[Sean Smith]

Thanks for the suggestion to use AE. While bulge wasn’t suitable I was able to use the Reshape effect and three masks to achieve something better than expected. It’s subtle, the transition almost imperceptible.

[Sean Smith]

Not exactly. I suppose I haven’t done the best job explaining things.

The only requirement is that I can magnify one focus point by 2-4x with little to no noticeable distortion at the focal point while also allowing the ‘full’ image to be viewed in a manner that still resembles it in some way. The purpose is to zoom in on an event which occurs within ~2 seconds while avoiding the drastic change in perceptive that is typical of normal zoom effects. In my mind I was imagining that one focal point would enlarge itself while at the same time the rest of the image would ‘crunch together’ and then I could manually add another vfx to the distorted areas to further enforce the focal points prominence.

[Sean Smith]

I was hoping for a solution in Vegas but I suppose I should get AE anyways. Hopefully this will do the job.