V9 Pro - Gigapixel Image Support

Xander wrote on 5/11/2009, 8:06 PM
I have installed the trial version of Vegas 9 Pro and have a 1920X1080 project with three tracks:
Track 1: Protitler title - nothing fancy, just a default from the Generator selection.
Track 2: Black-and-White 8bit PSD with white chroma-keyed out. I do a pan and scan from top to bottom over the default 5 seconds. Image size: 4467X5625
Track 3: 4368X2912 16bit PNG with pan-and-scan from left to right.

I had to turn off the Adjust Size and Quality for Optimal Playback in order to play back the preview. With it on, Vegas would just sit on the selected frame and have the moving preview dots when I hit play. I would have to End Process on Vegas as it basically locked up.

Currently, I haven't hit play but Vegas will not update the preview and just has the 3 moving dots. Tried rendering to both AVCHD and MPEG-2 - blu-ray template, but get insufficient memory errors.

I am using my laptop currently so my system specs won't help here. Currently using Win XP Pro SP3, Intel T7200 @ 2GHz, 2GB RAM.

As another test I dropped about 20 images (like Track3 above) on the timeline. By the 10th image, I was getting red frames.

What does this new Gigapixel Image support mean as I am not really seeing any improvements over version 8? What are the limitations? Anybody else done much testing with large images?

Comments

CClub wrote on 5/11/2009, 8:34 PM
Could this be your problem:
"Support for frame sizes up to 4096x4096 (see the Video tab in Project Properties)."
rmack350 wrote on 5/11/2009, 9:11 PM
Yeah but a gigapixel image could be up in the area of 40,000x25,000 (very roughly).

Rob Mack
john-beale wrote on 5/12/2009, 7:43 AM
I haven't tried it, but it seems like what you're trying to do ought to work. 2 GB RAM is the recommended system spec. so I don't know why it doesn't.
Coursedesign wrote on 5/12/2009, 9:55 AM
SCS is saying that gigapixel still images can now be panned, scanned, and zoomed through a video frame of up to 4096x4096 pixels.
Xander wrote on 5/12/2009, 8:19 PM
Yeah, it would be good if Sony clarified what a Gigapixel image was. In the Vegas 9 manual, the only search return for Gigapixel was as a new feature - no mention elsewhere. I would not classify 4096X4096 as a Gigapixel image.

If you were working on a 4K project, there would not be much pan, scan or zoom with a 4096X4096 image. I typically work in 1920X1080 projects so could resize within that range, but as said, that ain't Gigapixel.
farss wrote on 5/12/2009, 8:48 PM
You've read what Course said wrong.

A gigapixel image can be output into a frame of upto 4Kx4K.
The gigapixel image itself can be something around 40Kx40K.

The support for gigpixel images and the increase in maximum project frame size to 4K are two unrelated new features.

Bob.
john-beale wrote on 5/12/2009, 9:48 PM
Incidentally, what video formats are available for output at 4k size (eg. 4096 x 2304) ? I was not able to generate a MPEG2 or a Sony YUV video of that size; both those codecs maxed out at 2048 pixels across. I was able to generate a set of 4k still frames though (JPEG and PNG work).
rmack350 wrote on 5/12/2009, 10:01 PM
I've heard of people outputting image sequences at that size. I'd think you could do it in uncompressed AVI format, and Red can shoot in that resolution.

Rob Mack
farss wrote on 5/12/2009, 10:17 PM
I'd try DPX , it certainly should support 4K. Note however it is 10 bit LOG.
Once I get around to installing V9 I should give DNG a whirl.

Bob.
rmack350 wrote on 5/13/2009, 9:23 AM
Finally got a chance to play a little in or near the gigapixel playground, just to try out out. The tools I had that were "ready to go" were pretty limited but I was able to create a 30k x 10k tif file in photoshop CS2 and then import it to the Vegas timeline.

All this at home in the last 20 minutes of my day, so I was kind of rushed. The image size was arbitrary and I was just picking something that CS2 wouldn't complain about but which I knew that Vegas 8.0c would have choked on.

Vegas9 could load the file into the project and onto the timeline, and I could do some event pan/crop with it, but the going was slow and I think this might be a place where 64-bit and lots more memory would really help. No surprises. I think importing 10 of these might get pretty ugly.

With a little more time I could generate a big file in a friendlier format. Maybe that'd make a difference, but I can see that Vegas 9.0 ought to be able to handle bigger images on the timeline. Generally a good thing.

Rob Mack