I am having trouble importing large photos into timeline. The quality in preview window is bad (unless I zoom in) and the render quality is horrible. I have tried converting to .png and changing interlacing settings with no help. I have also tried batch conversion using IrFanView. Here are the specs on the large photos.. thanks in advance.

3626 x 2902
sRGB Color
24 Bit Depth
362 dpi

For scaling photos, you need to preview and render in "Best".

To zoom in on photos, make sure you use Pan/Crop and NOT Track Motion.

Vegas is not staying in "best" setting during preview. I set it and when it gets to the photo and a transition, it reverts to "half" lower quality. What would cause that?

Render does look better though.

My System : i7 64 bit Vegas 9

From the Vegas Pro 9 readme:

Vegas can now automatically adjust the video preview size and quality to optimize frame rate during preview.

Right-click the Video Preview window and select Adjust Size and Quality for Optimal Playback if you want to emphasize frame rate during preview.
When the command is not selected, video quality is emphasized, and the frame rate will be reduced if necessary.

You don't mention any details about how you tried the batch conversion in IrfanView.
That's generally what I use when reducing the size of high resolution photos for use in Vegas and I've been pleased with the results.
If I'm using the shots full frame in video, then I reduce their dimensions in IrfanView to be a close match to the Vegas project settings.
If I need the images smaller for multi-image, or larger to purposely pan-and-scan, I set the dimensions appropriately smaller or larger than the project settings.
It's easy to batch convert all the needed photos in separate passes at several sizes and keep them in separate folders labelled with their dimension in addition to having IrfanView add the dimension to the filename of each photo.

Gary, please checkout Mike's advise concerning Preview. However, this would NOT give you a "bad" render. Reducing the resolution is then the way I'd go. Do you NEED all of that resolution?

As you are now saying: "Render does look better though." - Good!

In this context, Preview and Render are 2 different things.

Grazie

ya, when you render, there is quality setting drop down menu, set it to "best" for large photos or scaling, cropping, panning etc

Previews really don't matter, its annoying to preview with low quality/a low frame rate but it doesn't effect the render.

Another thing to remember... If you're ZOOMING IN on the image - DO NOT use Track Motion as that will zoom in on the frame. Use Pan/Crop instead which will use the full resolution of the image.

Y'know, what this ALL comes down to is:

A] Capture Video in the format you want for the resulting delivery you need

B] Prepare ALL media - video, stills, audio - in the format you require for editing for the delivery you finally need (this could also mean for archiving).

If you need large reso, so be it. If you DON'T, stop it!

Grazie

Another cool trick I've found, if you want to see what it will play back like when rendered is to make a loop region covering the area you want and then press "SHIFT + B". This will render the looped region to RAM and you can then play it back and see what it will look like when rendered.

And if you don't have enough RAM for the length/complexity of the sequence, then do a Pre-render (Shift+M).