Zoom in zoom out effect

phoenix wrote on 9/8/2002, 10:41 AM

Many of the video documentaries utilize an effect (especially with still images) where they slowly zoom in and zoom out on portions of the current image to enhance effect. Can Vegas Video or any other low level video editing software do this?

Comments

sonicboom wrote on 9/8/2002, 10:59 AM

yes vv3 can do this
pan/crop
this way you can zoom in and out to animate the stills
plus, you can use track motion to create picture in picture and/or make them move
plus, you can composite stills with video
it's up to your imagination
good luck
sb

wcoxe1 wrote on 9/8/2002, 9:52 PM

I have found that at times it is even useful to put a bit of pan and/or zoom on ordinary video footage if there is either too much or too little of same.

Sometimes I add it, sometimes, if there is too much, I subtract it. And, sometimes it doesn't look good to fool with it, and you have to learn when to drop it and leave bad enough alone before you make it worse :)

sonicboom wrote on 9/8/2002, 9:54 PM

don't you lose quality zooming in of video footage?
sb

stepfour wrote on 9/9/2002, 12:23 AM

I think it makes the quality suffer a bit, but, boy can it be reputation saver. I shot some video recently where I had not fully tested the camera-mic combination. I had a directional zoom (shotgun) type mic on the camera. I never noticed it while I was shooting, but, in post I saw that the tip of the mic is visible on the widest shots. It looks like a black, half moon shape coming in at the top of the clips. Fortunately I only had a few very wide shots, and with VV3 crop feature I was able to easily crop out that mic tip. The lesson I learned is to tryout all camera setups and always edit with a program as great as VV3!

wcoxe1 wrote on 9/9/2002, 9:10 AM

He is right, you do lose some quality. It is a trade off, which is worse, zooming in and losing a bit of your resolution, or leaving it and having the other problem, whatever it is, show?

Don't forget, the quality of the vast majority of TV sets is way below the quality of DV, and losing a bit of the resolution of your DV may not even register on the TV, from a numeric point of view. From an overall point of view, you and I both know there is a difference, so it should certainly be minimized.

Think of it like this. I first discovered this abiltiy when I went back to a camcorder which had been set up to be operated by remote control at a wedding. It seems, from the large eye poked into a few seconds of the early video that some children bumped it and left it very slightly at an angle, somehow. I was able to correct the very obvious skew by turning the video, in VV, some 6 degrees. This is NOT a desirable thing to have to do. But, the alternative was to have the priest and bride looming over the groom, both looking like they would any minute now fall over on top of him. I took the lesser of two evils.