[Seatlanta]

Hi:
I don’t know of a limit on the number of still photos, but there seems to be a problem with still photos whose dimensions exceed about 1200 by 800 pixels. I have few problems when I keep them below that limit. When they get larger, Vegas hangs and requires restarting.

I do a lot of work with still images, so I’m always curious about how other people are doing with their projects. I need images with higher resolution because of pans and zooms.

Could you tell me the approximate dimensions (W x H in pixels) of your photos.

Thanks.
James (seatlanta)

[Seatlanta]

Gee, I’m not a professional event videographer, but I agree that your fee sounds very, very reasonable.

You don’t say how many hours you spent filming, editing, and traveling, but I would have expected to be paid for all of that time, and also the cost of the media (DVDs, etc.).

If you filmed lots of students, you could also work out a deal to sell the DVDs to the parents.

On the other hand, if you’re just learning and are looking for experience and things for your resume, then you probably did just fine.

Many clents don’t understand the time and effort (and frustration) that go into a simple video production, and many aren’t willing to pay for good work.

Best of luck.

James (seatlanta)

[Seatlanta]

I’ve done tests with my camera and with my Fostex MR-8 digital recorder — https://fostex.com/index.php?file=products/digital/mr8 . Here are the results:

With a long video take of 53 minutes, along with two versions of audio (DV tape and Fostex), the end-of-tape sync signals were off by 8 frames–barely more than 1/4 second.

A slight control-drag adjustment and everything lined up. And with normal-length takes, I probably won’t have to do any adjusting at all. This is good news for me because I now have a very accurate wild sound option.

And it’s a cinch to remove the compact flash card from the Fostex and dump the wave file into Vegas (or Sound Forge).

I have no idea about the accuracy of other systems, but I’m very pleased with the Fostex.

James (seatlanta)

[Seatlanta]

Hi:
I’m not sure if it’s what you wanted, but I created a letterbox with blurred bands at the top and bottom, and with a red border, by using the following:

Cookie cutter (four instances)
Chromakey

I put the event on one track and the blurred event on another track.

I added the letter box bands at the top and bottom with (two instances of) the cookie cutter, using a black rectangular shape–one for the top and one for the bottom band. Slide one toward the top and one toward the bottom to get the bands positioned where you want them.

I repeated the cookie cutters with red bands, letting the top and bottom bands extend a few pixels past the black bands.

Next, I used chromakey to make the black bands transparent, exposing the blurred background at the top and bottom with a bright red border.

Here is the result:

https://woodlandproject.com/JHSpix/letterboxblur.jpg

There are probably simpler methods, but this one worked, and it was quick.

Good luck.
James (seatlanta)

[Seatlanta]

Hi Leslie:
It’s certainly OK to hold me responsible for just about anything that goes wrong. That’s exactly what my wife does.

Anyway, if you’re referring to 35mm or other film cameras versus digital cameras, I’d say that digital is the way to go. Normal prints and slides will be digitized anyway, so why not skip that step?

I’m a watercolor artist, and I use a digital camera and scanner exclusively. In fact, I recently sold my Nikon 35mm and all of its lenses. They’ve been gathering dust for years.

I’ve also scanned 35mm slides with good results, but I think the secret is to make final corrections in Photoshop or a similar program.

I’ve found that Vegas 6.0 has some problems with very large (high-resolution) still images, especially jpegs. After many, many experiments, I found that if I keep my jpeg files below 1600 x 1200, Vegas does not hang or crash. In most cases, this is much more resolution than you’d need, but if you’re doing pans and zooms (Ken Burns effects) on the still image (as I do), you may need a high-res image.

I’m presently using a Canon Powershot S70, and I’m very pleased with it. The 7.1 megapixels are usually more than I need.

Good luck.

James (seatlanta)

[Seatlanta]

Thanks, everyone, for your input.

As some of you suggested, I did a test with my Canon mini-DV camera and my Fostex MR-8 digital recorder.

I set up the camera and recorder next to one another and set them both to record. I created a sync signal by banging two film cans together a few times, then waited almost an hour and did it again near the end of the tape.

Here are the results:

With a long video take of 53 minutes, along with two versions of audio (DV tape and Fostex), the end-of-tape sync signals were off by 8 frames–barely more than 1/4 second.

A slight control-drag adjustment and everything lined up. And with normal-length takes, I probably won’t have to do any adjusting at all. This is good news for me because I now have a very accurate wild sound option.

And it’s a cinch to remove the compact flash card from the Fostex and dump the wave file into Vegas (or Sound Forge).

James (seatlanta)

[Seatlanta]

I capture old 8mm and 16mm home movies to digital format and I get improvements by using the following three effects.

