[Tom Keane]

Ok, OK, I figured it out…. actually it was john’s emphatic statement that got my head clear. He said “You don’t want to change the pivot points at all.”

I restarted and found that by moving the 2 photos back and forth against each other using their individual track motion positions (while watching the parent motion in the preview), I was able to see the width of the photos in the position box. Then using John’s point of not messing with the pivot, I positioned the front photo forward on the z axis by half the width of the left side photo. Then I moved the left side photo along the x axis by half the width of the front photo. This seemed to position the photos the correct distances from the center point (the pivot). Now when I used the parent motion to rotate, they move as I want (at least close enough), and I didn’t mess with moving the pivot.

Can’t believe I spent so much time on this and all it took was a simple whack in the head from John to see the light. Thanks loads.

[Tom Keane]

John, I’m a fan of your tutorials and had studied that particular one. However, in my situation, my 2 photos don’t fill the 720×480 frames horizontially, just vertically, so when I match up the photo edges at 90 degrees, I’m actually causing the underlying full frames to intersect (bisect?) which seems to throw off the center of rotation. When I use the parent motion, the photos rotate, but in a wide arc (probably because it’s the underlying full frames that hold the photos that are actually being rotated). The pivot seems to need to be shifted, but I don’t know how to get it accurate.

Thanks for the response.

[Tom Keane]

Thanks for the reply, Mike.

John has some great tutorials, but in the tutorial you reference, he is moving the pivot for a single plane. In my case, there are 2 intersecting planes to rotate so the pivot point is somewhere offset in both the x and z directions (I think). I just don’t know where or how to compute it or how to set it. Can’t understand why I’m having so much difficulty figuring this out. At this point, I’ve about given up on using the effect, although I know it can be done.

Thanks for trying.

[Tom Keane]

Thanks for checking, James.

I found I can get what I want by setting the “stretch to fill frame” to yes in the pan/crop properties. Then applying the border FX and I get the border I want around the cropped image (albeit quite a bit larger than I want). But then I can reduce the image with track motion to get the size that I want. Seems a bit round-a-bout (vs. simply framing the crop), but it gets to the look I want.

Thanks for the comment.

[Tom Keane]

Thanks, Mike.

I’m a bit determined when it comes to getting the look I want, so I’ll get there. Thanks for the help.

[Tom Keane]

Thanks Mike, but your suggestion changes my crop box to match the project settings. I want to keep my crop box my size and simply add a border to the new size.

I’ll crop in photoshop and bring in the cropped image and put the bevel on it in Vegas. I’m sure that will work.

Thanks for the response.

[Tom Keane]

Thanks for the response, Mike. That didn’t seem to do the trick.

The border I want is the bevel as the photo will appear mounted on a matte (solid color) and this border provides a nice edging.

I went back to previous projects and found that I used the border FX on full images so I suppose for this image I could crop outside of Vegas and bring in the cropped photo as a full image and that would work. Just adds an additional step.

I also noticed that when I pan/crop, I’m not “stretching to fill frame” because I want the reduced size on the background, however it seems that Borders FX only uses the full frame for the border.

So another workaround might be to pan/crop and stretch to full frame, add borders FX, and then use track motion to reduce the size of the image with the border. I just didn’t want to lose quality by using track motion to resize.

I’ll get there, I just thought borders FX would do what I wanted on a Vegas pan/cropped photo, and I was getting frustrated that I couldn’t figure out how to do it.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

[Tom Keane]

Ryan, I updated from Pro 8 to Pro 10c and I occassionally get that same red screen in the pan/crop window and the clip freezes. Since it happens infrequently, I thought it must be me doing something by mistake that made it happen.

At this point it is annoying, and I don’t have any solution. Never saw it happen with Pro 8.

I’ve not had the cross fade issue you speak of.

Tom

[Tom Keane]

Thanks, guys. Initial tests look fine. Appreciate the help.

Tom

[Tom Keane]

I recall having a problem after the update as well, however I don’t remember how I got around it.

When in doubt, try a reboot (shut down the computer and restart). That’s one of my approaches when new updates don’t work on first try.

Good luck.