advice on how to make Pan and Zoom transparent

[slyttle]

Hi there,

I am fairly new to VS Pro X3 so please forgive me if I am missing the obvious here.

Problem:
I have a vertically oriented image that I want to pan and zoom within an overlay track. When I apply the pan-and-zoom, the window is horizontally oriented, so there are black bars on each side of the image (remember, this is a vertically oriented image). If I try and adjust the dimensions of the window, it maintains the same aspect ratio and simply zooms in and cuts off part of the image. If I leave the black bars visible, they block out part of the background I have in the main video track.

I tried adjusting the transparency of the overlay track, but that applies the transparency to the whole image and not just the black bars. I also tried to change the background on the overlay track to green and then used a Chroma Key to make it transparent, but I couldn't get that to work either.

Maybe I can rescan the picture with a green screen behind it and then use Chroma Key combined with pan-and-zoom to achieve what want, but that seems awfully complicated.

Is there an easy way to make these black bars transparent?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

-Sheldon

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

Welcome to the forum

Unfortunately the Pan and Zoom is applied to the video frame and not an individual image so will include the borders, large borders when using Portrait Images.
The Chroma Key will affect the whole frame so removing the background will also remove the same colour in the image, not what you want.

You could try rendering the section to a new video file, this will include the background and image, then apply the Pan & Zoom. Not sure if this is what you require as it will pan the background as well.

I assume most video users have resigned to using images that fill the frame 4:3 or 16:9

Options….

Cropping Filter may do, you can deselect the background colour from customise….

There is of course a Picture In Picture filter that may do what you want.
Not had chance to use it myself…although having a cursory look still seems to produce the black border.

You could create a larger image to fill the frame with a transparent background from your portrait image, Png types can do that.

I’m sure theres a way around the background………..

[mitchell65]

I think I must be getting the wrong idea here so if that is the case, apologies in advance!
I have just put a video clip in the timeline then put a portait view still image in the overlay track, applied the Pan & Zoom but I get no black bars at all.
P.S. I tried it with a png and a jpeg. Same result!

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi John

Strange, it’s a portrait image, using ‘keep aspect ratio’

Try this:-
Change background colour from black to any other colour.
Add image to top track, will show as full size in middle of frame.
Tick the Pan & Zoom option from the Photo tab panel.

I see the background revert to black.

Try again in overlay track, image shows as a smaller version.
Apply Pan & Zoom, I see black bands left and right.

[Ron P.]

A possible work-around is to use the VIdeo Pan-Zoom filter, not the Pan-Zoom on the Photo tab.

[mitchell65]

Hi Trevor
What you say in your last post is perfectly true and that's exactly what happens on my set up. What I did was to only put the image on the overlay track as slyttle had said he had a background, presumably a video clip, in the main track. I then used the video pan & zoom. I always forget thet there is a seperate option on the Photo tab. So I inadvertantly used Rons workaround.

[slyttle]

Thanks Trevor, John, and Ron!

Last night I played around with some of your suggestions and managed to get rid of the bars. I did it using Trevors "PNG with transparency" suggestion, and I even got my idea of rescanning with a green-screen and using chroma key (it is a black and white image so there was no green in the image to worry about).

Tonight I'll also try pan-and-zoom filter as Ron suggested ... I hadn't noticed that, but should have guessed that there would be more than one way to achieve the same thing.

Many thanks..... so far I am finding VS really good (though I had my first "Out of Memory" error last night, so I suspect there are still some memory leaks in there .... I've got 8Gb of ram so memory shouldn't be an issue)

-Sheldon

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

I had tried all options I could think of in using Pan & Zoom, and the various filters, all to no avail.
The Photo Tab -- Pan & Zoom have to be used with clips in the top main timeline. (i think)
Unfortunately this still produces the black background on the unused portions of the frame, masking the actual background.
Yep Chroma Key is an option but this affects the image as well.

I assumed Sheldon wished to use the overlay track and show his video as a background?

Maybe the Picture in Picture filter needs further investigations.

[Ron P.]

The Photo Tab -- Pan & Zoom have to be used with clips in the top main timeline. (i think)

No, the Video Pan/Zoom can be applied to photos in the main video track. When using it, you do not get the black-bars on the sides of the image.

vsx3_videopanzoom_main.png (155.87 KiB) Viewed 3805 times

The next screen-shot is using the Pan/Zoom from the Photo tab;

vsx3_pan_zoom tab_main.png (165.1 KiB) Viewed 3805 times

The next is when the Video Pan/Zoom filter is applied to a photo in an overlay track.

vsx3_videopanzoom_overlay.png (165.45 KiB) Viewed 3805 times

I don't know why the Photo tab pan/zoom behaves the way it does, but you don't get that with the Video filter pan/zoom..

[mitchell65]

I found exactly the same as Ron. Use the Video pan and zoom in either the main or overlay tracks without a problem!

[Ken Veal]

If I am on the right track here- would this work....Make a screen capture of the image with an image editing prog like Paint Shop Pro leaving out the black lines.Save that to your hard drive then import it back into VS..........Ken