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image aspect ration questions
I’ve had a lot of trouble with vegas (and also architect) when it comes to frame size vs image size (with imported images).
The video I’m using in my project is ntsc widescreen and the frame size is 720×480 (and the visible image fills the entire frame). I created an image in Photoshop which is also 720×480 which also fills that entire space.
When I import the image to vegas and use it on the timeline though, the image gets letterboxed for some reason. I looked in the pan/zoom window to see that the height/width are set correctly, and they are. It even shows the image /perfectly/ fitting in the frame rectagle (the dotted lines with the ‘f’ in it), yet for some reason the black bars are still on the sides… I can get rid of them by using one of the other presets (16:9, academy), but then the image is just enlarged and part of it is not visible in the frame anymore.
Can anyone tell me why this is? If the image and frame size are exactly the same, and the dotted line indicating the frame matches completely with the image dimensions, I don’t get why this is happening… thanks!
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4 Replies
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[Ryosuke Asuka] “Can anyone tell me why this is?”
You are ignoring the pixel aspect ratio (PAR). The PAR for NTSC Widescreen is 1.2121. The PAR for an image is 1.0000 (square pixels). In order to make an image that fits properly in an NTSC Widescreen frame you must multiply 720 x 1.2121 = 873 to get square pixels. Make your image 873×480 and it will fit perfectly.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
hmm, I see.. So does that also mean if I had created the image in photoshop and specified I wanted widescreen aspect ratio pixels, then I could have created the image @ 720×480 and it would have fit?
The one thing I still don’t understand is, in the pan/crop window, why does it actually show the image fitting? Does that window not account for the difference in PAR?
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[Ryosuke Asuka] “So does that also mean if I had created the image in photoshop and specified I wanted widescreen aspect ratio pixels, then I could have created the image @ 720×480 and it would have fit?”
No. That still makes a 720×480 PAR 1.0 image file as far as I know. It just stretches the preview in Photoshop so that when you draw circles they will remain circles when stretched. It’s a bit of trickery. You’re better off making a real widescreen image of 873×480.
[Ryosuke Asuka] “The one thing I still don’t understand is, in the pan/crop window, why does it actually show the image fitting? Does that window not account for the difference in PAR?”
Newer version of Vegas have changed their behavior and automatically crop images to fit the project. Go into Options | Preferences | Editing and uncheck Automatically crop still images added to timeline and Vegas will stop cropping when you add images and show you what you really have which is a 4:3 image on a 16:9 timeline.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
wonderful! Really appreciate the help John!
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