graphic files are handled differently from video files in a number of ways.

    your dpsreality hardware has two image banks, allowing image files to be used simultaneously with two layers of video in real-time. you can extend image files to any length on the timeline without altering the way they are interpreted or the way they use the hardware's resources.

    the key difference between working with video and working with image files is video must be 720x486/576 (ntsc/pal), whereas image files can be any size. image files are rescaled to fit the screen when they are imported.

    if you create an image with a large circle in it in a paint program and then import that image file into dpsvelocity and preview it to a video monitor, the circle appears slightly egg-shaped. that is because the pixels on your computer screen are square, while the pixels on your video monitor are slightly rectangular. for ntsc, pixels are higher than they are wide, and for pal, pixels are wider than they are high.

    to compensate for this difference in pixel shape, you should create your graphics at a 4:3 ratio, such as 720x540 pixels, and then resize your picture in a paint program to the raster size used by your video standard (720x486/576 ntsc/pal). this will give you an image that looks slightly squashed on your computer screen but that appears correctly on your video monitor.

    when working with graphic files, dpsvelocity natively uses 24-bit bmp files that are 720x480 (for ntsc) or 720x576 (for pal). anything that is not a 24-bit bmp file (not including dpts and icgs, which are handled natively) is converted into one and stored in a directory on your system drive.