Hello, I have been trying to use vegas 6 to make still photo slideshow music dvd's. I had been using Pinnacle.

I have an xp, 3ghz, machine, 2gig ram, 200gig+ hard drive space, radeon 9600 vid card.

I seem to be unable to render a project that has more than 100 pictures and 1 song in it, or more than 5 minutes worth of stills & music. When I try to render more than that at a time the rendering timer times out unfinished, and the program hangs, and has to be restarted.

I have tried best & good settings, tried rendering ac3, then architect ntsv mpeg2, and avi's

This seems quite ridiculous since most people use it for way more intense projects that what I am trying to do.

Are there any suggestions to getting this program to work properly, or any ideas why I am having trouble?

Do you get an error or does your machine just come to a stop, without an actual error. Try to render the same project on a different machine, if you can. If not shut down every program you don't need and try again.

Hello, thanks for the reply.

You know how the rendering box comes up with the percent completed, and time remaining, it will run out to 0 time left to complete, but it will be say only 75% done. And then it will just sit there. Eventually I try to cancel, but the program will not close, so I have to cntrl-alt-dlt it.

I have another computer, which is a slower one, and it doesn't seem to do any better.

I also usually run with minimal processes running, maybe around 24.

I was wondering if my image size is a problem. The pictures are high Quality jpg's, 300dpi i believe. Their sizes range around 3-5 megs each, pixel size averages around 3500x2300.

I assumed there was much more info in video, and size would not be a problem.

If so, what size would be recomended?

Any other ideas?
Thanks

I was wondering if my image size is a problem. The pictures are high Quality jpg's, 300dpi i believe. Their sizes range around 3-5 megs each, pixel size averages around 3500x2300.

Those images are far too large. especially if you have a few hundred of them :-(
Unless you're doing extensive zooming on them, I'd drop the size substantially (by at least half).
Programs such as IrfanView (http://irfanview.com/) (it's free) can do batch processing and it's very quick.

I reduced the size of the images by 50%, and that solved my problem, they rendered without trouble.

As well the quality looked good on the television, however there seemed to be more "flicker" than I'm used to. I'm not sure if thats related.

The screen on some shots with higher contrast seems to crawl, or flicker, the highlights seem to shift, if that makes any sense.

Any solutions to minimize that?

Thanks.

Glad to hear that shrinking them worked.
Now on to your other issues. Here are wo things for you to try.

Solution #1 (flicker problem) is to reduce it. This can be done with a script (my preferred way) or by clicking the first image, shift-clicking the last one (to select all of them) and then right-clicking and selecting Switches - Reduce Interlace Flicker.

Solution #2 (contrast problem) is to drop the video to proper levels. You may not realize it (I didn't until Glenn Chan explained it) but still images take the entire 0-255 luminance range. The problem is that digital video is limited to a range of 16-235. The solution here is to apply the Color Corrector (Secondary) FX on all your stills. The easiest way to do this is to click the Track FX icon in the track header and select this FX. Then select the Computer RGB to Studio RGB preset. This will bring the video levels to where they should be.

Hope this helps.

Solution #2 (contrast problem) is to drop the video to proper levels. You may not realize it (I didn't until Glenn Chan explained it) but still images take the entire 0-255 luminance range. The problem is that digital video is limited to a range of 16-235. The solution here is to apply the Color Corrector (Secondary) FX on all your stills. The easiest way to do this is to click the Track FX icon in the track header and select this FX. Then select the Computer RGB to Studio RGB preset. This will bring the video levels to where they should be.

I had no idea about what the Computer RGB to Studio RGB filter did. Thanks! Is this change somethign that might be noticeable or is this prett far off the detail end?

jason robinson

I had no idea about what the Computer RGB to Studio RGB filter did. Thanks! Is this change somethign that might be noticeable or is this prett far off the detail end?

What it's doing is bringing the levels from your digital stills in line with where they should be. I've noticed that, on both the scope and an external monitor, images processed with this filter look better and I can see some previously lost details in both blacks and whites.
Glenn Chan's articles On the Level-parts 1 &2 (http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/glennchan/levels_in_sony_vegas_part_one.htm) get into this in much more detail than I ever could.

Thank you for the info. I am trying this now.

When applying the color correction, I click the fx icon, which opens the dialog, select the color correction, and hit add, which then brings up the color corrector info, select studio color, then what, just hit the close button?

That will apply to everything in the track?

Thanks

As long as you select the Computer RGB to Studio RGB preset AND you did this at the Track level, yes, it will apply to everything in the track.

As long as you select the Computer RGB to Studio RGB preset AND you did this at the Track level, yes, it will apply to everything in the track.

I was just about to mention that this probably should be done on the track level in order to avoid applying this to every.... single..... clip.... in your time line.

Jason