Peter,
I have a veg file I can send you (on home system) that probably does just what you want. Contact me offline - pauncz at attglobal.net.

BTW .. I am in Toronto. And you?

Tom

I'd send you a veg, but it really depends on the picture you want to pan. So a generic veg probably isn't that useful since you'd end up changing all the parameters to make it pan your particular photo smoothly.

Lets see if I can make a word picture that may help. Several people have emailed me wishing to scan a group photo for example where you begin at a corner slowly pan a row, slight pause, move up to next row, scan back the other way, move up again then pan that row and so on. It sounds more complex than it really is. Such projects are probably the most involved, so I'll give details which can be modifed for simpler pans.

The time element (how long it takes to zoom the entire image) is controlled by how far you drag the image on the main timeline. Give youself enough time. More then you probably think you'll need. I usually start with dragging the still image out to two minutes.

Assume you have a group photo with people grouped in three rows.

Decide where you want to start. I'll start at far left, bottom row. You usually want to have the person's head near 3/4 of the way up the frame and avoid if possible the people in the lower or higher rows from distracting or being cut it off at a odd spot where you'd see the top half of the head from the row below. Do that by deciding on far you zoom in on the row your scanning.

1. Use pan/crop to zoom in on the first indvidual. Set smoothness to zero. Set as 1st keyframe. At this point the first person or object is within the bounding box. If you're going to pan, probably want to center so the starting frame has the person a little off center to begin with.

2. Decide how fast you want to pan. Somewhere in the 20-40 second range seems to work well depending on much you zoom in.

3. Move the bounding box to the person at the end of the first row and
set a 2nd keyframe. You don't have to be precise.You can fine tune later. Lets say this point is 24 seconds. So far you have the 1st and 2nd keyframes as diamonds on the pan/crop timeline by clicking on the set keyframe icon in the work area.

4. It helps to undock the FX work area and pull it away and enlarge it so you can see the time markers on it.

5. You're ready to start to pan up to the second row. I like to have a slight pause. Click on the 2nd diamond, "copy" click on the timeline 1-2 seconds further down (why you may want to zoom the FX window so you can see) Paste. So far you've panned right from the 1st person in the bottom row across to the last person in the 1st row at the far right, then had a slight pause.

6. Now center the person at the right in the second row (just above where you left off in the row below) within the bounding box set the next key frame. Once finished it will smoothly pan up. Don't worry if the people/objects aren't perfectly behind each other, they rarely are and Vegas will easily and smoothly pan on the angle between them. To avoid a bump, only have a single key frame where you left one row and start the next. Let Vegas fill in the blanks.

7. Again set the same time interval to pan back left as you did in step # 3 to originally pan right in the first row. Set another key frame at the left end of row #2. So far we're roughly at the 50 second range on the timeline.

Continue repeating these last steps till you've panned the whole image regardless how many rows it has.

At any point you can play it back to check your progress. If it pans either too slow or fast just click on the appropriate diamond and nudge a little left to go faster or right to slow down, remembering to adjust the following keyframe diamonds accordingly.

Panning a landscape and other things works pretty much on the same principle. If you want to pause, speed up or slow down all you need to do is add keyframes at that point to accomplish it.

I just put up a couple new tutorials #14-15 that cover panning/cropping.

Billy Boy...you are the man...I have read in 3 places how to do pan/crop...however all these places dont gear it to novices like myself..your tutorials are right on the money and after reading the pan/crop one with your old grade school friends, I was fiinally succesfull.. . I like Spots new book..but it assumes one has a decent amount of vegas knowledge ...You should write a vv book for us novices.. Keep up the great tutorials.. You are the man!!!!!!!!! JOHN

Billy Boy... pardon my ignorance..but how to i set alpha channel with slider?? Where is it located?? ok up till that point..Thanks..JOHJN

Billy Boy... pardon my ignorance..but how to i set alpha channel with slider?? Where is it located?? ok up till that point..Thanks..JOHJN

I found the alpha channel but that only sets the last A reading...you gave 3 numbers for 3 parameters.. could you kindly explain how to do #4 JOHN

Billyboy, I really like that, it is a subtle way to highlight. Thanks

We're talking DVD-A right?

1. click on a object like some text caption

2. over on the right, to the right of where it says highlightling style you'll see a little checkerboard box that by default is black and white. Click on the little arrow right of it. You can now enter the RGB and A values. Or just move the sliders. I prefer to enter values so they all have exactly the same color otherwise you can get shading.

You can try the same thing with thumbnails using the mask overlay option. I don't care for it as that much. If you get just the right combination of yellow and red then it almost fakes a overlay that looks brighter when that particular button is selected. Seems to look best with the 3rd button type in the second row.

IM a little slow hang with me plez though..On step 4 Billy Boy.. what are those 3 numbers for ??? and entered where. I entered step 3 RGBA settings.. Thanks and I really want to see this work... JOHN

R = red
G = green
B = blue
A = Alpha

The first three determine the color. So for example if you pushed the R and G sliders all the way to the left and push the B all the way to the right you'd have pure blue. The values would be R 0 G 0 B 255. The A or Alpha channel sets how intense the the color is. If you push the vertical slider all the way to the top of its range the color is as saturated as possible. At the bottom none. Anywhere between the extremes something more pleasing probably.

So by changing the values of the four silders you can pretty much have any color you like. You can even match a color of any object in the work area. Just use the eye dropper tool. Click on what color you want to duplicate and the sliders will jump to make the current selection that color. So if one of your thumbnails has a nice share of red you want to use for your text, just click the eye dropper tool on that part of the thumbnail and it will set the text (if the current object) accordingly.

Got it Billy Boy.. You are the man!!!!!!! Clear, lucid, simple explanation.. Are you a high school/ college teacher/instructor ??? If not, you'd be a superb one. JOHN