Zooming and panning within a fixed-size frame

[KMatthia]

I want zoom and pan on a still image, but within a fixed-size frame that does not fill the entire screen. Everything I try, including masking, seems to want to apply the scale and position without regard an outside limit. I'm new to this. Any suggestions?

I'm using Premiere Pro.

[Michael Grenadier]

so if I take a vertical photo on my phone and bring it in to premiere and put it over a horizontal video and animate it, and the cropping doesn't change, you'll be golden?  Just want to make sure that I've got a good handle on this.  It's been a fair amount of back and forth...  Old family photos are great.  I edited a piece a few years ago for a client that had home movies from the 1920's. amazing stuff.   

[KMatthia]

If by "animate" you mean set position and scale with keyframes, then yes. You might look at the exchange with Conrad. I've been successful on bringing in photos with their original aspect ratio as individual sequences. What I haven't been able to do is get them onto the main video timeline and still retain the ability to fiddle with their position, scale and duration -- along with keeping them in the bounds of their original size.

[Michael Grenadier]

So you've pre-built your still animation in its own premiere sequence?
Find that sequence in its bin and drag that sequence from the bin to the
timeline
of your complete assembly. That will nest it. To adjust the animation
double click on the nest in the containing sequence and it will open in a
new tab in the timeline and you can adjust the animation . Make sense?

[KMatthia]

If I convert the sequence of the still photo to a nest, then I can bring it into the main video sequence.. The problem is that it covers the whole video. If I rescale and reposition the nest, then I'm back to the same problem of the outside boundaries not being constrained on top of the video, but rather growing is size as it does the scaling.

[Michael Grenadier]

Scale nest as desired in containing timeline and then double click on nest
and then animate inside the nest in its own timeline tab.

[KMatthia]

After scaling and positioning in the video timeline, then going to the nest to put in another set of scaling and positioning, nothing changed on the video timeline. It was not applied. Is there a rendering step missing?

Conrad's video of the baloons seems to be proof that Premier supports the effect I want, but unfortunately I still cannot reproduce that effect without exporting and importing. I'd prefer not to lose any quality.

[Richard M Knight]

I would never have thought about using crop on an adjustment layer for this, works well.

[Conrad_C]

OK, based on everything you’ve said so far, here are a few key things about Premiere Pro that should help you get there simply and quickly.

Nesting an image (or video) in its own sequence is instant, because if you simply drag a media item in the Project panel to the New icon, a new sequence will be created that contains that media and exactly matches the media pixel dimensions. Now that media is in a frame of the same exact size, with no math needed.

The slow part is that you would have to do this for each media item you want to animate in a frame, because each of them needs to be in its own sequence. Do not drag more than one at a time, because that would build a single sequence with multiple items (great for a slide show, but not for what you want to do here).

Once you have a sequence for each media item, you drag these (not the original media items) into the master sequence, which makes them nested sequences. This is what you have to do so that each media item can be animated inside its own frame limits.

How do you animate each? Double-click one of the media item sequences to open it, in its Timeline select the original media item, and look in the Effect Controls panel. Enable keyframes for the properties you want to animate, and then you have two time-saving choices to do your pan/zoom:

• Click to select the Motion heading so that a bounding box appears around the media items in the Program panel. Now you can position and scale using that bounding box and its handles.
• In the Effect controls panel, scrub the values next to the properties you are animating.

Remember, you are not doing the animations in the master sequence; only in each individual nested media item sequence. When you’re done, your animations in each of the nested media item sequences will be visible in the master sequence. You can do the nested sequence pan/zooms either before or after you add those to the master sequence.

There’s one more thing I noticed: If you have multiple media items that need exactly the same pan/zoom, you can select one of them in the master sequence imeline, choose Edit > Copy, select the others, choose Edit > Paste Attributes and select Motion. That will copy the animation to the items you selected, though they will now have the same position so you’ll probably have to pull them apart in the Program panel and drag them to their final positions. But it means you only have to set up the pan/zoom once.

This is going to be both more flexible and higher quality than rendering out video and importing it back in for each item. Using nested sequences, you can keep making adjustments to each item at any time and they will continuously update the master sequence (no waiting for rendering, no extra export/import steps), and there will be no generational quality loss from rendering out and importing each item.

[KMatthia]

Conrad, thank you for these details. I'll try now to follow them and get back.

[KMatthia]

Thank you, Conrad.

Did you that Conrad, Kordt/Cordt and Kurt/Curt are all derived from the same original form which is "Kühne Rat" in today's German spelling. In old spelling forms "Kun Rad" or "KonRad" or "ConRad." "Kühne Rat" means "bold counsel/advice" in English. Thank you for your good advice!

I think I understand what you are saying, but am running into a hang-up on the step: "Once you have a sequence for each media item, you drag these (not the original media items) into the master sequence, which makes them nested sequences. This is what you have to do so that each media item can be animated inside its own frame limits."

I get a new tab for each sequence I create. but when I try to drag one of the nested sequences into the master sequence using the "Overlay" option (or anywhere else at all), I get a popup error message saying "No content in sequence In/Out range"

I haven't found a work-around to overcome this problem. Do you have any more bold advice 🙂

Kurt

[KMatthia]

Addendum:

If I convert the sequence of the still photo to a nest, then I can bring it into the main video sequence.. The problem is that it covers the whole video. If I rescale and reposition the nest, then I'm back to the same problem of the outside boundaries not being constrained on top of the video, but rather growing is size as it does the scaling.

[Conrad_C]

KMatthia wrote:

“I get a new tab for each sequence I create. but when I try to drag one of the nested sequences into the master sequence using the "Overlay" option (or anywhere else at all), I get a popup error message saying "No content in sequence In/Out range"”

I do not know what is going on there. The way I did mine was to drag a still image sequence from the Project panel and drop it into the Timeline of the master sequence. I also tried it by dropping into the Overlay drop zone in the Program panel which is what I think you did, and didn’t get an error.

