Which NewBlueFx's for stills meline

[Geoff Jak]

I am putting together a series of stills on the Vegas Pro timeline.

I have about 100 stills to choose from and am scanning them at 300 dpi - I know that needs to go down but betterr more than not when zooming is concerned.

The big Q is - Can you advice me which transitions will work well using a series of stills.

I am putting this together for a funeral Friday and need to get it together quickly but tastefully. Thx

[Don Bloom]

First I don't think you need to make the resolution anything less than 300dpi. In all the montages I've done in Vegas over the years I try to never go less than 300 when scanning in a pic. That has seemed to work well for me.

As far as transitions, it's hard to say without seeing the pics and hearing any music but the easiest fastest and safest would be simply a nice dissolve or anywhere from 30 to up to 60 frames.

Also just an FYI this topic really has little to do with NewBlue so should have gone into the Vegas forum where you'd probably get more results.

[Geoff Jak]

Thx for all the info Don

I"ll keep in mind the 300 dpi issue.

I have gone to Vegas and it was suggested I use Ultimate S or Excalibar. Thought I would check here to see what this set of fx can do for stills. Thx again Don

[Don Bloom]

I don't use Ultimate S but I do use Excalibur and it is teriffic for montages-actaully Montage Magic is made just for that but I have done them for a long time simply doing everything manually. You know the old fashioned way ;-)

I just don't think NewBlue is the right tool for this job but they may have something out there I'm not aware of, I just think Vegas can do the job on it's own with very good results and either Excalibur or Ultimate S or Montage Magic are great add ins to make the job move a little faster and easier.

[John Isgren]

Originally Posted by Geoff Jak

I am putting together a series of stills on the Vegas Pro timeline.

I have about 100 stills to choose from and am scanning them at 300 dpi - I know that needs to go down but betterr more than not when zooming is concerned.

The big Q is - Can you advice me which transitions will work well using a series of stills.

I am putting this together for a funeral Friday and need to get it together quickly but tastefully. Thx

The Vegas Production Assistant has a plugin that will help put together a montage with both transitions and motion. This was built in conjunction with VASST.

You can download a 3- day trial from:
Sony Creative Software - Download: Vegas Pro Production Assistant

I have used it to put a wedding montage together in an hour or so to shows at the bride's mother's house the next day.

[Edward Troxel]

I designed Montage Magic specifically for simplifying the Ken Burns style movements to pictures and made the process "smart" by adding face detection to the process. I figured if there's faces, that would be the primary area of the image. Plus, it takes care of everything so that you don't have to worry about keyframes.

I, personally, still use Excalibur to add the desired overlaps/transitions to montages as well as change the length of the images as needed. The other scripts mentioned will do this as well.

As for 300dpi, dpi is meaningless in video. All that matters is pixel width and height which needs to be at least as big as the video project. If you're zooming, most people recommend double the project size for the pixel width/height.

[Geoff Jak]

Hi Ed. Thx for the comments.
Can you tell me were I can DL some video tutes for my purpose - a series of 63 stills on a timeline and i want to add a title at the head,disolve through each shot- about 5 sec's a piece, zoom in on the last pic and have an end title. Thx for your time

[Edward Troxel]

I'm sure there's not one designed specifically for that exact task. I have one for using Montage Magic on the Montage Magic page on my site. As for building the timeline, just drop the clips on the timeline.Naturally put a title generated media at the beginning and end as desired.