Thanks... but I think it was actually due to my own stupidity! I had the preview ram set to 0.... I couldn't see anything added to the time line. I cranked it to 1024 and everything NOW appears to be fine. dumb,dumb...idiot...dumb....

The preview RAM setting shouldn't have had that effect. That's only uses when building a dynamic RAM render.

Hi

Can someone advise me what the preferred Still size is for PAL photo's?.

I do a lot of Pan and Zoom using VASST Ultimate S 3.1.

Many thanks.

BrianG

787x576

It'd be a nice feature to have a slider for that setting somewhere easy to reach. Maybe a little ating memory monitor tool that allowed you to view memory usage, adjust the cache size, and flush the cache entirely.

Rob Mack

Kelly said "The preview RAM setting shouldn't have had that effect. That's only uses when building a dynamic RAM render. "

You know, I think the cache gets used for more than that. For instance, if you just set a region to play in a loop I think Vegas puts frames in the cache to help with playback.

Rob Mack

Ah, but that is a dynamic RAM render that Vegas builds for you.

However, when dropping the cursor somewhere and letting it sit, what you (eventually) see in the preview window shouldn't be affected by the RAM preview settings in any way, shape, or form.

Yes, you're right that all the little cached frames are dynamic ram renders, just like a RAM preview.

I couldn't and wouldn't really agree (or disagree) with the last part though. It's an assumption. I have a feeling that Vegas may be doing dynamic RAM renders of any still it plays across, especially if it doesn't match a project's properties.

Rob

> Can someone advise me what the preferred Still size is for PAL photo's?. I do a lot of Pan and Zoom using VASST Ultimate S 3.1.

As Mike said, double your project resolution is enough to zoom in 50% which is a pretty good zoom. The Pan/Zoom in US3 Photo Montage never goes that deep.

Remember Vegas has to resize each frame so if you use a 10MP image Vegas will have to resize 10MP to less that 1MP 25 times per second (for PAL). So in addition to using less memory, giving it less resizing to do also speeds up renders.

~jr

I used to use 6Mp with no problems but I find my 10Mp stills slow the machine down no end as it tries to show the clips in the bin.

Any freebie software that will downsize them for me? to say a 6Mp

Picassa from Google should do the resizing just fine for you... and it is free (and useful I might add).

j razz

Kelly said "The preview RAM setting shouldn't have had that effect. That's only uses when building a dynamic RAM render. "
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All I know is that my ram was set to zero, all i got on the time line was a red frame where the still was supposed to be.... turned it up, and all is normal. I'm not resizing either... the size is 3388x2616 pixels (4Mb) and they seem to work fine now.

Very odd. I run with the preview RAM size set at zero almost all the time and never have this sort of problem.

I just tried it with a similar sized JPG and zero preview RAM and didn't have a problem, but what you're describing is Vegas being unable to load the image into memory, I think.

You aren't resizing anything, but Vegas is. It's resizing your still down to project size, at least for the moment it's in RAM and being displayed. I'm assuming it'd cache those frames to RAM if it could.

Just for yucks, I change my project template to 1920x1080x29.97. I've got about 20 stills of around 3k px on the timeline. They won't play back at higher than about 14-18 fps if RAM is set to Zero. If I raise the RAM setting to 16 they ramp up to 29.97, but each one takes several frames to get there, suggesting that Vegas is loading the resized versions of them into RAM. They come up to speed just as slowly if i raise the RAM setting to 256 so I don't think Vegas needs very much RAM to do this. Just a little.

I'm kind of reassured that Vegas can actually cache a still like this because it at least shows that Vegas has enough logic under the hood to know this is a still and isn't going to change.

Other tests. With Zero RAM Cache, a 1920x1080 project, and quality set to Best/Full, my framerate on these stills drops to about 3 FPS. To me, that says there's resizing going on.

Rob

Hi JR

Many thanks for your response, and that of Kelly also.

Where would we be without this Forum?

Regards

BrianG

Well.... I stand corrected. I thought that using full sized stills would work fine (about 4Mb each). I was wrong. When I tried to render I got crash, crash, out-of-memory, crash, crash.

I had to go back and compress ALL of my stills down to a more reasonable size.... about 650Kb each.

A lesson learned!

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Known as a "Powertoy:

above is a link to the "image resizer" for XP

Its down the list on the right hand side of the webpage near the bottom. Every time I R-click on a photo in the drop down menu is a choice to "resize" the image and I've found it really fast and easy to use....

4MB and 650KB doesn't mean much. A 1280x960 uncompressed bitmap is 4MB and that's a medium size image. A 6144x4096 image can be compressed down to 650KB jpg and is still a large image.

Pixel dimensions mean much more than file size.

The thing about that 650 KB jpeg file is that it has to be uncompressed while you use it, so it could actually take up a lot more space in RAM.

But if things are working, don't fix it any more.

Rob Mack