Try using the Vegas Unsharp Mask effect. Although it won’t really sharpen the image, you can make it appear sharper. A little goes a long way.

You can also (sometimes) use Brightness and Contrast to make old videos and films look better.

Color Correction will help take care of color shifts.

Good luck.
James (seatlanta)

[Seatlanta]

I listed incorrect resolutions for all of the examples in my posting about the tests. The sizes are not in dpi, but in the image size in pixels. For example, it’s not 3000 dpi, but 3000 x 3000 pixels. That’s quite a difference. I shudder to think about resolutions like I listed originally. Sorry for the error.

Here are the corrected results:

====================

I used a black-and-white photo from the late 1940s and used Adobe Photoshop to save it in different formats (*.jpg, *.tif, *.psd) and different sizes from 1500 x 1500 pixels to 10,000 x 10,000 pixels. I cropped the picture into a square so that the horizontal and vertical resolutions were the same.

I tried dragging the file to the timeline in Vegas 6 and in Vegas 4. The *.psd files were almost exactly the same size as the corresponding *.tif files. The *.jpg files were much smaller for each corresponding resolution. For example, a 3000 x 3000 pixel file for each format was:

psd: 25,908 kb
tiff: 26,388 kb
jpeg: 1,357 kb

The jpeg files were much, much smaller (in Kb), but they caused the most trouble in Vegas 6.

Here are the results.

JPEG files
Vegas 6 handled everything through 6000 x 6000 pixels.
Vegas 4 handled everything through 10,000 x 10,000 pixels.

TIFF files
Vegas 6 handled everything through 5000 x 5000 pixels.
Vegas 4 handled everything through 4000 x 4000 pixels.

PSD (Photoshop) files
Vegas 6 handled everything through 8000 x 8000 pixels.
Vegas 4 handled everything through 10,000 x 10,000 pixels.

[Seatlanta]

I used a black-and-white photo from the late 1940s and used Adobe Photoshop to save it in different formats (*.jpg, *.tif, *.psd) and different resolutions from 1500 dpi to 10,000 dpi. I cropped the picture into a square so that the horizontal and vertical resolutions were the same.

I tried dragging the file to the timeline in Vegas 6 and in Vegas 4. The *.psd files were almost exactly the same size as the corresponding *.tif files. The *.jpg files were much smaller for each corresponding resolution. For example, a 3000 dpi file for each format was:

psd: 25,908 kb
tiff: 26,388 kb
jpeg: 1,357 kb

The jpeg files were much, much smaller (in Kb), but they caused the most trouble in Vegas 6.

Here are the results.

JPEG files
Vegas 6 handled everything through 6000 dpi.
Vegas 4 handled everything through 10,000 dpi.

TIFF files
Vegas 6 handled everything through 5000 dpi
Vegas 4 handled everything through 4000 dpi

PSD (Photoshop) files
Vegas 6 handled everything through 8000 dpi
Vegas 4 handled everything through 10,000 dpi

Other observations:
Some hi-res files were not visible in the timeline preview; they were just black, although they did show on the preview screen.

Some hi-res files did not show up in the crop window. There was just a white background with the letter “F” on it. Even so, panning and cropping worked, but it was a hit-or-miss operation.

I suspect from past experience that there will be more crashes as the number of different photos builds up on the timeline. For the above test, I simply dragged 10 copies of the same photo onto the timeline, panned-and-cropped one of the copies, dragged them around on the timeline, overlapped some of them for dissolves, and generally just played around with them, trying to get it to hang.

Everything was pretty stable as long as the photo’s resolution stayed below a certain range (see list above). But when the resolution got too high, the program stopped as soon as I tried to put just one copy on the timeline.

James (seatlanta)

[Seatlanta]

I appreciate the suggestions from everyone.

As for the high resolution, I need it for some photos because of the pan-and-zoom I have to do. If I begin with a group photo with 100 people and zoom in on one face, I have to start with a hi-res photo or the closeup view will look terrible.

If I’m not zooming in on one important part of the photo, I could get by with much lower resolutions, but if I end up zooming to just 10% of the original width, that’s a big jump in original resolution. And sometimes, for historical photos, I go from an establishing shot to a tight, tight closeup.

That said, I do believe that I may be able to go with a slightly lower resolution for many of my pix. Also, I may have to work around the problem by using a lower-res pic for the establishing shot and then zooming to a higher-res version for the closeup.

But the bottom line is that Vegas 6 does not handle large jpeg files as well as previous versions. See my next post for some data from tests I did today.

Thanks everyone.

James (seatlanta)