Zoom / Pan effects

songsj wrote on 10/24/2005, 2:08 PM

Please tell me I have nort purchased a lemon in Movie Platinum 6.0.
I cannot seem to get the zoom and pan effects to wokrk. What I mean By zoom is when you zoom in on an entire frame or in my case still picture. I dont mean some effect like transitions but the effect of a camera lens zooming in on a subject. My Windows Moviemaker basic had this feature and it worked great. Zoomong and panning with stills is everything and if this program can't do it I will be bummed and VERY disapointed. The effect, fades transitions etc are great but I figure I must be doing something wrong because a high end consumer program like this must be able to perform these functions. Any help would be appreciated, I've
spent hours trying to get this to work with the pan/crop icon in the frame field and no luck. I try setting First frame, next frame change the zoom setting in the work station location and I get nothing, I've tried using the curser to set up a zoom area in the frame and just get a little jumping of the picture, almost like I'm trying to animate the thing when all I want to perform are simple zoom and pan functions. Please HELP!!!!!

Comments

jtfrazer wrote on 10/24/2005, 5:11 PM

Songsj,

The first suggestion I'd make is to try the "Show Me How" tutorial entitled "How to Crop, Scale and Rotate Video". You can access this by clicking on the "Help" menu and then selecting "Show Me How...". This tutorial will walk you through the process. You may have to scroll the window down a bit to find this tutorial.

In general, here's what you do:
1. Click on the "Pan/Crop" icon in the clip you want to work with.
2. A window will open for setting up the pan/crop. The first thing I usually do is lower the Zoom % to about 50. This makes it easier to work with.
3. You'll see your image in the center of a dotted circle. The image will be surrounded by a dotted square. To make your image smaller, grab a corner of the square and drag it so the square becomes bigger.
4. To move the image around, move your cursor near the center of the image and then click and drag the image.
5. Watch the preview window to see what happens to the image when you play with the size of the dotted square or move your picture around.
6. To rotate the picture, move the cursor so it hovers over the edge of the circle. Click and drag around the circumference of the circle to rotate the image.

Be aware that VMS platinum works with key frames. If you do the steps I outlined above, you'll be setting the size, location and rotation that will be displayed at the first frame for your picture. To set up a stopping point for your pan/zoom, have a look at the bottom of the Pan/Zoom window. You'll see a little slider bar in the area where the time axis is displayed. Grab the slider with the mouse cursor and slide it to the right to move to a new time value. Down below the slider you'll see a series of diamonds with icons in them. Click the one with the + sign in it to add a new key frame.

Next, go back to the circle and square area and select a new position, size and/or rotation for your picture. You can do this several times if you like by adding additional key frames.

Once you've done this, close the Pan/Zoom window and preview your show to see the effect.

The ability to use key frames gives you LOTS of control over what you do with pan and zoom.

Hope this helps,

Jim
Once you've done these steps

songsj wrote on 10/25/2005, 3:13 AM

Thanks JIm, I finally got some of it figured out and did acouple of very cool zoom in's. now I need to work out the zoom outs etc.
Looks like it will be very flexible once a person masters the process.
one thing I did notice though is that my pans were not smooth,
even on the smooth setting, and the effects were very glittery. I tried different preview settings and could not find a good preview picture for the zooms. I did burn a DVD and played it on my tv and it looked fine. Maybe I need a better video card. My PC is a Gateway 832GM Media Center. Pentium 4 630HT, 3.0 GHZ with a gig of ram. The video card is integrated on the motherboard, not sure what it came with, but if an upgraded card would give me a smooth picture it may be worth the bucks, any suggestions?

jtfrazer wrote on 10/25/2005, 6:53 AM

You might try applying an "anti-flicker" filter. I'm at work and can't look to see where that's done. I tried it once and it does reduce the glittery effect but it also makes the images a little soft. I decided to live with the glitter.

Jim