Yes The easy way to do it is drag the picture from your media pool onto the video timeline. Click the little square thing in the upper right hand corner of the picture (or video). It will open up the pan zoom window. In there you can zoom in - out - and pan in any direction - or spin if you wish. You can use the keyframes in the bottom ( a slider with little diamond blocks) to add motion.

Example: your picture lasts 5 seconds. In the first second you zoom in and pan left. You add a key frame in second 2 and move right and up. Second 3 you add a keyframe and pan center and start to zoom out. Second 4 you set your final position of the picture view. VMS will plot a transition between each of those points and you will see the motion in the time the picture is displayed.

There is a tutorial found here that is written for Vegas 2.0 (so it's quite old) but it still holds true. You won't be able to use the downloadable .veg file, but the information is identical.

Oh Man! When I started typing this reply, there were no other responses! But I kept typing, and typing, and typing... By the time I finished, I refreshed the original thread before posting, and already there were three responses.

Oh well, I'll submit what I typed here anyway. Hopefully the huge reply won't crash the Sony servers.

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Yes, VMS certainly has this effect. It can be performed on still pictures or on video. (Of course, zooming in on video can look pixelated pretty quickly, due to the limited resolution of the DV format.)

Drag a photo to the timeline. Now click once inside this new photo on the timeline, so that your vertical cursor line is there, and the photo shows up in your preview window.

Near the end of the new event (video and stills on the timeline are called "events"), you will see two icons. The top one looks like crop marks -- a rectangle where the lines are extra long at two of the corners. Hover the mouse pointer over it and it will identify itself as "Event Pan/Crop..". Click this icon once, and it will bring up a window.

In the Event Pan/Crop window, you should now see your photo, with a dashed line rectangle and a giant dashed line "F" in it. The dashed outline represents the outline of your "TV screen" -- the resulting video -- so whatever is in your dashed outline frame is what will appear in the preview window. Now this is where things are going to seem weird, because the zooming works the opposite of the way most people would expect it to. In this window, your photo will stay the same size, and instead you make the dashed frame bigger or smaller. Grab a corner of the frame, and drag it in to make the whole dashed frame smaller. This is how you zoom in on a photo. Whatever fits within the frame is what will show up in your preview window. (If you can't see your preview window, try dragging the pan/crop window out of the way.)

So... you make the frame smaller to zoom in on the picture. Make it bigger to zoom out. Click inside the frame and drag the frame around the photo to pan from one place to another. Note that if you click and drag outside the frame where the circle is, you can rotate the angle of the frame.

You will get used to this after a while, but I know, at least for me, it seemed backwards to the way I expected it to operate when I was first learning how to use it. I guess the best advice here is to think of the frame as a camera -- pretend you have a big, poster-size copy of your picture, and you're holding a video camera, and what you see through the viewfinder is the dashed frame. This means that if you want your image to look like it is rotating clockwise on your TV, you would actually have to rotate your "camera" counter-clockwise. Play and play and play with this until it sinks in. Experiment!

Now, moving the frame around and making it bigger and smaller is just part of the task. You need to learn how to control how the pan/crop is controlled over time. Look at the mini timeline at the bottom of the Pan/Crop window. If you don't see it, you might need to stretch your Pan/Crop window out bigger, or scroll down in it.

This mini timeline shows just the duration of this particular event (photo or video item). If you have a 10-second long still photo, you should have a 10-second long timeline here. On this mini timeline, you will see little diamonds. These are "Keyframe" markers. You might just see one at the beginning, or you might have a bunch of them already, from playing around. (Note: there are other diamonds below the timeline, with arrows in them or + and -. These are actually icons, not keyframes.)

If you have more than one diamond on the timeline, right-click-and-"delete" all but the very first diamond. Now single-click on the first diamond (first keyframe), and use the dashed frame to adjust how you want the picture to look at the beginning. For this example, zoom in a bit to the lower right corner of your picture. This will be your starting keyframe.

Now, click near the end of your mini-timeline, and a cursor with a positioning slider should appear, drag this as far to the right as you can, so that the cursor is at the very end of your mini timeline. Now click the diamond with the "+" in it, and this will add a second keyframe to your timeline, at the end of your timeline. With this keyframe "selected", go to the frame and the photo and change things around to the way you want the picture to look at the end of the 10 second period. For this example, zoom in to the upper-left corner of your picture.

Now, as you drag the cursor slider back and forth on your mini timeline, you can watch the results in the preview window. Or, it might be easier for you to close your Pan/Crop window and play the video back from the main timeline to see how it will look. The computer will automatically interpolate from your starting position to your ending position. The panned video should start out at the lower-right of your photo, and gradually pan diagonally up to the upper-left of your photo.

Now, click on the Event Pan/Crop icon on your photo event in the main timeline to open up your Pan/Crop window again. We'll add a third keyframe somewhere in the middle. With the pan/crop window open, click about halfway across on the mini timeline. This should locate the cursor there. Now click the diamond with a "+" in it to add another keyframe. With this middle keyframe selected, you now get to adjust a "middle" image position. At this point, move the dashed frame to the upper right corner. Close the window and play the video again. Now you should see the video start out in the lower-right corner, move up to the upper right corner, and then move left to the upper-left corner.

