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I have received the following email from a user who is having trouble getting registered on this forum. I am helping him with that, but in the meantime, thought others might be able to help him with his problem.

Sorry to bother you Ken. I can't seem to get credentials set up for VS Forum and get no response from tech supt.

Is there an option (add-on, plug-in, whatever) to add a controllable accelerate and decelerate feature to the Pan and Zoom filter in V.S. 12 X2?
One can add fade in/out to that filter (transparency) but it starts and stops immediately instead of ramping up to speed and slowing gracefully at the destination.

If smooth start/stop is not available, it would be nice for someone to create such.

Thanks in advance,

Terry Hauser
Bloomington, MN USA

As far as I know there is no variable speed when adjusting the speed of a clip when using either the Playback Speed function or within a video filter. Seems it would be easy enough a feature to add. I would thing all it would take would be some key framing.

With that said, the speed of the pan & zoom is determined by the length of the clip, the amount of zoom, and the distance of the pan. For instance, say you have a 5 second clip and you want to zoom from 100% at the beginning of the clip to 300% at the end of the clip, and pan from the far left of the image to the far right. In that scenario the pan & zoom effect would be pretty fast.

Now compare that to a 20 second clip that only zooms from 100% to 150% and only pans from the far left to the center of the clip. The p & z could take its sweet time (relatively).

I use additional key frames to achieve what I think is similar to what you are looking for. I do a lot of pan/zoom on stills and often want the position and zoom level at the end of the clip to be visable for a longer period of time. What I do is add a key frame somewhere around 60-70% of the timeline of the frame and set the zoom level and position very close to where I want my final to be. When the clip plays, it moves quickly to the near mid-point key frame and then the pan/zoom effect slows dramatically until the end of the clip. On longer images I have done slow-fast-slow (etc) movements with 2 key frames added.

Or... with stills

Use two stills over the same number of secs (or frames). the first still has the Pan and zoom applied and if you make note (on paper) of the numbers and zoom point (use the cross mark) and apply it to the second still you have the effect using keyframes to stop at a certain point.

it's a little finicky way to do it but by adjusting the lengths of the stills you can control the speed of the pan.

use several copies of the stills if you are brave and like the tediousness

I know this may sound silly as the last two posters said, key frames in the pan and zoom adjustment will do it all but......

Just for fun try this. Set your pan and zoom in a smooth line from start to finish. If you want to slow down the last 25% and don't care about the overall clip duration just cut the clip into two at about the 75% mark and change the duration of the second clip to a longer time either by dragging it or the numerical dialog. Then cut it again and shorten the new third section. Go in and change the ending position in the zoom if you want. As long as you don't change the starting position of any of your segments they will pick up seamlessly where the last one left off. You can accomplish the fast/slow/fast effect surprisingly quickly this way without ever opening the pan/zoom fine tuning box or adding a key frame. Once you play around with this technique it's pretty darn quick and easy for manipulating images.

That's an even cleverer way of doing what I suggested Cheers!

Thanks "metmot". Your method is very helpful for what I am attempting to do. It would be nice for Corel to build an option to the pan/zoom controls that would allow one to tailor an accelerate/decelerate feature for these functions. A simple "ramp up" and "ramp down" would be very nice indeed.