Importing still images

[decfde]

I use videostudio 9. I am trying to import a still picture from a video camera into my timeline for ultimate burning onto an MPEG dvd for NTSC. However, because of the difference between square pixels from a digital camera pix and rectangular pixels for video, there is distortion in the picture. Some manuals say to crop the picture into 720x480 on the picture editor before importing into videostudio, others say 720x576, others say 720x530. What should I be doing to assure the still pic is not distorted in the final video-- should I resize the picture first, then crop? Should I just crop? And in what dimensions? Thank you.

[THoff]

Don't resize -- simply go into the Preferences, select the Edit tab, and tell UVS to keep the aspect ratio. You may also want to make sure the resampling quality is set to Highest while you are there.

Last night I created a 16:9 DVD containing a combination of 16:9 video and 4:3 (I have a Olympus E-300 FourThirds System camera) still images, and there is absolutely no distortion.

[sjj1805]

So called still images from a video camera vary.
Some are kept on a seperate memory card, others (like mine) are kept on the tape in amongst the video.
The way my camcorder works is to hold the picture for something like 5 seconds thereby creating a small video file.

If your camcorder works like mine then I have found that the best thing to do is to import the still image video onto the timeline and then use the
save as still image function to grab a single frame. The resulting picture in the final video is then a hundred times better.

Steve J