Smooth still image sequence

[Hans-joachim Schuetze]

Jake,
I think John is referring to the “Properties” dialog box that shows up after you imported the still image sequence as project media (it’s important to check the “Open still image sequence” box).

Once you click on “Open” in the import dialog, a dialog box “Properties” should show up, with 2 tabs – Media and General. On the Media tab, you can specify the tape name, time code to be used, etc., including “Frame rate”. The default is the frame rate of your project (e.g., for NTSC, it would be something like 29.97). You can pick alternative values from the drop-down list, or enter any other numerical value.

John, please correct me if I am wrong…

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Hajo Schuetze
Video editing amateur
https://vimeo.com/hajooo

[John Rofrano]

Hajo, you are correct. Sorry for not being more specific. Most people just hit enter at this window and don’t go to the media tab and specify the attributes of the media. This is a critical step for Vegas to interpret your still image sequence correctly. Thanks for pointing that out.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jake Theriault]

Thanks for the help, but, I did all you said and I got to the open still image sequence dialog box and set it to 8 fps and then BAM.

Error message.

“Warning:An error occurred while opening one or more files

The item was not found”

Which is bull crap because I know exactly where the files (pictures) are. I dont see why my computer+Vegas can’t see where they are. I mean, I even checked to see if they could manually be imported by importing them through the explorer and it worked that way, except i cannot specify the fps like i can with your way, which is why I dont think anything will work now =( I am pretty sad.

[Hans-joachim Schuetze]

Jake,

sorry to hear you are running into problems.

I can think of 2 possible causes, the 1st being the more likely culprit.

1. Like me the first time I used Vegas, when importing the pictures as project media, you may have selected ALL (or several) of your pictures in the sequence, and then checked the “open as still image sequence” box.
If that’s the case, click on the first picture in the sequence only, and check the box.

2. If you are running the new Windows 7 (Release Candidate), you may have run into problems with hard disk drivers.
Consider checking this thread, https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/24/893199

Hope it helps, good luck,
Hajo

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Hajo Schuetze
Video editing amateur
https://vimeo.com/hajooo

[Jake Theriault]

Thanks so much with the help! The problem was the first one, so i selected the first image and imported it with the selected box you said, and it worked fine and imported all of the pictures (751 pictures) into a big long “video” ( that’s about a minute ans 30 secs) that I put on the timeline, however…

When I play it back/preview it, it looks choppy.

It pretty much “loads” while it’s previewing, which makes it look extremely choppy.

Is this normal?

And when i render it, will it stay choppy, or will it be a smooth, 8 fps video clip?

[Hans-joachim Schuetze]

Previews can look choppy for a number of reasons. Try the following (in no particular order, I am working on my 2nd beer)…

Basically, I fully agree with your hypothesis: Preview tries to do in real time what a rendering process can take all the time in the world for. Render (over night, if need be) and check.

– Lower the quality of the preview: Above the preview screen, find a bit of text that may say something like “Preview (Auto)” or “Good (Full)” or something like that – change this to a lower quality level (the lowest being Draft — Quarter).
– Close other programs running on your machine, and close those hogging memory and/or CPU time. This may include crashed software (like on my machine, where a svchost process uses 100% of one of my the 2 processors in my rig)
– More memory, better CPU, faster hard drive, etc. (aka brute force approach)
– Render and check. Aw, right, I did mention that above.

If you have a slow rig, you may still experience a jumpy video when playing it back – when I watch some HD video on vimeo.com it happens to me all the time.

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Hajo Schuetze
Video editing amateur
https://vimeo.com/hajooo

[Jake Theriault]

Thanks for the quick response!

It works! I am so grateful and glad!

(I have a okay machine, just to specify: Dell Inspiron 8600 w/ a 1.6 ghz and 2G of random access memory, so no problems with that)

I did all your steps and did a very small test render with about 15 frames at 8fps. It worked perfectly! Just perfect!

You see, the reason this means so much to me is that I have a lego mini series on youtube, I give it some pretty decent work, too. I used to always “convert” the frames to ‘8 fps video’ with the horrible Windows Movie Maker 2, which is ridiculous and long and frustrating. But now with your help, it’s a snap to convert the frames.

One more question: what’s the max amount of frames i can render into 8 fps at a time? 700? 500? 200? Don’t worry I, will start by converting the frames in groups of 300, just to be safe. But how much do you think Vegas can handle at a time?

Anyway, aside from that last question:

I cannot thank you enough! I am very grateful for that advice, truly, I am.

-Jake T

[Hans-joachim Schuetze]

Jake,

my pleasure, glad to be able to help. I think I have seen some of your stuff on YouTube.

As for the size of the project your setup is able to handle, I would be more optimistic. I currently have Vegas handle a project with 3,000+ 3.1 megapixel pictures at 25 or 30 fps alongside with several pieces of video with a dual core CPU at 1.83 and 2 gigs of RAM. It may take time to render, but it does it.

Coming from Ulead’s Videostudio and Windows Moviemaker, my first impression of Vegas was “wow, it does not freeze, I can still do stuff”. So much better…

Enjoy!

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Hajo Schuetze
Video editing amateur
https://vimeo.com/hajooo

[Jake Theriault]

Hi again, I was hoping I would not run into any more problems, but I guess i did. Everything was working out great so I was taking stills and putting them through the program and everything worked fine. I left for a 2 week vacation and came back and started “filming” again. I had a 750 stills that I put into the program and did all the steps to turn it to “video” in 8fps. It worked perfectly like last time, only the problem was that two black bars on either side were different sizes when watching the newly “converted” vid with the final project.

Here is a video showing you what I mean. Please play them in Vegas to see what I am talking about.

( I uploaded it but I really dont know how this site works, so I dont know where to find the video I just uploaded to show you…)

[Jake Theriault]

This is a second of the initial ‘divide’ in the project, where the old clip meets the new clip.

The first Half second or so shows the ‘old way’- the way that the rest of the project is.
The second half shows the ‘new way’ – the way the rest of the project DOES NOT look like.

If you put it in Vegas and look at it, you see the image sort of jump- the side black bars dont stay the same. It really screws up the way the film will look. If you could help me agian, I would really appreciate it, thanks!