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Using DV in high def projects
Am I thinking along the right lines here? I’ve been shooting DV on a Canon G9 to accompany my photoshoots (still camera) and would like to create some behind the scenes vids for the web and possibly for film festivals, and I suppose also to burn to standard DVD’s. Since my still images are basically super high def, and in order to create teh video at teh best quality I have in terms of media, it seems that I should create my projects in high def (720p for sake of machine power) and then import the DV vids to accompany that. When I drop these files (640×480 30fps AVI) on the timeline, they come in “fit to the frame” in the vertical direction – this is stretching that 480 pixels to 720 right? For the sake of using their quality for what it is, I thought I would create smaller floating frames of the DV tracts at their native resolution.
So first, why does Vegas not drop them into the high def project at their actual resolution (instead of stretching them to fit)?
Secondly, when I use the Track Motion control to resize these to 640×480 (in order to not have to crop into the videos to fill the widescreen format and to not have a 4:3 image with pillarboxing), they end up 640×3?? something – is this because of the non-square pixels of the DV files? Should I use the 480 dimension instead?
Is this the best method of using the DV content with high res still images? Anyone else doing it this way? It seems to me this would hide the lower quality of the DV video somewhat rather than blowing it up to expose it in high def.
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4 Replies
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> So first, why does Vegas not drop them into the high def project at their actual resolution (instead of stretching them to fit)?
That’s just the way Vegas works. It scales everything to fit the project. Other NLE’s import at native resolution. What you can do is open Pan/Crop and change either the width or height to match the project. This will get you back to native resolution.
For example: if you drop a 720×480 DV file into a 1920×1080 project, open Pan/Crop and change the Height to 1080, you will get the DV file resized to it’s original resolution within a 1080 frame. You can now use the pan/crop frame to move the video anywhere on the screen (no need for Track Motion)
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Not sure I follow you there… If you wanted that dv video to be it’s actual 480 pixels high within the 1080 video frame (thereby creating a PIP), why would you change its dimension to 1080 in the event crop? I still don’t think this is working the way it should – I tried it with the event crop instead of the track motion last night and it didn’t work – (project set to HD 720p) in the event crop dialog, the size is already showing 640×480, but the image is filling the video window top to bottom. Does that setting actually relate to the size of the area that image or video is allowed to move within WITHIN the entire video or is that setting controling the size of the media itself? I’m not sitting in front of it right now (will have to try again tonight), but it seems that I tried every single setting combination in the event crop dialog and could never get the video to shrink to its native size and then be able to move it anywhere within the video frame other than within the original area it snapped in to.
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> Not sure I follow you there… If you wanted that dv video to be it’s actual 480 pixels high within the 1080 video frame (thereby creating a PIP), why would you change its dimension to 1080 in the event crop?
Because Pan/Crop is not setting the dimension of the picture, it’s controlling the dimension of the frame. Setting the frame size to match the project size will present the media at it’s original resolution.
> I still don’t think this is working the way it should – I tried it with the event crop instead of the track motion last night and it didn’t work – (project set to HD 720p) in the event crop dialog,
Then you should set the height to 720. When you said HD I wrongly assumed 1080.
> the size is already showing 640×480, but the image is filling the video window top to bottom.
That’s correct. 640×480 media in a 640×480 frame will fill the frame 100%. That’s why you need to make the frame size larger to match the project (720).
> Does that setting actually relate to the size of the area that image or video is allowed to move within WITHIN the entire video or is that setting controling the size of the media itself?
It’s the size of the frame that the video is within.
> I’m not sitting in front of it right now (will have to try again tonight), but it seems that I tried every single setting combination in the event crop dialog and could never get the video to shrink to its native size and then be able to move it anywhere within the video frame other than within the original area it snapped in to.
Try this. First right-click and select Match Output Aspect and then change the height to 720 and see if that gives you what you want. I think it’s the difference in aspect that’s causing the limited movement within the frame.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Ok, works like you said, though it seems odd the way they set it up – perhaps meant for something else. It works groovy, but I was also using the drop shadow feature in the track motion dialog… so, I still have to use that funtion to complete the pip effect I’m looking for. Thanks for the help.
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