Photomontage - Ultimate S or others?

[David Delaney]

I am in the process of putting together a huge photo montage piece that will require a program to individual make some movement or create some dynamic shots from stills. I have read and heard that Ultimate S does this. My main challenge right now is that not all of the photos are 640X480 and most are taken with the camera turned side-ways (so I guess instead of 6X4, they are 4X6 - taller than longer).
When placing some of those pics in Vegas, I noticed there is quite a bit of white space on either side of them (and using aspect ratio just squished them) and the number of pictures makes it more than uncomfortable to have to crop or resize them all in photoshop - so...

Does Ultimate S or another program out there take this into account the size and shape of the photo when it creates a dynamic photomontage? I hope this makes sense.

Thanks

[Edward Troxel]

Yes the size is taken into account. Definitely give Ultimate S a try. Also give Excalibur a try. See which one works best for your needs. You can find a demo Video Scrapbook video as done in Excalibur here. Info on Ultimate S is at www.vasst.com

[Randy Stewart]

I usually resize my photo's to 1440x960 before bringing them into Vegas using Photoshop batch processing and make sure the framing is correct for the primary focus of the picture. The problem you will have using any script program in Vegas is that it doesn't see the picture's primary object so when you do an automated match aspect ratio/project size, you will get portrait photos showing from the waist down or other unintended framing. If most of your photos are portrait sized, you'll end up having to key frame everyone to bring the primary object into view (most likely) anyway. By preparing the photos first, then bringing them in via Ultimate S, at least you will not have to mess with key framing each one to adjust the movement. The batch processing feature of Photoshop can be saved and reused too. In fact, I have one for doing just resizing, and one for doing resizing and automatic color correction. My choice of script is Ultimate S as it has so many other tools included (audio, FX, sync to music and markers, MotoPhoto, etc.). I haven't used Excalibur in a couple of years but I hear it's good also. Hope this helps.
Randy

[Gilles Pialat]

For basic photo montage, you can use my free scripts VideoSlide & VideoZoom.
More info HERE.

[David Delaney]

Thanks, I will look into that - another thing :

1) How are most people dealing with the RED EYE issue in VV7? I know that the Platinum studio has a feature for dealing with RED EYE, but what is the tried and true method of getting rid of it?

2) I want to import some FLASH clips into my project - how should I save them in the flash program? As an AVI or can I save as a SWF?

Thanks

[Randy Stewart]

David,
Red eye reduction is included in Vegas 7. Right click a picture on the timeline or in the project media window and chose Red Eye Reduction. Create the selection over the red part (drag to size circle) and hit delete. Repeat for each eye in the picture. It will automatically fix all occurences of that picture in your project. Sorry, but I can't answer question 2. Someone else will I'm sure.
Happy editing,
Randy

[Hugh Mobley]

I have used swf from swishmax on the timeline and they were fine

[John Rofrano]

Originally Posted by David Delaney

My main challenge right now is that not all of the photos are 640X480 and most are taken with the camera turned side-ways (so I guess instead of 6X4, they are 4X6 - taller than longer).
When placing some of those pics in Vegas, I noticed there is quite a bit of white space on either side of them (and using aspect ratio just squished them) and the number of pictures makes it more than uncomfortable to have to crop or resize them all in photoshop

There are two things you can do about this. One is to place a copy of the image on a track below and zoom it to 4:3 aspect. Then give it a Gaussian Blur so that it is a wash of color. The color will match the border of the picture and provide a nice background for the side borders.

The second thing you can do (which is much easier) is to drop a motion background on the track below so that the motion background shows through instead of just black. All of the major networks do this on their HD broadcasts when they have to show SD footage. You easily create motion backgrounds with Vegas Generated Media.

~jr