I typed the error message into Google and it brought up another thread on this forum that suggests there may be a problem with track targeting. Read the last two posts in that thread (No Content Sequence In/Out Range) and review whether the targeted tracks in your Timeline panel are correct. Or maybe someone else reading this thread has a better interpretion of that error.

KMatthia wrote:

“If I convert the sequence of the still photo to a nest, then I can bring it into the main video sequence.. The problem is that it covers the whole video. If I rescale and reposition the nest, then I'm back to the same problem of the outside boundaries not being constrained on top of the video, but rather growing is size as it does the scaling.”

That sounds to me like you are editing in the master sequence, changing Position and Scale of the nested sequence. It should work correctly if, as I mentioned above, you apply the Position and Scale pan/zoom animations to the media inside each nested sequence. If you want to do a pan/zoom limited to image dimensions, be sure you double-click that nested animation to get inside it first, and then do the pan/zoom to the media inside that sequence.

KMatthia wrote:

“ "Kühne Rat" means "bold counsel/advice" in English. Thank you for your good advice! ”

You’re welcome. Yes, I once looked up the meaning of my name and found that, which makes it interesting that I ended up in the business of training/education. I have not yet asked my parents what they thought I might be doing in the future when they gave me that name.

[Christian.Z]

working with nests solves a lot of problems, otherwise please post a screen recording of your issue

[KMatthia]

The nested sequence is in this first export:

The master sequence is in the second export (the above nested sequence appears after a few seconds:

The pan and zoom parameters applied to the nested sequence are not being applied to the track in the master. If I put the pan and zoom parameters in the master, the inset will start to grow.

I've tried everyone's suggestions about the placement and sequencing of the pan and zoom parameters. Nothing seems to work. What do you recommend, Christian?

[Conrad_C]

Those YouTube videos help a lot. If the black and white inset is the animated sequence truly nested within the sepia full frame sequence, the black and white inset should be pan/zooming. Can you post a screen shot of the master sequence timeline, with the nested sequence in the master sequence? And maybe also the Project panel? And both with the sequence names visible?

[KMatthia]

You can see that the key frames are active on the nested sequence. Position and scale are also used on the master sequence to size the very large JPG to fit in the corner. If I do all the position and scale on the master, then the frame is not fixed-size. If it do it on the nested sequence, then it doesn't get applied to the master. I've tried sequencing the setting the parameters in different orders to no avail.

[Conrad_C]

It looks to me that one of the causes I suspected is happening. The first screen shot shows that the media in the master sequence is "194307 Kurtchen 02.jpg", which is a JPEG image file with no internal animation, not the animated sequence made from that image. Therefore the original non-animated image is in the master sequence, instead of the pan/zoom sequence of the JPEG file that is supposed to be nested in the master sequence.

A quick way to fix this is to Alt-drag the sequence created from "194307 Kurtchen 02.jpg" out of the Project panel (or whatever bin it’s stored in) and drop it on the JPEG file that’s in the master sequence timeline. Alt-drag and drop is a shortcut for replacing a clip in the Timeline, because the intention is to replace that JPEG image with the animated sequence created from the JPEG image.

The long way of doing the same thing is: 

1. In the Project panel, select the pan/zoom sequence that was created from the clip "194307 Kurtchen 02.jpg". 
2. In the Timeline panel, select the clip "194307 Kurtchen 02.jpg" 
3. Choose Clip > Replace With Clip > From Bin. That will replace the media selected in the Timeline with the selection in the Project panel or active bin.

When the animated sequence of the image (not the image itself) is in the master sequence, what you want should work.

This is an important principle to understand, because once you get how nesting works, it solves a lot of problems in both Premiere Pro and After Effects.

[KMatthia]

I did that as you suggested, but it didn't help. Here you see the screen shot with the tape head toward the end of the sequence. It still doesn't zoom. I tried rendering the nested sequence, but that didn't help either. What you saw previously was created by dropping the nested sequence into the master timeline. It's perplexing to me.

[Michael Grenadier]

is this what you're trying to do?

https://vimeo.com/452706628 

this is with motion paramenters in the nest...  Happy to share project with timeline if you like...

[KMatthia]

I looks like it is possibly the same. What I want to do is an inset box like in this video, but with the contents zoomng and panning without the inset box growing. A box like this:

I'd be happy to look at that project file. By the way, that's me in 1943 🙂

Kurt

[Christian.Z · Accepted solution]

Step 1: Nest your still image

Step 2: double click on the nested sequence

Step 3: animate with keyframe. Don't resize

Step 4: go back to the master sequence

Step 5: click once on the nested sequence, resize and change position.

Here's a video explaining those steps:

https://youtu.be/C5CyLvsL8mM

[KMatthia]

Thank you, Christian. That worked perfectly! I removed all the attributes on the nested sequence and the master sequence and started over with your steps and voila! And I appreciated the short video also. I've learned something from each of you who have so kindly tried to help along the way and now my problem is solved. Thank you to all of you at the the Support Community.

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

Just adding that you have now seen two ways to do this. Christian_Z1 showed how to start from items already in the Timeline, using the Clip > Nest command. I had described how to set up the nested sequences before adding them to the Timeline. Both work just as well, it’s up to you whether you want to set up the animated pictures before or after you add them to the Timeline.

[KMatthia]

Thank you Conrad for your time and help!

[rabbid83]

Hi, thanks for the tutorial, but somehow this didn't work for me. I have done exactly as the tutorial instructed, but when I return to the Master Sequence the frame would resize as well. Please help. Thank you.