Pan & Scan on stills

[Francois Xavier]

Kevin,

it is known that using of “anchor point ” is much better than “position” for pan&zoom (therefore the superiority of AfterEffects)

do you use anchor point for your pan&zoom in Fcp ?

Documentary Director & Editor

[Walter Biscardi]

[Francois X] “it is known that using of “anchor point ” is much better than “position” for pan&zoom (therefore the superiority of AfterEffects)”

I’ve honestly never heard of that one. Been using AE for 9 years now and generally just use Position, Scale and Rotation in AE for movement, though I’ve been favoring the 3D camera for the past two years. AE has a better render engine and much better scaling, so that’s why AE stuff looks better than FCP.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Francois Xavier]

I tried “anchor point” for pan & scan in AE since I read Richard Harrington book and … yes It’s like a cam running on the still (like in the old days) rather than a still moved under a cam.
Well in my opinion

Documentary Director & Editor

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

[Francois X] “It’s like a cam running on the still (like in the old days) rather than a still moved under a cam.”

I think you’re “romanticizing” this option just a bit.
Its not quite that “special”.

(BTW, there is no difference in the appearance to the “audience” if you choose to rotate a photograph under a camera or rotate the camera shooting a static photograph.)

Think of the “anchor point” as a “push-pin” stuck into a given point of your image.

You can rotate the image around this “push-pin” even if it is not “stuck into” the geographical center of your image.

For instance, if there was a clock-face seen in the lower 1/3 of your image, you could set your “anchor point” in the center of the clock and rotate the entire image around the center of the clock-face.

In some DVE systems an anchor point can also be applied to the “Z axis” so the image will rotate around this point in “free space”.

[Francois Xavier]

Matte

I am not talking “rotate” / I am talking displacement “ala Ken Burns” / pan &scan

did you try & compare both way in AE ? (anchor point vs position ?)

Documentary Director & Editor

[Chris Poisson]

When Matte Murray isn’t dodging fish or Hurricanes he’s usually giving good advice here, and I have to say after trying Fotomagico’s demo he is right again. Wow, buttery smooth, VERY fast to do the moves, beautiful output. (They even put their demo watermark very tastefully small and out of the way.)

It has a very similar settups of moves and zooms as Pan Zoom Pro, the downside of course is that it’s a self-contained program, so you would have to exit FCP, make your movie and import, and it’s a little slow to render, but you can leave it go and return to other tasks. I’d say speedwise with all the limitations of each it would be a draw, but I still give PZP an edge overall for it’s flawless integration with FCP.

Both very, very cool Ken Burns tools.

[Kevin Monahan]

Typically, I use the Anchor Point to set the area of interest in the still. A scale and position move will be centered around wherever the Anchor Point is placed. I have used the Anchor Point to do moves, and yes, Trish and Chris do suggest this. Like Matte, I cannot really tell the difference in basic moves, but if I want to do a simulated camera move right between someone’s eyes, for example, this is where the anchor point comes into its best use.

Kevin Monahan
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