This has always bugged me a bit. When moving a clip around with event pan/crop, you are really moving the camera around the picture.

Correct. PLUS you aren't moving the Picture, only the viewing frame.

For me, it would seem more intuitive to move the picture around the canvas.

To do this you need to use Track Motion.

Also this is why it IS called PAN: Move across the Picture

. .and

CROP: For cropping the picture

Is there a way to switch the behavior between these two?

Nope. What you get is PAN or CROP. What YOU are wanting is something else . . .

Is that clear?

Totally. What YOU want is Track Motion. Here you move the WHOLE videoed frame, when reduced around the Preview. I suppose if I am going to be generous of spirit, and bend to your wish for something intuitive, it wouldn't hurt to have something like "Event Motion"? But there ain't!

You know what, if Pan/Crop hadn't been invented/included you/me and others would screaming for it!

OK, now you CAN crop a picture and THEN move that around, by using Track Motion. You CAN PAN across a frame and also use TM to then get the WHOLE Crop to be moved in total. So here is where you would do the switch.

Grazie

Thanks Grazie,
That makes total sense. Yes, I think I'd find an option for event motion to be quite useful. I guess what I'm after is a way to intuitvely move objects around the screen sort of how Flash works. I want to easily be able to create movies like this guy using his dots:
http://www.mondaydots.com/

So, not so much video editing, per se, but more moving images and objects around.

Also, I'd like to use vegas to create something like the commoncraft folks:
www.commoncraft.com

Thoughts?

Using TM I could do the DOTS thing. Nothing there really "phased" me? In fact, about 4 years back I did do a similar animated dots theme for a corporation. As for the other sample, Vegas can do that all day long. Now, whether the operator capable or would be up for it, is another thing!

Grazie

Along the same topic...what has always bugged me is that I can't seem to crop the image the way I would expect. How do I crop the image to make a narrow vertical image for example? How do I crop the four sides of the image individually with full control of the cropping? Say I want to make a small horizontal crop of just the eyes of a person....I need to control positioning and then bring in the sides individually as desired. Hope this makes sense as it is hard to describe in words.

Erik

If you disable Keep Aspect Ratio - one of the icons on the left - you can reshape the rectangle to suit.

Yes, you could do this using Track Motion, but it would be quite tedious. I think what I'm getting at is some future tools for directly manipulating objects in the preview window.

For example, if you had 20 dots no the screen and wanted to make them all a little larger, you could box select them right on the stage, and transform them a little larger. You could also go through and move each of them around just by selecting and dragging to taste.

So, this would be more of a future enhancement request.

"If you disable Keep Aspect Ratio - one of the icons on the left - you can reshape the rectangle to suit. "

It's not working that way for me. If I disable AR, I can pull in the sides in equally vertically for example but when try to pull in the horizontal sides on top and bottom the picture now zooms instead and does not crop the image.

Erik

Sorry Erik - hadn't understood exactly what you were after. Yes, Pan crop will zoom in, but if you want to just "extract" a part of a frame such as someone's eyes, the bezier mask is better - or cookie cutter, except this doesn't allow you to change rectangle aspect.

Erik,

Under "Source", turn off "stretch to fill frame".

This lets you crop an image and keep that small piece as a small piece. It won't let you reposition it though. For that you'll need to apply Track Motion as well.

What's really needed are two separate frames: one to crop, one to pan. They could normally ride on top of each other as identical rectangles, but we should have the ability to uncouple them.

- The cropping frame lets us choose a section of the image.
- The panning frame lets you size and position that section where you want it.

That would make Pan/Crop much more versatile!

To have full control of CROPPING,

Turn off MAINTAIN ASPECT and STRETCH TO FILL FRAME under the SOURCE option on left as well as turn off the two icons.

Dave T2

Kelly and Dave

Wow - after 6 plus years of Vegas I find out about that feature - thankyou.

"Turn off MAINTAIN ASPECT and STRETCH TO FILL FRAME under the SOURCE option on left as well as turn off the two icons."

Wow! Finally an answer on this that allows me to do what I want to do!! Funky, but it works! Thanks very much as this has frustrated me for over a year.

Erik

"Turn off MAINTAIN ASPECT and STRETCH TO FILL FRAME under the SOURCE option on left as well as turn off the two icons."

I wish I knew this 2 days ago:(

Ah well, hopefully, I shall remember next time.

Just to remind ANYBODY, here are five of the best over the past year . . .

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=647507No:1[/link]

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=565319No:2[/link]

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=583744No:3[/link]

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=518191No:5[/link]

Grazie

>>Just to remind ANYBODY, here are five of the best over the past year . . . <<<<<

and no. 4 is .............?

Hah! - That was just to see if anybody was listening to me. Well done young Mahesh, 10/10 !

Grazie

Young? YOUNG??
what you after, young lad.

I guess we will never know the mystery of #4....

But here is what has bugged me in learning/using Vegas - best work flow procedure when I need to use Track Motion - which is a lot of the time.

My prior editor had the equivalent of Event Motion - throw an event on the track, adjust the motion of the event till I really like it, and then I was free to move the event with it' s key-framed motion around the timeline. And then adjust it to flow right whenever I needed to.

But with vegas I get the idea that I better have all my events basically in right order before starting to mess with track motion - cause if I want to move it around later - seems like it might be a lot of work..

I think that is what I am working on most right now - getting comfortable with TM - and it is not happening very easily. The pan or crop I understand - and it is event related. But the track motion and having to deal with later moving events that have track motion keyframes seems a little daunting.

Any helpful hints ?

I do not use track motion much unless I need to zoom to infinity. As I understand track motion deals with the video at it's project resolution, whereas crop deals with the native resolution.

Dave T2

I like using PIP's in a lot of my edits - and the manual shows using motion tracking for PIPs. Here's a sample -

of what I am talking about - I don't mean for you to watch the whole thing - basically around 1 minute is the pip screen - and you don't need to watch much of it - but basically the whole edit is resizing and cropping a single event - very simple stuff - and several times using 2 PIP's cropped from the same event.

If you don't use the motion tracking, how do you do those type of composites ?

If you don't use the motion tracking, how do you do those type of composites ?

This kind of PIP can be done with either Pan/Crop or Track Motion.
Duplicate the video track and apply either of these FX to it to get the PIP.
Want 3 PIPs?
Duplicate the track a 3rd time.
Repeat as often as necessary.
You'll need to use keyframes to control the appearance of the PIPs.

Mike

Mike

Thanks. I appreciate the reply - and it is exactly what I have done. Except the OR. I think it has to be done in both - OR - that is my problem that I need to resolve.

I think the real question for discussion was in my previous post..... and it actually has to be done with BOTH pan/crop and track motion - and when DaveT2 said he doesn't use track motion - and I said I didn't see any way to do that without track motion - and then I said for me that it becomes a workflow issue - because once you do all the key framing on the track - and then you decide that the event has to move on the timeline - it becomes for me an editing nightmare....

and that is what I am asking about - ways around that issue.