Thank you for the answer. I'll see about trying Vegasaur and see if it works for what I need. I watched a few of their promo videos including a user on youtube that uses the Tweener feature to help smooth out the keyframes. He used it in the Track Motion window rather than in the Pan/Crop tool.

Is it better to use pan/crop (camera movement) keyframes in the Track Motion window rather than in the Pan/Crop window/tool? There is an additional keyframe control option (Type) in the Track Motion window that the Pan/Crop tool window doesn't have. I can't tell if this makes the transitions from one keyframe to the next any better than using keyframes in the Pan/Crop tool, that's why I ask. The problem with working in the Track Motion windows is that the whole project is one long clip as opposed to the much easier way to navigate around in the Pan/Crop tool that handles with each clip separately.

Anyways, I'll keep working at this. I was hoping there might be a script that would create keyframes in between a Point A and B...and make it all look great. Maybe that's what Vegasaur does...I'll see about using their trial to test.

Best Regards

VP19 may improve full keyframe bezier curve. At that point you'll be able to make super-smooth keyframe motion in PIP instead of Vegasaur Tweener.

Can try this method. Use motion tracking panel to transfer camera shake data.

I really wish VEGAS add more OFX like Perspective Warp, Camera Shake, Chromatic aberation, New glow (like Resolve/Pr).

Thank you, gentlemen, these are great answers!

Though I use manual keyframes in the pan/crop tool of Vegas on almost every video I edit, the heaviest use of this method is when I edit volleyball videos I film with multiple cameras (most of them on tripods and completely still).

Here's a 10 second clip from the AVP that shows a single camera (manned by a cameraman) gently and smoothly moving as it captures the action (0:07-0:10):

And here is one of my videos (just watch 10 seconds to see what I'm doing), where I've added (manually) keyframes to mimic a cameraman moving the camera around. I'd like it to be a bit smoother and more realistic (not looking for the handheld/shaky camera effect):

I installed Vegasaur an hour ago and I'm fiddling around with it. It has promise to help with what I'm doing. I don't have a lot of time to edit a whole volleyball game and add keyframes to every single shot and get it just right. I did some tests by creating a bunch of keyframes following the ball and then I added the Vegasaur Tweener effect and it cleaned up the transitions from one keyframe to another. Some of the settings I experimented with messed it up and made it jerky. For these volleyball games I'm not looking to add handheld effects, but it was interesting adding a mild handheld effect after the Tweener effect.

Still figuring things out. Cheers

It's not tweener you need to use if using Vegasaur, Use Jarle's Handheld Camera!, It has set presets from mild realistic movements to strong, and can automatically create those keyframes in the pan/crop window.

Hey Steve, thanks for the suggestion. I've been playing with Vegasaur for a few hours now, still getting a grasp though. If I could just slap Jarle's HH Camera on and somehow it would magically follow the ball, or the movement...that would be great! Actually, I have a plugin called Active Camera that does a pretty good job at camera movement and has quite a few more settings.

The thing that Tweener (seems to be) doing so far for me is making the beginning and ending of the move (from one keyframe to the next) not seem so jerky. Yes, I still have to manually put in my keyframes by going through each video clip and tediously selecting where, when and how much pan and zoom is needed, but Tweener then takes all those keyframes and joins them together with a lot more keyframes in between them and because it has the easing feature, that seems to make the difference of not seeing that jolt in the camera when one keyframe starts making its way to the next one that has a much different camera angle, if that makes sense.

I thought the Pan/Crop Assist would have more of what I needed, but it doesn't seem to have a smoothing feature of keyframs that are already in the clip, so really I haven't found any use for that (yes), in my testing.

@alifftudm95 thanks for the video on how to add camera movement through the tracking...that's pretty neat!

Excalibur has a Montage tool that will add movement to each event.

NewBlue has effects that will add movements to simulate things like handheld or earthquake.

 I also add fake camera movement to almost all my editing projects

Just as a matter of interest, which NLE and process were you using to achieve the desired artificial camera movement thus far as shown in the videos that you've uploaded?

I've just been using pan/crop keyframing within the last few hours in Vegas Pro, but it is was more for 'reframing' after a rapid pan where the absence of smoothness isn't all that noticeable. Right clicking pan/crop keyframes does offer a choice of keyframe shaping - including 'smooth'. But in my experience, 'smooth' is very subtle in Vegas Pro and doesn't seem to make much noticeable difference if there is a sequence of keyframes like you have exampled. I think that I'd struggle to get the effect in Vegas Pro that you've exampled in the 2nd video (which is nicely done IMO).

Re NewBlueFX, I found Earthquake to be excellent for creating a moving train effect on a still image taken on the interior of a train.

Have you tried changing your keyframes to SMOOTH and using the Keyframe Interpolation settings in Pan/Crop? They make a lot of difference in how your move feels. You can get close to a real camera move.

I don't know know about Version 18, but in previous versions, if you are zooming in you want to use PAN/CROP as opposed to TRACK MOTION. TRACK MOTION works at project resolution whereas PAN/CROP will treat the video/still at its native resolution.
 

I think this example that I threw together very quickly, is more of a natural camera move than your examples. The keyframes are set at Smooth and the interpolation is around 50.

If I remember correctly there is such a single and free script available. I'll look for this one later this day.

Maybe Active Camera -VFX from Newblue Elements 3 Ultimate-Pack?

If I remember correctly there is such a single and free script available. I'll look for this one later this day.

I must have been wrong with this one, at least I can't find that script (anymore).

If I remember correctly there is such a single and free script available. I'll look for this one later this day.

I must have been wrong with this one, at least I can't find that script (anymore).

VegasQuake - not updated since 2005 so it won't work in current versions. Last mention: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/help-pls--110836/#ca684986

But doesn't VegasQuake do the opposite of what Richard-Brill asked for?

