pan and zoom for FCP

[Curt Morgan]

import your picture-select it-click the motion tab on top of the window that it apears-then use and of the controls listed to manipulate. You can also(more easily just use your canvas and click and pull the corners of the image till it is the size you prefer. In order to do so you must turn on wireframe at the top of your canvas. Hope this helps a little.

[Assia Grazioli-venier]

Thank you…
I was actually using that method but thought there was a better one. The quality of the image becomes very poor, especially if I zoom into the picture, and I was trying to avoid that. In AvidXpress the Pan and Zoom is excellent (probably the only good thing about Avid, in my opinion) because you can select the quality you want, so your picture hardly ever suffers from it. Are you sure there is no way to ensure better quality? Thanks again for your help…

[Fred Miller]

I’ve used both AVID P&Z and FCP. They are just about the same as far as quality. If you’re seeing a lot of yuckiness during movement, then add a little motion blur. Also make sure (if it’s still) that your positions (x & Y) are whole numers.

hope this helps

[Kevin Monahan]

Also make sure the Sequence > Render menus have the dark green “FULL” bars checked and that your timeline RT Pop Up menu is in Safe RT. Ditto what Frank said about having the x,y coordinates on whole, even numbers. Make sure that your imported graphics are not overly huge. No more than 2X the native frame size. For DV that’s 1440 x 960 at 72 DPI. You optimize images to that size and resolution in Photoshop.

Also, and maybe most importantly–only judge the rendered quality of the graphics in your video monitor, NOT the computer monitor.

Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[Fred Miller] “make sure (if it’s still) that your positions (x & Y) are whole numers”

Fred, that’s ALMOST correct 😉

In the Motion Tab, under the “Center” settings:
the VERTICAL (Right-hand window) values for keyframes need to be:
not just “whole” numbers… but EVEN (not odd) whole numbers.

I’ve never found any problems with using ANY value on the horizonal position.

[Fred Miller]

you are correct sir!

thank you for refining my mis information.

[Johnw3d]

Apart from low-res playback settings affecting Canvas display quality, poor output quality on zooms usually means you don’t have enough native resolution in the image and are zooming past a 100% crop. What is the original res of the photo? How far are you zooming in?

If you are doing a lot of pans and zooms, you might want to check out PanZoomPro, a commercial plugin from my company Lyric Media. It helps prevent zooms past 100% and does coordinated eases on pans and zooms, which are hard to do directly in FCP. You can see a bit about it at https://www.lyric.com/fcp-plugins/index.htm#pzp.

Cheers,
John.

[Simon Bronson]

Even if I zoom as little as 102% my image is still going soft. I’ve been pumping my footage through After Effects if I want to do any image enlargement. Any other methods apart from the Motion>Scaling option?

thanks in advance,

simon

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

[Simon Bronson] “Even if I zoom as little as 102% my image is still going soft.”

1. You must render all effects to get full quality.
2. You must only check for QUALITY on an externtal video monitor, not on the computer monitor.
3. You must make sure that if you adjust the position of an image that the VERTICAL position is placed on an EVEN (not odd) INTEGER (no “percentages”).

I scale even 720×540 images in FCP up to 160% or so and, depending on the image, get very good results.