formating still images in timeline to ntsc

[scolew]

What is the best way to format scanned images into NTSC DVD compliant images? I have Photoshop and there is a place to resize the image to NTSC...is this the correct way? If so, when I save them, should I save them in .psd or .jpg? I will be importing them into Vegas 6. Is there a way in Vegas to format them into NTSC or does it have to be done in Photoshop....OR if there is a better product to reformat to NTSC.

Thanks!!!

[redwudz]

Oh!..... too many questions. I can tell you that .psd won't do you much good. Only readable in Photoshop or similar. On a still image, not sure what NTSC has to do with it outside of resolution size. I would go with JPEG, 1024 x 768 as that is a common resolution. Or probably more compatible, 800 x 600.

[guns1inger]

Actually, Vegas will quite happily import PSD files, as well as tga or tif. Any of these are preferable to jpg as they are either uncompressed or losslessly compressed.

Photoshop even has presets for PAL and NTSC D1 sizes, just to make life easier.

If these are simply for presentation at full size, and you aren't going to zoom or pan across them, then D1 is fine. If you are going to be doing some form of motion work, then larger is better.

You also have to deal with interlace flicker, so apply a slight gaussion blur (0.1 - 0.2) or vertical directional blur to reduce this.

If you don't need the layers, then flatten them and save them as tif or tga for loading. It simplifies things.

[thecoalman]

The way I've been doing it for full screen static images is to first crop the image to the correct aspect first, I'd magine PS has that feature. Then I resize to what ever the resolution of the video is, if your using 16:9 this is going skew the image but when played back on your 16:9 video the aspect will be correct. Then apply a slight blur and adjust for NTSC/PAL colors.

[scolew]

Thanks for the great information!!!

It just seems that if I have a photo in potrait...that if has black borders on the sides in the preview and does not show up over the full screen. Is this something that I am doing wrong? Also, some of my landscape ones have some black areas to one side. Thanks so much again!

[thecoalman]

I don't know how vegas works but it depends on what you tell it to do with the image. If you tell it to maintain the aspect then the black will appear since it only resizes to the max aspect. If you tell it to use full screen it will but that destoys the aspect, things such as circles will become oblong.

If you want to maintain aspect and use them full screen you have to first crop the images to the correct aspect then resize to the resolution of the video. You could also use egas to zoom in.

[edDV]

I would vote for oversized stills and just import into Vegas. Vegas will size them to the timeline project format.

Heavy zooming requires a much larger still.

[scolew]

edDV...

When you are saying oversized stills, do you mean make them large in Photoshop and then import them? If so, how do you mean? I am sorry for such dumb questions...

[edDV]

I mean shoot in the digital camera or scan to greater than 720x480, say 2000 x 1000. That way if you pan or zoom the image, you aren't upscaling.

[scolew]

ok....great...thanks so much for your help and prompt reply.

Thanks to all of you for you super help!!!!!!!

You all are great!