Suggestion for pan/zoom

bwilliamson wrote on 2/17/2004, 11:37 AM
I don't know if this is the right place to make suggestions, but here goes.

I have just been working on a project to required zooming and panning around in a single clip. In MS, this means splitting the clip for each begin/end point.

This would have been a whole lot easier if MS had but one, simple feature. I should be able to click on a clip and say "set the (begin) pan/zoom values to be the same as the (end) pan/zoom parameters for the previous clip". Without that feature, for each clip I have to set the end zoom values, then *memorize them* or *write them down*, get the properties for the next clip and manually enter them.

When you have to routinely memorize or write something down, that is a sure sign that your interface is not working.

And by the way, do you know how many times a day I go to set the ending pan/zoom on a clip and *forget to click in the checkbox AND push the 'End' button*??? So that when I move the pan/zoom window around it changes the begin zoom values, which means I have to go back and set the begin zoom values *again*? Many, many, many times a day. But can you undo this mistake??? NOOOOO. Can you recover by using the missing feature? NOOOOOO.

Thank you for listening.

Comments

Former user wrote on 2/17/2004, 11:46 AM
If they are all the same, you can save them as Templates, if they are all different, then I think there is a limit to the amount of templates you can store.

Dave T2
Steve Grisetti wrote on 2/17/2004, 12:49 PM
Dave is right.

No need to right down or memorize the settings for beginning and end. You can simply name and save them in the little box at the top of the pan/crop window (clicking the disc icon to save). Then, when you need those settings again, you just use the drop-down list.

I'm not sure what your second concern is since, once you've set the beginng and end points up, they operate independently. But, if you accidentally change the beginning point with the end and you want the beginning to get back to its original settings, all you have to do is enter 720 x 480 in the dimension settings.
djcc wrote on 2/17/2004, 1:24 PM
I have made the same suggestion requesting "begin=end of previous clip"... not sure if it was noticed by the powers that be.

Regarding Grisetti's recommendation, I think an easier way is to left click on the image in the pan/zoom dialoge and select "restore".
Steve Grisetti wrote on 2/17/2004, 1:27 PM
Didn't know that trick, djcc. I like it better too!
bwilliamson wrote on 2/17/2004, 1:35 PM
Saving the settings with a name is a good suggestion. Most of the time I will never need the setting again, aside from the one clip to clip transition, but it's still helpful. Thanks.

Entering 720x480 won't help, since those are almost never the right values. Even if they were, the location would be wrong. I need to reproduce values like "Center is 342.7 x 585.9".

Just FYI, what I have is some long screen capture videos. These were captured at 1024x768 or 800x600. However, the final product is an MPEG-1 at 352x240. Needless to say, you can't read an 800x600 screen at 352x240, so I have to move the "view window" around to the points of interest. So the window size can be 352, 400, 480, 600, or whatever is usefull at the moment, and the locations are all over the place..
bwilliamson wrote on 2/17/2004, 1:42 PM
That's a good tip, I hadn't seen it before. It solves the "how do you get back to a full frame?" problem (BTW, I think you meant right click).

I'm glad someone else thought of this same suggestion. Maybe someone will take notice.
mistergizmo wrote on 2/17/2004, 4:23 PM
>You can simply name and save them in the little box at the top of the pan/crop window (clicking the disc icon to save).

That would be nice...if it worked. For some reason, on my installation (both in v 3.0 and in upgraded v 3.0a), when I enter a name in the "Preset" box and press the disk (save) button, the name disappears and isn't available in the drop-down list.

Still trying to figure out why this happens. I'm getting tired of writing down the parameters to use in the next shot for continuity.