Be aware that the Vegas is not always WYSIWYG... depending on the situation, the video and even the DV/firewire preview can be inaccurate.

http://glennchan.info/articles/vegas/colorspaces/colorspaces.html

Dear Glenn:

Thanks for the link.

Bill


P.S. As to the part of my question that concerned motion, is this x y z stuff simply a hit and miss proposition or can the correct values for given situation be referenced somewhere?

In what context? Flat plane with varying Z. Rotation about y? ???

What you will find is X & Y are dependent on Z as the Z plane affects the 3d-2d projection. The ratio of change of X and Y are dependent on the focal length and Vegas does not specify (or allow the focal length to be changed), at least not that I have found. ie, the projection of the 2d view fulcrum is biased by a the view with a 35mm lens as opposed to a 105mm lens.

More info as to what you have in mind will help to point you in the right direction.

"can the correct values for given situation be referenced somewhere?"

Absolutely they can be referenced. However, the correct values for your given situation are the values that are correct for your given situation ... whatever that might be, and i'm sure that every situation will have a different set of correct values. What are you trying to do in this situation?

Dear All:

Let's say in a pan/crop situation you wanted to zoom in 50% or pan slowly from left to right. What numbers would you assign to the relevant Xs and Ys, and from where would you get them?

Bill

If those are the exact procedures you want to do then don't bother with 3D. Simple 2D pan/crop will handle both of those perfectly well. We still can't tell you the numbers because they depend on the frame size of your project and the size of the media. However, i can tell you how to figure them out.

To zoom in 50% find the height & width values in the pan/crop window and enter values exactly half as big. Of course, that's assuming you actually mean you want to zoom in 200%. A 50% zom would really be a zoom out to make the image smaller in which case enter height & width values double the original. So far x & y haven't been used at all. If you want to zoom in somewhere other than center then play with x center and y center. What numbers to put in? Well, that depends on what part of the image you want to zoom in on. And honestly ... this is probably better done by eye while you move the image around with the mouse than by typing in numbers. When you get the part of the image you want to see showing in the frame then you can reference the x and y values right there in the pan/crop window and that's what you'll need to use. Of course, you're already there and those values are already in use, so you won't have to do anything other than read them if you're curious.

To pan, you will probably start with a zoom as mentioned, drag the picture to the right until the leftmost portion that you want to start the pan with is in the frame. The x and y values will be displayed, but once again you're already there so you don't have to do anything with them. Set a keyframe at the end of the event and drag the picture to the left so that the rightmost end of the pan is displayed. The x and y values are set and displayed for you.

Really though, unless you have a question such as, "in my video i have a background image with a rectangle displayed that goes from x,y of 183,47 pixels to x,y of 351,172 pixels, my project is SD NTSC 720x480 and my source media is a 640x480 quicktime file, what values do i need to type in to make that source media fill that rectangle?" .... we can't give you numbers. We can help you learn how to figure them out for yourself though.

And as far as x, y, z goes, Vegas' 3D implementation is a bit lax. We don't know the and can't change the viewing angle, we don't know how far from the camera the image is. Without being able to explicitly deal with that information then setting 3D parameters is basically a crap shoot. Nudge things around until they look the way you want them to.