There is a significant difference between Pan/Crop and Track Motion with regard to zooming. Pan/Crop will maintain the full resolution of your input while zooming in. Track Motion resets the resolution to match the project and then zooms in. This gives very different results when using media that is larger than the project size.

For your case it doesn't matter because your source is the same size as your project but if you used larger source e.g., high quality stills or HD source in a DV project, you would see a big difference between the two.

~jr

So JR, are you saying when pan/cropping/zooming with hi-res stills in a DV project it is better to use track motion for doing so?
Thanks,
Randy

Nope. It is never better to use track motion from a quality standpoint, though in some cases it might not be worse. General rule i follow is that to crop or resize i use Pan/Crop and only use Track Motion to move images around. For that matter, i usually use Pan/Crop to move things around too and rarely ever make use of Track Motion.

To answer the question about the 'box' interfering with Pan/Crop, generally the first thing you should do when opening Pan/Crop is to right-mouse-button click in the cropping frame and choose 'match output aspect. This changes the cropping rectangle to match the output frame and avoids the 'box' problem. This isn't always the most useful thing to do, but it often is.

General rule i follow is that to crop or resize i use Pan/Crop and only use Track Motion to move images around. For that matter, i usually use Pan/Crop to move things around too and rarely ever make use of Track Motion.

Same here, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something : )
Thanks Kelly,
Randy

Pan/Crop does seem limited though if you need to Zoom something out to infinity. I can do that in Track Motion, but not in Pan/Crop.

Dave T2

Good point...that can't be done in pan/crop but works great with track motion.

thanks everyone for their answers. I tend to do exactly what everyone does then. For photos I always use the track motion and pan/crop for zooming in on footage.
Am I right in my thinking though that to zoom in on the image almost magnifies the pixels like using a digital zoom on an optical camera or does it just limit what the viewing area sees?
I just reread JonnyRoy's comment... sorry.
Is this correct? Why does it seem fuzzier?

Anything becomes blurrier the closer you are to it. Its just a matter of how much. The better quality (higher resolution) you begin with the farther in you can zooom before the degradation becomes really obvious. Pan & crop will use the original media resolution to zoom into, so if ou start with a highh resolution still (or HD) it will be clearer than if you zoom in with track motion which resets the event to the project properties resolution and then zooms. Or something like that......

Am I right in my thinking though that to zoom in on the image almost magnifies the pixels...

Not almost. That's exactly what it's doing.
Unlike a still from a digital camera that's (probably) larger than project size, you're artificially magnifying an image that's already at project size so any zooming in will make it fuzzier.

Mike

NEVER use track motion to zoom photos.

Never.

As JohnnyRoy and others have said, when using Track Motion to zoom, Vegas first takes your photos, which might be 3000x2000 pixels, and samples them down to 1440x1080 or 720x480, or whatever your project resolution happens to be. It THEN zooms. Thus, if you zoom in so that you are looking at 1/4 of the photo (i.e., you are looking at 1/4 of the area), then if you have a 720x480 project, you will have 360x240 pixels, no matter how many pixels were in the original photo.

Yucch!

By contrast, the Pan/Crop tool for each event zooms the original pixels in the photo. Using the same example above (zooming into the photo so I now display 1/4 of the original area), my 3000x2000 pixel photo will still have 1500x1000 pixels. At render time, if I have project settings of 720x480, this 1500x1000 image will be further sampled down to 720x480.

The ONLY time you can zoom using pan/crop is if the stuff you are zooming is the same as your project resolution. Thus, if you have 720x480 DV video on the timeline, and your project resolution is 720x480, it doesn't matter whether you use track motion or pan/crop. You will get the same results.

However, when using high-res photos, or when using HD footage in a project which will be output at SD resolution, do NOT use Track Motion for zoom

[Edit] OK, I finally put my glasses on. Here's the correct re-write of the above paragraph in which I mistakenly wrote "pan/crop" instead of "track motion":

The ONLY time you can zoom using track motion is if the stuff you are zooming is the same as your project resolution. Thus, if you have 720x480 DV video on the timeline, and your project resolution is 720x480, it doesn't matter whether you use track motion or pan/crop. You will get the same results.

thanks for your help.... They should really include all this info with the actual program. Not make you have to pay for training videos or ask others what their trial and error test have resulted in.

I shudder when I think of all the horrible video made from photos in Vegas where people used the track zoom controls because they didn't know better and -- as many have pointed out in the past -- the track motion control seems more "intuitive."

<<The ONLY time you can zoom using pan/crop is if the stuff you are zooming is the same as your project resolution. Thus, if you have 720x480 DV video on the timeline, and your project resolution is 720x480, it doesn't matter whether you use track motion or pan/crop. You will get the same results. >>

I think you meant track ,motion, right?

I think you meant track ,motion, right?Not sure what you mean. I just re-read three times the portion of my post you quoted, and I don't see anything wrong with it. Of course my eyes aren't all that good ...

I think T. Esslinger was right. Because I jumped to the same conclusion when I read your post too.
The sentence should read:
The ONLY time you can zoom using TRACK MOTION is if the stuff you are zooming is the same as your project resolution.
Or maybe I'm dyslexic in my old age. (I actually am, at times. You ought to see me try to cut some moulding for door frames. I usually ruin at least one piece)

Lol, I do the same thing... It's the damn inside outside angles... it's a bitch with solid pine crown mouldings.... not a cheap lesson.

Wow, am I stupid. You are all correct. I added an edit to the end of that post above to show the sentence as it should have been written. Thanks!

that's better. Thanks John.

I basically only ever use Track motion when I'm doing 2D and 3D compositing, because you can use parent child relationships to group movments, but beyond that, PAN CROP BABY!!!

(my .02)

Dave

thanks for your help.... They should really include all this info with the actual program. Not make you have to pay for training videos or ask others what their trial and error test have resulted in.

Pan/Crop tool is for panning & cropping events. Track Motion is if you want the events to move around. I think the names are very self explanatory (like "capture" & "save").

But, to make you happy, the very first sentence in the manual for the respective section (can't copy/paste because the bastards @ sony think it's necessary to use security to lock us from doing that!) & in the help file says specifically what each tool does:

pan/crop: "Cropping is the process of removing the outside edges from an image or video without resizing it" & "You can use event panning to focus on the action of a video event, or you can simulate motion using a still image."

track motion: "The Track Motion window is used to move a video track over another track."

(copied from online help). Manual + help has EVERYTHING on how the tools work, you just need to look.

Hey Happy, You don't sound like you are too happy.
I realize they give an explaination of things, I've been to the help menus many times.
I just feel they can better explain what would be better for what.
Anyway, I didn't come here for smart ass remarks but thanks for your help none the less.

L8R,

I'm not quite sure what he was getting at, especially since in the online help, immediately below the paragraph he quoted is this section:What do you want to do?

* Zoom or pan a video track
* Create a shadow effect
* Create a glow effect
* Move a group of composited tracks (apply parent motion)
* Change editing options
* Save or recall a keyframe preset So, in fact, the very first thing that Sony envisions you doing with Track Motion is zooming. And, as I pointed out in my last post, the controls are far more intuitive, since as you make the box smaller, you zoom into the video, whereas with pan/crop it works the other way around.

So, as long as you have it figured out and now only use the zoom feature when dealing with video that is the same resolution as your project, you'll be just fine.