I searched the vegas preview windows posts and couldn't find an answer...

I'm creating a training module for a web application at work.
I took motion screen shots using Camtasia, saved as .avi's using the tech smith codec.
My first time using the camtasia so I know I need to learn a better workflow.

Anyway... I dropped the camtasia avis on my vegas time line. The output frame size was 650x480.
I created a simple call out arrow in photoshop and used the default 720x480 frame size.

I scaled and positioned the error via the pan/crop tool (several different arrows popping up around the screen) and everything looked peachy in the preview window.

When I rendered the project out (wmv file) the arrows were slightly out of position.

After a lot of swearing, I realized the problem was the overlay error was 720x480 frame size and the underlying video was the 650x480. I created new arrows with the 650 frame size and rerendered and all was fine.

So I understand, conceptually, what happened. The frame sizes were mimatched and in rendering one was changed that threw the arrow out of line.

But why did it all look fine on the preview monitor? Are there settings to make it not do that?

And what can I do in the future to avoid this problem?

Thanks

Because the display monitor is displaying non-square pixels, your graphic was created (most likely) with square pixels, and the render to windows media is square pixels.
You can turn off the Pixel Aspect ratio match in the Preview window by right-clicking.
Or, you can use pan/crop to match the Camtasia footage to your 720 x 480.
Or, you can lay the Camtasia over a background, so you preserve aspect ratio of both Camtasia and any video you may have shot with a DV/HDV cam.

Wow! An answer in 8 minutes.
It's been a while since I've been on this board but Spot still reigns supreme!

oh, pixel aspect ratio (he smacks himself for headspacing on that)

Vegas is a great app for setting up a project with, eg., 650x480 square pixels, progressive, 12fps (or 4fps, whatever), so, set it up to whatever size your capture is or you're outputting to.

Take advantage of what Vegas offers for camtasia work, work in the rez of your capture and/or output. You will be the king of previewing your screen caps!

The idea is that Vegas can be pixel and frame-aspect agnostic while still doing the "best" thing with the footage (keeping all of the data in-frame). Sometimes it bites people like this.

Another solution (since you may want to render wide-screen, square, commercial display, etc.) is to make your project look exactly as you want it, then nest it in another project (drag in as media).

So, the steps are:

1. Make your project, and make it look just as you want it.
2. Save it.
3. Hit the "new" button.
4. Drag your first project (from step 2) onto your timeline.

Now, when you save your final output, everything will be lined up. You may have letter-boxing or pillar-boxing as a result of the nested project being fit, as a whole, to the final output, but it guarantees layout integrity.

Thanks for the info.

I played around more with Camtasia and vegas yesterday and hit on what Seth mentioned, ie setting up the vegas project to mirror the captured clip properties and it worked like a charm.
I was able to render out in the tech smith codec and everything seemed to work fine and no res loss.

It still amazes me that all the info on this board is free.