Thanks...

There is a couple of ways to do it inside Vegas.
Use velocity envelopes and set a keyfame of zero on the frame of choice. Trim everything before that keyframe. Trim or stretch clip ending to desired length.
You can also do a one frame time region selection, render region to a new track as an uncompressed AVI, then stretch as needed.
Watch out for jitters though with either of these technics. You won't see that on a PC preview screen.
To get rid of jitters you will need to use an outside program with de-interlace, or snapshot the preview window at 360x240 and take a slight quality hit.

Craig H.

If you need a basic paint program with some cool features, here is one for free. Doesn't have deinterlace, but it is a free paint program that will let you import and export your preview snapshots.

http://www.serif.com/photoplus5/index.asp

Craig H.

would Leonard's suggestion be the best way to retain image quality and not have to deal with jitters?

I suppose we can't expect every desirable capability to be incorporated into VV (well . . . not yet, anyway). Although VV is my editor (and now, with the addition of vidcap2.5, my print to tape tool) of choice, Pinnacle products (Studio DV or Studio 7) shine at grabbing stills, either directly from your DV camcorder or from captured footage.

You just locate the frame you want, click on a drop-down menu choice (or some similar mouse action depending on which of their programs you are running), decide where you want to save the new file, and that's all there is to it. You can immediately drag the pic to Pinnacle's timeline, set it's duration to suit you.

Of course, Pinnacle-captured stills are easily imported to VV.

Caruso

>>would Leonard's suggestion be the best way to retain image quality and not have to deal with jitters?
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If your preview window is displaying a 720x480 frame when you snapshot it, there is a chance of jitter. This will happen if there is any movement in the scene between fields. Two fields makes a frame. If the preview was 360x240 when you snapshot you will have no jitter, but there will be a slight loss of resolution. If you were to de-interlace the 720x480 snapshot in an extrnal program, it would become a 720x240 resolution still. Still a slight loss, but no jitter and it will look better than the 360x240 still.
Anyway you choose to make a still from a 720x480 frame has the chance of jitter. The only way to know if there is jitter is to check on a NTSC/PAL video monitor. I can do this with my S-video output of my Geforce II video card. OHCI external monitor feature will also do it. But in can't be a "recompressed edited frame".
Ask if you need more info on any of this.

Craig H.

set your project, temporarily, to Progressive.

that will eliminate the jitters at the 720x480 resolution setting?

>>set your project, temporarily, to Progressive.
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Can you give us some more info on this. I set project to progressive, snapshot preview, pasted into paint program, exported as .bmp file, loaded into timeline, funky picture. I even tried progressive at the clip level, no go. Played with the de-interlace settings at project level, no go.
Good news is thru all my playing I figured out that "recompress edit frames" OHCI output needs to be at preview quality to see fields. In draft mode it was really fuzzy and didn't show fields (no jitter even if there was jitter). I always run in draft mode for less skipped frames when my preview window is going out S-Video via my Geforce II MX.
Man o man, Vegas is a deep program.

Craig H.