Cropping, Panning and Zooming
Panning
(moving sideways to get a panoramic view) and zooming (moving in closer or
further away) are two common techniques in video. Both effects are easy to
accomplish in Vegas and can be used to add interest to still images or alter
videos. Cropping removes unwanted portions. To crop/pan a still image begin
by placing it on the timeline. Clicking on the top icon opens the pan/crop
event workspace shown below.
A typical
image opened in the Event Pan/Crop workspace by clicking the Pan/Crop icon
of the event on the main timeline. While maybe a little intimidating at first
the controls are well though out and easy to use.
The first thing you may notice is either black space above and below the image or black space at either sides. This is due to the image being a different size than the project frame size. To correct, right click on the image in the control window and select Match Output Aspect. This will cause the image to jump to fill the frame, however the most often result is either part of the height or width will now be cropped as reflected by what portion of the image remains inside the control handles.
To control what portion of the image remains in the frame, click on the image with your left mouse and while holding down drag the image around to position it within the dotted lines that connect the control handles. Notice that the X, Y values are updated under Center as you drag the image around.
You can thus very precisely position where the image will be within the frame by either dragging it around in the workspace or manually inserting values. To zoom in on the image making it larger, pick any of the four corner handles. Hold down your left mouse and drag it in towards the center watching the boundary box with the nine control handles shrink as you drag in toward the center. Whatever remains inside the box becomes the new boundaries of the frame. What is now outside the boundary box is cropped and no longer part of the frame. In this way you can easily control what portion of your image is seen, zooming in and out as you wish. In a like manor you can pan left to right, right to left, top to bottom, at a angle, etc..
For special effects you can rotate the image within the frame. That big "F" that appears in the middle was chosen because its the first letter in the alphabet that reflects orientation. Right click on the image. Select Flip Horizontal and the image flips left to right. Selecting Flip Vertical turns the image upside-down. Notice how the "F" changes to show the present orientation. Entering a value in degrees under Angle will rotate the image accordingly. As you probably expected this all can be automated with key framing
Simple Key Frames
The Vegas key frame controller uses a miniature timeline that can be synched with the main timeline. To do that click on the I icon with the little yellow lock at the bottom of the Pan/Crop controller work space. What you do next in setting keyframes will be synched with the time values shown on the main timeline. There are six key frame control keys each represented by a different diamond icon at the bottom of the keyframe controller. The first, just right of the Sync cursor control sets the first key frame. When you set a keyframe a diamond is added to the keyframe controller timeline to indicate a keyframe has been added. Once you are happy with how the image looks in the work space view, click on the first keyframe icon THEN click on the next to the last diamond icon (with the plus sign) which inserts the keyframe. If you do nothing else the image as it appears in the first keyframe will remain as is for the length of the entire event.
To add
some motion change the boundary box to reflect how you wish the image to appear
in the last frame of the event. Suppose you wanted to zoom in so the last
frame in the event zoomed in on the mountain peak. Click on the last key frame
icon. Move the boundary box to reflect how you want the last frame to appear
or just type in values to size and center as you wish. Click on insert keyframe
to change.
Now either position the cursor to the start of the event on the main timeline or click on the first key frame in the pan/crop controller, then sample the result by clicking on the play button. The event should reflect the changes from the first keyframe to the last keyframe by smoothly zooming in over time. For simple zooming you don't need to add intermediate key frames. Vegas will automatically calculate them for you creating a smooth zoom. The smooth adjustment produces linear motion from one keyframe to the next if set to zero. Increasing the setting effects how motion changes over time.
How slow or fast the zoom happens isn't controlled by the keyframe controller. To alter how long the zoom takes to complete, drag the right edge of the event on the main timeline. The longer you stretch the event, the slower the zoom or pan takes. To zoom out simply reverse the process setting the first keyframe to the maximum zoomed in position and the last keyframe out as far as you wish to zoom it.
Panning works exactly the same way. All you need to do is set the first and last keyframes how you want them to appear, then insert a starting and ending keyframe. Panning and Zooming simultaneously can be set up in a similar way adding additional keyframes as necessary if you need to better control where in time the pan/zoom happens. For best results drag the image to roughly the length you think will be necessary for a smooth zoom or pan as the first step THEN set your keyframes. Doing it the other way around can result in stopped motion which along with reversing will be the subject of a future tutorial.
Intermediate Keyframing
For more
involved panning or zooming you may wish to begin with a still image of double
or triple the size of the frame size of your project so you have more pixels
for Vegas to work with resulting in less jumpiness and a better quality rendering.
The class photo at the left is from about 45 years ago. Ouch! I'm in the bottom row second from left. To pan and zoom the image begin by selecting the starting position which is always the first keyframe (not shown) then size the control box accordingly to frame the subjects. Zoom in enough to center the subjects then position the box at the end of the bottom row (1) as you can see I used about 18 seconds which is a little fast, but I didn't want the demo to run too long due to limited web space. I started at the bottom row right panning left. Keyframe (2) takes us up to the second row (3) zooms back right to pan that row and so on. To finish we zoom out from where we stopped (6) to end up with the entire image filling the frame (7). As you will notice I didn't pan the last row due to size limitations and like I said the pan is really faster than it should be for the same reason. Just using a single image you can make a nice presentation.
More Advanced Keyframing
You don't
have to settle for how-hum effects. While simple panning adds life to an otherwise
still image we've just started to scratch the surface of what's possible.
Let's take it a couple more steps. Using the same single image we can make
it more dramatic and hold the viewer's interest.
The next level involves combining pan and crop with Track Motion. While pan and crop will allow you to control any portion of a frame of a single video, we can combine videos within the same frame to get some interesting effects. We'll keep the class photo on screen in one corner, then step through each individual having each person come out of the class photo along with a brief bio. Again due to space limitations I'm just doing a quick sample. You can expand on the concept considerably.
Tracks one and two are just text overlays. The first carries the bio for each person and appears and disappears as each person is presented, while the second provides a title that stays on screen for the video's full length. Track three uses Track Motion to size the class photo and keeps it in the lower left corner. Tracks four and five use pan and crop to isolate different individuals. Track Motion is also switched on to have each person slide in and out of the group. Again, I just did a simple effect to illustrate the concept, you can get a lot more fancy. All that's necessary to get the effect is set the keyframe generator for Track Motion to a starting, posing and ending position. Thus the image first slides out and up, pauses, the bio appears, and the image slides back under the group photo with the next one coming forward and so on. The sixth track is just a simple gradient to add a little color. I added a sound track for effect (not shown). You could add several more steps. For example using the cookie cutter would be effective to block out everyone but the person that was being panned or you could spin each image out or do some fancier text effects.
Open an External Player to view panning row by row of class photo
