Moving cameras in After Effects 6.5

[Michael Duff]

“What is the difference between camera Point of interest and camera position?”
camera position is where the camera is in space – POI is where the camera is looking

“Why wouldn’t you just use rotation to determine your point of interest?”
you can, just set the auto-orient to off. But sometimes it’s easier to just animate the POI – say the camera always had to look at a specific object, just set the POI on that object then you can move the camera around and it will always look in the same direction. OR maybe you want the camera static and then have it pan accrosss to another object. Instead of having to animate the rotations, just move the POI.

” How can you move camera position and camera point of interest together in the timeline window?”
ummm, I’m not sure, but you can in the composition window I think by holding down ctrl or alt while you drag.

[Jack Hilkewich]

The position of the camera is just that, imagine if you had a real camera it would have a physical position in space. The point of interest is the exact place where the camera is pointed. You can move that around and even parent it to other layers so that the camera will keep pointing to that particular layer. you can move the camera laterally and it would still point to where ever the point of interst is.

You can turn off the point of interest by right clicking on the camera layer and under transform you should have an option called auto orient turn that off. That will solve your moving the point of interest and position at the same time. Then, like you state, the rotation will become your orient.