[John Rofrano]

This is more of a personal choice. Since you have no requirement for HD output, I would work in a DV Widescreen project. This ensures that there are no surprises when output. I have had problems with things like credit rolls when making them in an HD project and rendering to SD. It actually looked better to make an SD credit roll. If, however, I need HD and SD output, I will work in an HD project and render to both targets.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

How are you taking the snapshots? You should be setting your video preview to Best (Full) and then use the snapshot button. That should produce the correct size.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

Xvid is your problem. Vegas does not support DivX or Xvid as a source and this is exactly the behavior that it produces. You would be much better off using the original MPEG files from the DVD. (Much higher quality too). Just use File | Import | DVD Camcorder Disc to get the files off of the DVD.

You can output to Xvid… just don’t use it on the timeline.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

> can not get it to stretch out to fill the entire video frame or move left or right to the sides. What gives?

Hold down the Ctrl key to override the aspect lock when you drag the frame bigger or unpress the Lock Aspect Ratio button on the left (third icon from bottom)

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

What codec does the video on the timeline use? Perhaps it is one that Vegas doesn’t support well and it is dropping frames and using the frame from the track below? This certainly is a strange behavior.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

What version of Vegas was the veg file created with? If it was version 8 then I would try reinstalling. Something is not right with the media generators.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

DV is always lower field first. Analog can be either depending on the capture card. I would render with the standard DV templates without changes to stay out of trouble.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

> 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

[John Rofrano]

> Is there an option to crop to fill the frame so it doesn’t have to stretch?

No, you would have to do that manually. The easiest way is to drop the project into a new DV Widescreen project as a “nested project” and then open Pan/Crop on that one long event and right-click the image and select Match Output Aspect. Then render.

> On a side note, could you give me an example of when you would use different (Resolution/PAR/Field Order) project settings and render settings for a final render?

I would only change them if I was rendering to a format like the web that doesn’t support PAR or interlacing. In that case you would modify the resolution to make the PAR 1.0000 which is what the web needs. For example, if I were to render DV Widescreen to Quicktime or MP4 for web use, I would render as 873×480 PAR 1.0000 Progressive.

> I’m just trying to get a clear idea of what each one specifically does, or at least how the project settings effect the render.

The way the project settings affect the render is that you are editing to the project settings. If you render to a resolution and PAR are different than the project, you may be surprised that things don’t line up as you expected. So as a general rule, I like to keep my project settings the same as my delivery format so that what I see in the project is what I get when delivered.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

DVD Architect is recompressing the file to PAL MPEG-2 anyway. You might as well render to PAL MPEG-2 in the first place and avoid the extra render to HD which can only loose quality from what’s on the timeline.

~jr

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