Trouble Adding Still Photos

buckingham7 wrote on 5/12/2006, 9:37 AM

Whenever I drag a still photo from my media pool and drop it on the timeline it only shows up on the timeline as a very thin gray line. If I then play the timeline from the beginning, the photo never shows up in the preview window. Or, it shows up in the preview window sometime after the progression line marker has passed where the gray line is sitting on the timeline (I used the word "line" a lot in that sentence) and then will continue to display in the preview window long after the 5 second default time for still photos has passed. If I grab the edge of the gray line and drag it, I see the whole photo with the pan/crop and effects symbols on it. It still will not show up in the preview window at the point in time when the progession line marker hits it, it usually shows up after the marker has passed it's position on the timeline and then stays in the preview window for longer than five seconds. I am very concused about how to add still photos to the timeline, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 5/12/2006, 9:49 AM

Do you have any problems adding video clips to the timeline? The only difference between still photos and video clips is that stills are always placed as some determined length (default is 5 seconds long) and video is placed at it's own length.
If you have changed the duration for stills to some very short value this might explain them showing up on the timeline as thin lines. It wouldn't account for the delayed display of them though.

Do you still have the delayed problem if you start a brand new project and do nothing other than add one single still photo to it?

buckingham7 wrote on 5/12/2006, 10:00 AM

I don't have any problems adding video. In fact I have already produced a quick video that I took into Architech and burned and played in my DVD player. If I start a new project and only add one stll photo, it still acts the same way. I will check my default time for still photos, maybe I do have it set really low, but I don't think that it is. If I drag out the gray line I finally see the photo. If I drag it out longer it starts to duplicate. I assume that the duplication is only a visual indication that I am extending the length of time that the photo is going to be displayed?

Chienworks wrote on 5/12/2006, 10:03 AM

Yes, that's correct. The width of the event on the timeline merely shows how long the photo will last. The farther you drag it out, the longer it will be shown. Vegas simple repeats the photo to fill up space on the screen.

Tim L wrote on 5/12/2006, 10:27 AM

As far as showing up in the timeline as just a thin line -- perhaps you need to zoom in (on the timeline) to see it? If your timeline is zoomed out to show a span of 10 minutes, for example, then 5 seconds of time will be a very narrow period on that timeline.

Regarding the photo not showing up in the preview window: how big are your photos? (X pixels by Y pixels) If your photos are fairly large (like 2048 x something, or bigger), it will take VMS a long time, while previewing, to load the file into memory and scale it down to the proper size for DV video (which is ~654x480 square pixels for a 720x480 DV video project).

As others have suggested, I found that scaling down the photos with an external program (like IrfanView -- free on the internet) *before* bringing them into VMS can help considerably with previewing and rendering speeds, and can actually give a better quality result if you do any panning or zooming in on them. I used 900x600 for my scaled down photos.

Also, changing your preview window setting from Best down to Good(Auto), or even Preview(Auto) can help a lot, with preview speed and response.

Good Luck
Tim L

buckingham7 wrote on 5/12/2006, 1:44 PM

Thanks for you input, that gives me some new things to try when I get home.