as an FYI for next time, I'm pretty sure if you make your images 872x480 then you don't need to change the AR, they will display just fine next time you bring them in.

Actually, it could help now if you just use infraview to rescale them all. Does the same thing as changing the AR.

Thanks, that's very useful. If I rescale them will that cause much loss of quality - more than using Vegas to adjust them? Cheers,

Kit

Cheers, Mike, thanks for the link. What I meant was why does Vegas force us to do the setting by hand - surely the default should be to have stills brought in automatically match the overall preferences of the project , then if someone wants to override that make a manual change. I guess if I use the script I will need to do so once before the final rendering? Still trying to decide whether to resize the images outside Vegas or use the script.

Kit

Kit, if you're running Pro 9, I believe it now has the option to do this automatically.
Anything earlier though and you still have to do it the hard way and that's when scripts like the one I linked to are worth their weight in gold :-)
As I said, it's partly because of the square vs. rectangular difference and also the fact that stills come in a wide range of sizes and there's no way for Vegas to know what the PAR is.

Personally I would run the script as soon as I dropped all the images on the timeline.
Keep in mind that images that are in a vertical format will be cropped to the centre so manual adjustment will be required on these.

I generally resize images (I use IrfanView for this as it's very fast and free) to 2X my project properties (i.e. 1440 x 960 for NTSC DV) as this allows me to do some mild zooming.
If I'm doing deep zooms, then I'll leave the size alone.

Mike

Thanks, that's very useful. If I rescale them will that cause much loss of quality - more than using Vegas to adjust them?

if you save them as png, tga, bmp, etc. (lossless formats) then no. If you compress it (ie jpg, gif, etc) then you're getting generational loss. But I'd suggest converting all your images for use in Vegas to png unless you absolutely require another format (IE PSD).

Not a problem I've ever noticed. (But then I'm in PAL land which is a different shape). But, could you not do one, then copy. Select all to end - paste attributes?

Hi, I just resized some images using Thumbsplus. Not only did resizing not help but after manually changing a resized image it didn't work either. Fortunately the script that Mike linked to did the trick for the original images. Does infraview have some special extra process? I doubled-checked that I got the dimensions right. Thanks,

Kit

I spoke too soon - further testing reveals that hte script didn't work - only manually adjusting the stills does so. Argh!

Kit

Why don't you reverse engineer this a bit. Set up your DV widescreen project and then export a still from the timeline. Now go check the dimensions of that still. Those dimensions will be the size that you need to crop your stills to get them to look correct in your project. (When I do this the image is 873x480)

Normally, you just drop images into Vegas and it resamples them to fit the project. You shouldn't need to do any special pixel aspect corrections.

If you want to see an extreme example of Vegas resampling an image to fit, make an 87x48 image and put it on your timeline. Vegas will blow it up to try to fill the frame.

What I'd probably do if I was prepping images for this video project would be to start with a Photoshop image of 873x480 (or a multiple of that) and then start dropping my stills into it. This takes care of the size and you can move the images around to set the framing. Then export from there as PNG. This would be too much work if I had a thousand images but would be pretty methodical if I only had 20 or so to deal with.

There are all sorts of other applications you could use. I like FastStone Image Viewer and have found it has some good batch tools. The main thing, though, is to make sure you understand what Vegas needs before you start anging your head on a brick wall.

Rob Mack

Kit, I have no idea why the script won't work for you as I just tried it and it worked for me.
I'm thinking that it's got something to do with how you're applying it.
Here's the way I did it.
Open a new project, set Project Properties to NTSC DV widescreen, import several stills, drop them on the timeline and run the "MatchAspect.js" script.
Every single image now matches the project properties.
BTW, I was using PNGs that were either 1131 x 798 or 3264 x 2448 pixels in size and, as expected, there was considerable top & bottom cropping of all the images to match the new PAR.
If this isn't method isn't the way you're doing it, what is?

Mike

Why don't you reverse engineer this a bit. Set up your DV widescreen project and then export a still from the timeline. Now go check the dimensions of that still. Those dimensions will be the size that you need to crop your stills to get them to look correct in your project. (When I do this the image is 873x480)

I was only 1 pixel off (and I just multiplied 720*1.212121). :D

but changing the image sizes does work. something else is wrong... are you a widescreen project?

