Two quick questions about inserting photos

[pdxrjt]

I essentially use Video Studio X7 to make slide shows of my still photos. Although I have poked around the manual and a book I have about VSX5, I have not found the answers to these two questions: 1) When I insert photos they are fairly small on the screen... there are enormous borders around them. I definitely don't want to "fill the screen" as that distorts and crops them, but is there a way to make them larger? 2) It seems that both of the programs I use to make slide shows degrade the quality of the image somewhat.... fair enough. Additionally, the website where I upload them "optimizes them" degrading quality a bit further. But what can I do to maximize the quality of the image and or the slide show so the "optimization" still leaves some quality in the image? If you can help, TIA, or direct me to a website or section in the manual and I will be happy to read about how to do it. Many thanks.

[BrianCee]

When putting photos into a VideoStudio project the most important thing is that the photo MUST have the same aspect ratio as your project settings - so if you are making a wide screen 16:9 video then you must first crop all the images to that aspect ratio - it does not matter how many pixels each side as long as the ratio is correct - try to keep near to your selected screen resolution (1920 x 1080 for instance) - there is not a lot of point going bigger as they will simply be resized within VideoStudio to fit the screen.

If you do that then "Fit to screen" will do just that without distortion as the format is the same - also when rendering VideoStudio has no need to adjust the image so there is less chance of degradation of the image - so both your problems will be taken care of.

[canuck]

I essentially use Video Studio X7 to make slide shows of my still photos. Although I have poked around the manual and a book I have about VSX5, I have not found the answers to these two questions: 1) When I insert photos they are fairly small on the screen... there are enormous borders around them. I definitely don't want to "fill the screen" as that distorts and crops them, but is there a way to make them larger? 2) It seems that both of the programs I use to make slide shows degrade the quality of the image somewhat.... fair enough. Additionally, the website where I upload them "optimizes them" degrading quality a bit further. But what can I do to maximize the quality of the image and or the slide show so the "optimization" still leaves some quality in the image? If you can help, TIA, or direct me to a website or section in the manual and I will be happy to read about how to do it. Many thanks.

What are the original dimensions of the photos you are inserting?

[pdxrjt]

For the first reply from Brian.... thank you very much, you've given me a lot to think about as I use both landscape and portrait mode in my shooting. When I tried "fit to screen" it was the portrait mode shots that were horribly distorted.

To canuck.... they vary considerably as I do a fair amount of post processing which includes cropping. At times I keep the original ratios when I crop but often I do not.

Thanks to both for the help.

[BrianCee]

I would put the portrait ones on a plain background of the full photo height - outside of VideoStudio and make that plain background 16:9 then you can treat them exactly as all other photos.

[pdxrjt]

Good idea..... thanks