Each keyframe you specify is saying "at this exact point in time, I want the image to look like this". The computer will just smooth in the motion and zooming in between, so that it ends up at all your specified keyframes at the time you specified.

A few more hints:

- To get the picture back to full size, right-click in the middle of your frame and select "Restore". This resets the frame to the full size again.

- You should see the numeric settings for all these operations along the left side of the pan/crop window. If you don't, click the "Show Properties" icon in the upper left corner of the pan/crop window. You can numerically enter values for all of these items, at each frame. This is especially useful if you've accidentally rotated the video, and want to put it back to 0° rotation.

- With the numeric values displayed: Locate the "smoothness" setting, and in most cases set it to 0.000! You'll need to select each keyframe in turn to do this. If you leave the 1.000 value for smoothness, VMS will "round the bases", so to speak, when you are panning around with multiple keyframes. In the example above, it would have kind of looped around from corner to corner (like a baseball player rounding 2nd when running from 1st to 3rd). This "smoothing" function can often end up going off the edge of your photo in the course of rounding out the motion. With smoothness set to 0.000, it will go in a straight line from one keyframe location to the next.

There, I hope that helps.

Tim L

Tim,

I'm also learning how to use VMS. In following your instructions, I can't seem to move the dashed rectangle with the "F" up or down. I I can only move it left or right. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

I was puzzled, but just figured it out.

Look at the icons along the left edge. The very bottom one controls available movement. Click it until it looks like a 4-headed arrow. This will let you move freely in any direction. Otherwise, you can select arrows that will allow only horizontal movement or only vertical movement.

Tim

Tim - Thanks a bunch for your response. I will try this tonight!

Dukester

One more thing to experiment with, right click on the photo and select "Match output aspect". That makes cropping and zooming easier when your photo doesn't have the same aspect ratio as your output. See the help topic "Creating a Picture Slideshow" for more information.

Maybe some can add to this discussion...

How can I move my 'background' picture...

I am in the middle of a short 4 minute slideshow.
I have many pictures of people that transition in and out...
just their face is showing.

I would like to use all of the 'tv' screen, but most of the
pictures have the faces in just about the same area, thus
most of the faces just fade in and out over the same area
within the tv screen...

any way to move the background photo so the face transitions
move away from the center top of screen???


Thanks

great piece of software

Ken
say from the upper left corner to center to

That's for the great info TimL.

It shows that if you are forced to film with a single camera, one can still make the result interesting.

Thanks again.
davdee

If you want the background to move then you simply do a zoom and pan on the background photo.

Make sure you understand that you can zoom out and then move (pan) the photo anywhere on the screen that you want.

Another option is to have the portraits pop up in different places on the screen by using a different pan location for each one. Or, utilize your multiple video tracks and have them fade in and fade out from different places on the screen at the same time.

Thanks for the help....BUT
I may need to re-phrase the goal.

I don't want to move the 'single' cropped photo around
the screen...my goal is to have the second cropped photo
(usually only the face) pop up someplace other than where
the last photo vanished from...

most of my photo have the face near the top, center of the TV
screen, my goal is to have the faces appear in all parts of the
TV screen...example pix1 showes in top center
pix2 appears in right center, pix3 appears in bottom left, etc...

I tried zooming out of the pan/crop screen, and see all of the
grid points, I move my picture to another place and close screen,
but I get no visual change in preview window...

thanks
Ken

I am gonna take a stab - Would placing some generated media as a "base" with photos popping in and out at various places on the media be what you are looking to do? If so you just lay the media down below your photo line and composite them in and out - moving the grid around on each photo pan. zoom in or out to adjust the size of necessary.

does that help akamorrow?

Yes, I think you understand what I'm shooting for...

My background media is a single picture, in the Video track no.3

My pictures are transitioning in and out in the video overlay track...

When I open the Event Pan/Crop window, I can pan out fine, and I
can move the picture, BUT the grid moves too, thus not really changing it's position within the grid, I think this is where it's not working for what I'm trying to do...

I can move the Event Pan/Crop window to the far side of monitor...
so I can see in the preview window, so I can observe when I move
the 'Selection Area' , rotate it , or re-size it....I can see all of it,
BUT when I try to move picture down or over or where over, the grid
moves and there is no change to the preview...

any ideas???

Ken

ps
I also just updated to latest build too

No problem. Go into the pan/zoom window, zoom out enough that you can move the pan grid over your photo, and then position the photo wherever you want. It will appear wherever you positioned it in the pan window. You may want to disable "snap to grid" to make it easier to position the photo exactly where you want. After you have it where you want you can simply have that event fade in and out. For the next photo (event), place the photo someplace else on the screen, Keep doing that till you have done them all, putting each one in some random spot on the screen. If you want one photo to disappear from one part of the screen while another is appearing somewhere else then do a cross fade between the events. If you really want to jazz it up add motion by playing with keyframes. You can change the position (and/or the zoom, and/or rotate the photo) for each new photo (event).

