that's a ridiculously large image. I mean it's over 1gb in size (memory, not disc size). That's ~10x more pixels then 35mm film scanned in @ high res (assuming 20,000,000 pixels). 100x more then 1920x1080 HD resolution. In one frame of video.

The scaled image is already 18x more pixels then 1920x1080HD, just use that. Don't use jpeg, use png. it's lossless compression. It's also ~4x the resolution of HD so that should allow plenty of zooming. If you need to get in to so much detail you need to get down to the pixel level on your original image you'll need to break it down in to smaller images. but if you need that much detail & you only plan on zooming you may want to re-consider what you're doing & think of a more efficient way to tackle it.

Vegas must uncompress any graphic that is used on the timeline, so in this regard there is no difference between a .JPG and a .PNG. (Although a .PNG is the preferred graphics format for Vegas.) Your 17328x11600 image is 575 megabytes uncompressed. (17328x11600x3 bytes per pixel= 603,014,400 bytes= 575megabytes.) Vegas will run out of RAM and hit the swap file pretty heavily for this size image and will appear to lock up when, in fact, it has just slowed to a snail's pace or, in some cases, may indeed crash. Obviously, Vegas needs RAM for itself and if you have multiple images, they will need to be kept in RAM as well. Open Task Manager and see just how much of the paging file is being used.

Your 7409x4960 image is 105 meg and appears to work. You can try turning down the RAM preview setting which will give Vegas more RAM with which to work. A 575 megabyte image is really pushing it, but could probably be made to work, although it might take forever to render.

This is one example where the 64-bit version of Vegas (and lots of RAM) will be a great help.

I agree it's a ridiculously large file but I was hoping to understand what the max size a .jpg or .png can be before Vegas will not handle it. If I know this value, I can calculate my file size to be just under Vegas's max when I'm creating my collage.

I posted a previous thread and I'm trying to achieve what Jim posted called Team Morph.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=581804

I guess I'm going to need to slowly keep increasing my file size to find the max. I was hoping someone knew the limits. The help just says you picture will turn red if Vegas is unable to interpret your picture and when rendering that portion will be black in the video. It would be nice if Vegas gave you a detailed error on why it's red.

It's probably dependent on your amount of RAM and how much RAM is currently free. It could be a value that approaches randomness as far as the user is concerned.

I suspect that the collage isn't necessary and that you could achieve the same effect even better by using track motion and pan/crop on individual images.

The collage is made to be 4000 small pictures that represent a larger picture when looked at from a distance. This technique is a Photo Mosaic. It would be possible to use pan and crop, and track motion with 3d alpha to achieve this on a smaller scale of picture (say 100). (Check out the team morph video on the track runners...I can do this technique but in lower quality than I want)

But when your talking about 4000 pictures you have to aline in a specific sequence, it's just not possible unless I wanted to spend a year creating the video.

Heck, if it's really a user RAM issue, then importing the 4000 pictures individually in Vegas would choak it as well.

I'm going to see if Nero or Windows movie maker can handle this large file tonight.

You can do that in vegas pretty easily. You only need to figure out how many you need to have on the screen at once. A 3d app would be easier then a vid app because then you can lay down a bunch, hide them, lay down more, etc. Then render segments. You'd do the same in vegas but getting that many tracks to move in sync would get annoying.

Perhaps you could break the collage into a few pieces, maybe divide it in a 4x4 grid with only 250 pictures in each section.

The difference between one single image that is that huge and lots of individual images is that Vegas only has to uncompress the images that are currently in the frame at any given point in time.

I'm going to try and split the picture into multiple grids tonight while I"m watching basketball. Hopefully this will work.