I've created several photo slide show videos in the past - they look great when played from a DVD, but always end up stretched when I try to render to an MP4 for Internet or iPad viewing. I'm about to start a new project and would like to do things better this time so that I can get good looking results in both formats.

I'm starting to wonder if I am even going to be able to render to both formats in the same project.

Here's what I've done in the past.

Project Properties - NTSC DV Widescreen (720x480) - render quality = Best

Images - I resize to 720x480. From a post on here that I read many years ago I also have been setting the image's pixel aspect ratio to D1/DV NTSC (0.91).

Then when I add the image to the project, I turn off Maintain Aspect Ratio and turn on Reduce Interlace Flicker.

I think these are the main steps as they relate to the images.

So now that I'm paying a little more attention, I'm wondering about changing the image's pixel aspect ratio - since I also want the video to be viewed on computer monitors.

I'm also wondering about turning off Maintain Aspect Ratio. When I turn it back on, I get black bars on the sides of the image. So my first question is when my project is 720x480 and when my image is resized to 720x480 - why doesn't the image fill the preview window?

Can someone help me with the best settings for creating a video for DVD and for .MP4? Should I keep Maintain Aspect Ratio on? Do I need to mess with the image's pixel aspect ratio? Is there anything else that I should be doing?

TIA - Mike

Your problem is that you're using a widescreen template (PAR of 1.2121) but you're setting your images to a PAR of 0.9091
Resize them to the proper PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio) and everything should be OK, no matter what format you render them to.

Wow - that was simple. Thank you very much.

So how does 720x480 equate to PAR of 1.2121? Seems to me that it's 1.5 (720/480)

Another question - if I want to make my project HD, is there a template that will have advantages over the others given that I want to render to DVD and MP4? I was looking at HDV 720, but cropping my photos to 1280x720 (which to me would be PAR 1.7777, but I'm guessing it's not) cuts out too much of the photo.

Setting the project to HDV 1080 (1440x1080) works well for the cropping but even after setting the PAR to 1.33, my test MP4s don't look right.

Any thoughts?

So it seems like there is something happening in Photoshop that is causing the stretching. When I take my image, crop to 1440x1080, apply a PAR of 1.33, the image appears stretched. When I create a new image using the Video HDV 1080p preset and copy my image into it, the image looks right - but the area that I can crop is different. The two images are the same size, same PAR, but one is stretched and one is not. Ugg.

Images are typically a PAR of 1.0. However, video is not. DV is .9091 while widescreen DV is 1.2121. When you drop the image on the timeline, the current versions of Vegas Pro will automatically apply the current project PAR to the image for you. You can see that by opening Pan/Crop and see the shape of the "F" window is shaped like the current PAR. When you render, the actual pixel size is 720x480 in both cases but the PAR determines whether it will be stretched to match 4:3 or stretched to match 16:9.

btw, the .9091 and 1.2121 does not relate between the 720 and the 480 - it's how the 720 will be changed to fill the screen.