"I'd like it to be a bit smoother and more realistic (not looking for the handheld/shaky camera effect):"

Gentlemen, thank you so much (again) for weighing in and giving such good ideas and counsel! I really do appreciate it.

@jetdv, I am not familiar with Excalibur and the Montage tool...I'll look them up. Re the NewBlue Active Camera you mentioned, I believe I have that one...and have used it to add artificial camera shake, though I nearly always use it to add extreme camera shake (because I'm not normally prone to add handheld camera looks to my videos, unless it's for a desired effect...like these 2 (which I used Active Camera for):

@Dexcon All of the volleyball videos I've uploaded to the VB youtube channel have been edited in Vegas 18. Thank you for the kind words about the artificial camera movement I added. Apart from the few uses of Active Camera (shown in the last 2 clips above), I manually added keyframes in the Pan/Crop tool for all the video clips that I wanted camera movement to be included in. Please note, I'm not looking for a tool to add random movement, or a handheld look, I'm looking for precise following of the ball/action...but not to look like a hard "keyframe 1 to keyframe 2" motion. The "easing" effect Tweener (from Vegasaur) has is proving to be helpful. I still have to manually place a bunch of keyframes for each clip...following the ball, zooming out/in, panning, etc...but then I slap on Tweener and it adds dozens more keyframes in between all the ones I manually placed...and it is giving the clips more of a natural look rather than a "hard pan" right after it reaches the next keyframe, etc. Here's the first VB match I edited (with 7 cameras), which took me about a month to edit...and I added a lot of camera movement (all manually) using only the pan/crop tool:

@Former user Can you believe that I've never tried changing the keyframe type in the Pan/Crop tool? You have to right-click on the KF and chose "smooth" to do that, right? I've always noticed the "Keyframe Interpolation" option in the man tab on the left in the Pan/Crop tool area, I suppose I should set that to 100 and change all the KFs to smooth, right? I'll see if that makes a big difference. I like the video you posted, the slight movement on the zoom/pan really looks good!--you said you set the Interpolation to 50?--how many KFs did you add in that clip?--is it just a starting and ending KF, or did you add others to give it that slight sway as it pans and zooms? Did you add an "easing" effect? I think the easing Tweener adds is probably the only thing I'd use Vegasaur for. I hear After Effects has a built-in easing feature in the KF editing part...but it would slow me down so much to outsource my clips to another app.

@Marco. Exactly, I'm not looking to add handheld and shaky effects to these cameras (phones, actually, just sitting on a still tripod for the whole game)...I'm trying to mimic what a sports cameraman would do when trying to follow the ball/action, they would zoom and pan as smoothly as possible to show the action. If you watch enough of my VB videos on my youtube channel, you'll see how some of the KFs are just jerky...when the next KF is reached, there is often a fast jerk that begins the journey to the next one. I think the "easing" effect is where I'm looking to get.

Kind Regards,
Richard

@Richard-Bril
At the moment I think there is no perfect way to do this in Vegas Pro. There are several problems which apply both for Pan/Crop as well as for Track Motion.

• Motion (zooming or panning) is based on keyframes and these keyframes are basicly meant as stop or at least kind of "catch" points.
• You can modify the motion around these "catch" points by temporal and spatial interpolation but the spatial interpolation (which is the "Smoothness" slider on the left) isn't enough for a totally smooth motion even if set to 100 %. "Linear" is the type of keyframe temporal interpolation which actually just ignores the keyframe for any tempo changes.
• If you set a keyframe, its interpolation will always affect both panning and zooming but for real smooth motions these two types would need to be affected separately.

The best approach to the smoothest motion I can get is to set all keyframes to linear (maybe except the first and last one) and all of them to smoothness 100 %.

I'm about to compare this with using Vegasaur's Tweener with having set "Easing" to "None", use "Loop Region/Timeline Selection" as "Tweening Area" and setting the "Motion Path" to "Smooth" and "Uniform".
Both methods throw good results but none of them is perfect.

If there is zooming and panning combined, probably it would be better to use Pan/Crop for zooming and Track Motion for panning and do the smoothing separately for each of these tools. But this would complicate the workflow too much.

"I think the easing Tweener adds is probably the only thing I'd use Vegasaur for."

Lots of Vegas users said something similar – until they discovered all the power it offers.

@Richard-Bril I think you will find the setting of 100 not right. 50 seems to give me good smooth starts and finishes. That is what I usually use when doing a slide show with zooms (Ken Burns type). I only used a beginning and ending keyframe. Yes, you rightclick to set the motion type. Linear gives you a definite stop and start whereas smooth tries to emulate a camera operator. But if you leave interpolation at zero, it acts like a linear. Play with it and you might not have a need for multiple keyframes. The easing effect is the result of using Smooth.

I see it very much depends on the type of movement used. Keyframe type "Smooth" seems to be fine if you only have a start and end keyframe and none between or if you really want to have kind of a pause between. If there are more than two keyframes, keyframe type "Smooth" will interrupt the movement at each keyfame (same do the types "Smart", "Slow", "Fast" of course).
I find the Vegasaur Tweener still outputs best result.

See these samples:

Smoothness: 0 %
Type: Linear

Smoothness: 100 %
Type: Linear

Smoothness: 100 %
Type: Smooth

Vegasaur Tweener

Depends upon the results you want. Tweener seems to take a wide path in your example.

Yes, the wider the path the smoother the motion around a (linear) keyframe appears. But you can modify the path in the Tweener via the Easing settings.

If I had a camera man that panned that way, I would get upset. 😀

This is 9 keyframes, 6 at SMOOTH 50, and 3 hold keyframes. It feels close to natural, maybe a little too exact for a cameraman, but what I would want when zooming and panning.