Smoothe Animation

teunis wrote on 3/7/2008, 7:22 PM

I am trying to use one of the lense flare special effects to highlite a title. I would like to make the effect make a smooth arc around the outer edge of the event. I open the effect in the trimmer and and do my best to make the flare move around the title in a smoothe circular motion. I just can't seem to draw a smoothe circle. Is there an easier way to do this?
VMS 8

Comments

mickbadal wrote on 3/10/2008, 1:35 PM

Here's some information I captured in my best practices, from a past thread. I hope they don't mind me reproducing the text here, because this may be exactly what you're looking for:

Subject: Event Pan/Crop question
Posted by: womanmarine
Date: 8/15/2007 12:54:41 PM

…
There is also in preferences>editing: a box at the bottom that gives default track motion smoothness and default pan/crop smoothness with boxes for a numerical value. What do these do?

Subject: RE: Event Pan/Crop question
Reply by: Chienworks
Date: 8/15/2007 9:00:37 PM

Let's start with a little thought experiment .... Let's say you've got four dots on a piece of paper in a square arrangement. Now, starting at one dot draw a straight line to the next dot, then the next, and so on back to the beginning. You've drawn a square, right? A square is very sharp, and not the slightest bit smooth. But what if you wanted the smoothest line possible? Well, drawing a circle that passes through all four dots is the smoothest you can get. The square has a smoothness of 0.00% and the circle has a smoothness of 100.00%.

This is what the smoothness setting does. Set at 0%, movement from one cropping or track motion position to another is done with the most direct, straight line possible. With a smoothness of 100% the most circular (or more likely oval) path is chosen. What difference does this make? Well, suppose you've zoomed in on one person's face in a picture, someone sitting down. Then you pan across to the person sitting next to them. And then you pan to the person standing behind. With a smoothness of zero the motion with go through a sharp angle when it passes over the second person. This could be a bit jarring. With a higher smoothness level the motion will more and more gently curve rather than jerking.

Beware though that a high smoothness level can sometimes cause unexpected results. The software will calculate the path of movement, and sometimes this path may go outside of the image! This means that you may have to re-tweak the keyframe positions as you adjust the smoothness in order to keep showing what you want to show.