Natural looking pans and zooms

[pwear]

I am trying, without much success, to make my pans and zooms in PTE 5 look ‘natural’, as professional camera operators do. The perspective correction option is certainly a step in the right direction,and I wondered if some discussion on the subject might help in the further development of this wonderful program.

From my own TV experience I know that if I ask a good cameraman/woman to pull back from, say, an upstairs window to a wide shot that reveals an entire streetscape, there will be nothing linear about the resulting shot. It will start in close on the window, the zoom will begin very gradually, almost imperceptibly, and then it will speed up, and the tilt down will accelerate too, until the frame starts to fill with information – shops, cars, pedestrians – at which point the camera movements will slow to allow the viewer to take in the extra data. The hallmark of a good camera operator is that you never notice any of these transitions in tilt/zoom speed, especially the moment when the zoom stops – it seems to just drift to a halt.

Think of a pan across landscape, an horizon maybe, and the same applies. It’s usually hard to notice when the movement started and finished, or whether the pan speed remained constant - almost always, it didn’t, it responded to the content as it passed by, dwelling here, hurrying there.

When I try to mimic this in PTE, putting waypoints between the beginning and end of a movement, every change of zoom/pan speed is obvious. Perspective correction doesn’t help. It looks robotic. I have drowned in maths and swarms of keypoints trying to smooth it out, but to little effect. The eye is amazingly sensitive to changes from one linear speed to another. The end of any movement looks the worst, like the thump of a zoom lever running out of travel – a situation which causes camera operators to swear, and do it all over again.

I notice that PTE presentations often dissolve into and out of animated images while they are still moving, and I wonder of this is the popular workaround. For those of us with limited skills, some kind of template or magic button that smoothes speed transitions, much as a fade smoothes a cut, would be super useful. It would probably have a dialogue just like that of any other effect.

I’m sure it is only because PTE already does so much so well that we try to push its qualities to the limit. I also look forward to the day when I can provide some answers to this forum, rather than my current succession of durn’ fool questions.

Peter

[Lin Evans]

Hi Peter,

Actually, because you have unlimited keypoints you can make the zoom do anything you wish even now without the changes which will eventually find their way into PTE version 5 release which includes non-linear zoom.

You must keep in mind what's actually happening. You have an animation happening over time so the keypoints must reflect your intent within any given portion of that time. You can begin a zoom very slowly then increase the speed then slow it back down in any manner you choose. Obviously this is not as easy as simply choosing a non-linear zoom to slow before stopping, etc., but anything which can be done with programming can be done with the keypoints once you fully undersand how they work.

Here's a link to a quick sample which shows one possible non-linear simulation. The zoom begins slowly, speeds up then slows down and finally stops. The increments can be made as finely as you wish by inserting multiple keypoints but this can give you something to think about.

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/zoomtest.zip

Best regards,

Lin

I am trying, without much success, to make my pans and zooms in PTE 5 look 'natural', as professional camera operators do. The perspective correction option is certainly a step in the right direction,and I wondered if some discussion on the subject might help in the further development of this wonderful program.

From my own TV experience I know that if I ask a good cameraman/woman to pull back from, say, an upstairs window to a wide shot that reveals an entire streetscape, there will be nothing linear about the resulting shot. It will start in close on the window, the zoom will begin very gradually, almost imperceptibly, and then it will speed up, and the tilt down will accelerate too, until the frame starts to fill with information – shops, cars, pedestrians – at which point the camera movements will slow to allow the viewer to take in the extra data. The hallmark of a good camera operator is that you never notice any of these transitions in tilt/zoom speed, especially the moment when the zoom stops – it seems to just drift to a halt.

Think of a pan across landscape, an horizon maybe, and the same applies. It's usually hard to notice when the movement started and finished, or whether the pan speed remained constant - almost always, it didn't, it responded to the content as it passed by, dwelling here, hurrying there.

When I try to mimic this in PTE, putting waypoints between the beginning and end of a movement, every change of zoom/pan speed is obvious. Perspective correction doesn't help. It looks robotic. I have drowned in maths and swarms of keypoints trying to smooth it out, but to little effect. The eye is amazingly sensitive to changes from one linear speed to another. The end of any movement looks the worst, like the thump of a zoom lever running out of travel – a situation which causes camera operators to swear, and do it all over again.

I notice that PTE presentations often dissolve into and out of animated images while they are still moving, and I wonder of this is the popular workaround. For those of us with limited skills, some kind of template or magic button that smoothes speed transitions, much as a fade smoothes a cut, would be super useful. It would probably have a dialogue just like that of any other effect.

I'm sure it is only because PTE already does so much so well that we try to push its qualities to the limit. I also look forward to the day when I can provide some answers to this forum, rather than my current succession of durn' fool questions.

Peter

[thedom]

Nice sample Lin!

But imho, you can "feel" the keypoints.

I think JPD posted some time ago a demo in which he demonstrated it is possible to make smooth non linear pan/zoom using several frames with combined keypoints.

But as Tom and Lin said, Igor will make life much easier for all of us with the "speed option"

(see Igor's post here : http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....ost&p=30897

1) Speed.

Currently all speeds (Pan/Zoom/Rotate/Opacity) are absolutely linear.

In the next betas we will add other non-linear modes (Accelerate/Decellerate, and custom values).

It will be a wonderful addition!

May be in next beta...

[JPD]

I think JPD posted some time ago a demo in which he demonstrated it is possible to make smooth non linear pan/zoom using several frames with combined keypoints.

That's right Dom, it's here, but it's in french and I didn't translate it because Igor will put it in PTE.

In the method I used, it's PTE which made the calculations to have a natural acceleration (Speed = gamma x time)