Importing images in their native size (?)

[Mike Kujbida]

Kelly, take a deep breath and repeat after me.
“Vegas is different. Vegas is not my old Velocity.”
Repeat until it sinks in 🙂

Coming from the dpsVelocity like you did, it took me a while to get my head wrapped around the way Vegas does things but now that it’s sunk in, I don’t want to go back to the “good old days”.

Vegas automatically scales everything to fit to match your project settings.
It does this because it has no idea if you want to do anything to the images while they’re on the timeline so it’s a case of “being safe rather than sorry”.
You can find out an image size by right-clicking on it while it’s in the Project Media tab, selecting Properties and looking in the General tab.
You can also switch to the Detail View in the Project Media tab and scrolling over to the Frame Size column.
These columns can be re-ordered by dragging them to the desired location so you could make this one the second column instead of where it currently is.

I know you know this but for newbies, once you drop a large image on the timeline, open the Pan/Crop window and resize it and/or add keyframes for a zoom or pan as needed.

Unless you’re doing a deep zoom on an image, the usual recommendation is to make sure the images are no larger than 2X your project size.
For SD NTSC, this would be 1440 x 960.
IrfanView is an excellent and free utility that allows batch resizing along with several other features.
I use it a lot when I do slide shows as I’m often given images from digital still cameras that are 4,000 x 3,000 in size.
Too many large images on the timeline can slow things down which is why I recommend using IrfanView to do a batch resize.
It’s very quick at what it does.

“I’m just starting to feel nervous about how much Vegas seems to mess with stuff without me wanting it to or knowing about it…”

That’s just Vegas trying to make your life easier.
Think back to the Velocity days and having to make sure each and every still image was the exact right size or your machine threw a hissy fit 🙂
I’ve gotten used to the way Vegas does things and, over time, you will too.

[Kelly Griffin]

Yo Mike, I was thinking more Digital Fusion than Velocity…

Regardless, with all the other “ten different ways to do the same thing” approach Vegas has, I’m just surprised that Vegas takes this mandatory approach to something like this.

I think it’s safe to say that just about any thought process starts with “Show me what ‘no change’ looks like first, so I can know how to make a change.”

Anyway, I’ll try what you suggest, but I’m just surprised that with the jillions of tools Vegas provides it doesn’t give me the choice about how to start my own manipulation of elements.

Taking deep breaths,

–Kelly

[Mike Kujbida]

Kelly, I remember using DF to do “Ken Burns” moves on stills.
It wasn’t that hard once you figured it out.
When I tried Vegas for doing this though, it was like a huge weight was lifted from me as it was so much easier.

BTW, I do agree with you on your “Show me what ‘no change’ looks like first, so I can know how to make a change” thought.
I can’t see it being all that hard to implement.
Like a lot of other things, they could have an option in the preferences to enable or disable this feature.

If you think your suggestion is one that is worthwhile, submit it to Sony through their Product Suggestion page.
https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/support/productsuggestion.asp

[Kelly Griffin]

Thanks Mike. I’m going to submit it right now.

I’m “Pro Choice” when it comes to different ways of skinning a cat.

–Kelly

[Mike Kujbida]

Good luck Kelly.
I’ve made a number of suggestions over the years (mostly for a decent titler) and have yet to see one get implemented.
It’s not like I’m asking for the stars, just the moon 🙂