Yep. I saw that. Very close. The thing about checking it in reverse is that it's kind of a learning experience with practical results.

> The only way I have been able to get them to display as expected when rendering is to rightclick each still, select media and change the pixel aspect ratio from 1.0000 (Square) to 1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen).

Kit, you do not... i repeat you DO NOT want to do this!

The media properties should ALWAYS reflect the true properties of the media. Otherwise you will get unexpected results (which is probably what you're seeing). Still images have a Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) of 1.0000. It is important that Vegas knows the true PAR of the media. I would change back any settings that you made to the media properties. If Vegas has inaccurate information about the true PAR of the media it will make bad decisions later. The only time you would change the media properties is if Vegas got it wrong. In this case, Vegas was right (images are PAR 1.0000).

What you want to do is use Pan/Crop to match the aspect of the project. Open Pan/Crop, right-click on the frame and select Match Output Aspect. This will crop the images to 16:9. There are scripts that can do this for you. As others have suggested, you can crop the images outside of Vegas as well to 873x480 or a multiple of that (e.g., 1745x960).

~jr

Hi Mike, that's the way I'm doing it. I wondered if it could be because I use a non-admin account so I tried again with my admin account - no joy. Now I'm not sure if it did work but stopped doing so or if I just thought it worked because I'd changed some files manually and forgotten.

Kit

Hi Rob,

That was a good idea, but its left me confused. When I check the properties of the still it gives me 218 x 92 with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.000 (square) but the project is definitely set to NTSC DV Widescreen (720x480, 29.970 fps) with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen) (I just copied and pasted those from the project properties).

I managed to finish this small project by changing everything by hand but I'd really like to understand what is happening and why the script doesn't work.

Kit

change the preview to good/full then save your image.

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that setting!. Now I have a still that is 873 x 480 but the pixel aspect ration is still square. It seems to render correctly but if I bring in a still made outside Vegas and don't change the pixel aspect ratio to wide then that doesn't render correctly. Getting more confused.

Kit

What are the pixel dimensions of the stills you are bringing in? Are they 873x480?

If they're not this shape (the size can vary no problem, as long as the ratio is the same) then, as JohnnyRoy pointed out the correct fix is to crop, not change the PAR. When you change the PAR you're stretching the picture out and distorting it.

If your pictures are the right shape and they're not fitting properly then you're doing something strange and unnecessary. We'll have to find out what that is so that you can stop doing it.

Doh! I feel foolish. My original graphics were 368 pixels high and then I adjusted them to 480px but I wasn't looking at the width - it's been 720 pixels all along. I'm going to rework some (I'm using Swish) and see what happens but I have a feeling that this is the cause.

So I shouldn't be adjusting the PAR to 1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen) even though the movie is widescreen? Why does a still exported from the movie have square pixels even though the clip has widescreen pixels - is that because widescreen pixels are just a software effect? I'd never even though pixels could be anything but square until I started getting into this mess. Never done a widescreen project before.

Thanks,

Kit

Would that everything used square pixels ... everything would be so simple!

Well, except that it wouldn't be. There are some reasons why various video formats have different PARs. In DV, both 4:3 and widescreen use the same size frame, 720x480. This means that both formats can use exactly the same file structure, and that a camcorder can record both formats. The only difference is that in 4:3 clips the pixels are squished slightly horizontally and in widescreen they're stretched out slightly.

HDV 16:9 actually has a 4:3 frame, 1440x1080. The pixels are stretched out 1.3333 to make it fill 16:9. This is done because it's 25% fewer pixels to store and therefore correspondingly smaller files, and higher compression levels can be achieved.

Still images haven't really ever had a need for such tricks, nor gain much advantage from them.

So, if you wanted to, you could make a .avi clip that is truly 873x480 with square pixels, save it, play it, edit it, and all would be fine. However, since almost everyone doesn't do that you may not find much software that would readily accept it. Vegas doesn't care; it will do most anything you tell it to. But, some formats have restrictions. DV (NTSC) can only be 720x480 and no options are possible. MPEG files must have dimensions that are multiples of 8 so you'd have to use 872x480 instead of 873.

And, for that matter, "DV Widescreen" isn't 16:9. It's 16.36875:9, so everything's a bit fudgy anyway.