yet pointed out that the manual specifically recommends png files.
B_JM wrote on 4/11/2005, 9:55 AM
manuals are not always right -

i pointed this out a long time ago when I showed that pngs had color shift - others quickly also picked up on this ..

they are also slower than some other formats ...