The key is to zoom *out* so that the photo can be placed somewhere besides the middle of the screen. To make that easier you might want to make more room by having the properties panel disappear (click on the "Show properties" icon).

If you are still stuck then you may want to describe exactly what you do when you go into the pan/crop window. Oh, and to make sure you are starting fresh, while in the pan/crop window you might want to right click your image and select "Restore". That will put it back to the defaults.

It must be the 'snap to grid' function...

I can't move the photo around on the grid...
when I try the grid moves too...

How do you turn it off???
I'm looking in the manual as I type...

thanks
Ken

I just saw your last reply. I suspect you are zooming the window, but not the frame. Grab the corner of the outline (frame) around your photo and stretch the frame (make it bigger). That will make your photo smaller in the output window. You can then reposition the frame around your photo to make the photo appear in different places in the preview window.

Thanks for your interest in my problem...

I can zoom the window and the frame too...
I can rotate the frame and zoom in and out...

What I cant do is move the underlying photo....
(transitioning photo)...with the intent of moving the
frame after the photo is moved thus moving the
'face' on the preview screen...I can move the frame...
I can easily get the feet on the screen output, I just
cant move the feet or face in my case...

I did find the 'snap to grid' function...turned it off, doesn't
seen to help in my area...

When I have the Event Pan/crop window open...and zoom out
and move the picture...the grid moves too

and under the workspace tab the X and Y offset numbers
change, giving the impression that the picture has moved
from the orignal spot...and if it has indead moved it seems
that is has not updated or refreshed to the preview window,
and when I play the slideshow from the beginning, the
pictures dont move from their last spot...

Ken

I suppose I'm not helping by not using the correct terminology. "Zoom" in the context of this window really just talks about how close the image looks in the pan/crop window. It doesn't affect the actual output at all. What I really should have been talking about is the cropping frame. So, ignore "zoom", let's talk about cropping. The cropping frame can be made smaller so that you can chop of bits of a photo that you don't want. Right? Have you been able to successfully crop a photo?

What you want to do is essentially the opposite of cropping the photo. That is, instead of getting rid of portions of the photo by shrinking down the crop frame you want to "add" to the photo by making the crop frame bigger in relation to the photo. Does that make sense?

Yes I can crop, just fine...it is key to the effect I'm aiming for...

Lets start with the essience of the slide show...1 large photo,
full screen, minus black areas top or side if photo is to small for
screen...

This covers the background image I have in place...not accaptable
so, I crop transitioning photo down to just upper body or face...
now I have most of background photo with photo 1 somewhere in
the top center part of preview screen...now photo 2 transitions into
view...if not cropped it recovers entire screen...so I crop it down to
useful size...now photo 2 is covering the relatively same area as
former photo 1...

the goal it to move the placement of photo 2 so the message
in the background can be seen at various times with the 'faces'
covering different parts of the message at different times....so the
'faces' never always cover the same area of the message...

it's like text justication...you can left, right, and center justify a word...
if you could add top, bottom, and middle too...with the photo,
now after the physical picture has moved you can crop the
body out of the picture and get the result of the 'face' moving
around the screen...and I mean moving in relation to the
last photo and the next one too...

I can pan the output window around the photo just fine, I just
can't move the photo around the screen to crop it afterward

thanks
Ken

Hmmm. Maybe I'm getting what you want to do. Assuming I do understand, how about this...

Crop your face photo down to the desired proportions *outside* of VMS. That is, make the initial photo the cropped portrait. Then, add that photo as an event, and enlarge the cropping frame so that the portrait is in the portion of the screen that you want.

Is that any closer to what you have in mind?

for the sake of discussion - the picture does not move - you dont move the picture - the picture stays put - there is no pushing the photo around, just the perspective. When it is composited to the "background " picture (or whatever) below it, it will change position based upon where you locate your FRAME{and centerpoint if you plan to rotate the picture any}. Sometimes the pan "source" tab properties need to be changed to enable you to have a full range of motion on your pan and zoom. Maintain aspect and stretch to fill frame may need to be turned off by clicking the yes and selecting no. I imagine you wont want to turn off the aspect ratio, but maybe the stretch. The frame around the picture has little boxes called grips. You use those to adjust the size of the frame (not the picture). If you happend to click on the corner grip and move it away from the center at a diagonal, you will notice the frame getting larger and the picture in the preview getting smaller. If you hover your mouse arrow towards the center of the picture until you see 4 way arrows and then left click and drag the frame (not the photo ) around you will see your picture change its position on the preview screen. It is helpful if you bring the main timeline window cursur to the photo you are working on (just left click above the photo) so you can see instant results to clarify what you are doing.

now if you are still having cropping issues and the pan zoom can't get it done you got two choices- use a generated media mask (like cookie cutter in FX) or crop them in your photo shop program before you import them

good luck with it

i'm having some trouble syncing up the info i'm reading with what i'm seeing on my screen in VMS 4.0. in the pan/crop window, what is the significance of the "begin" and "end" buttons with the check box between them? and how do you designate zooming in over zooming out?

thanks.