Thanks for the reply, Dafydd - I was moving too fast and being impatient last night. My wife was looking over my shoulder as I tried to edit some vacation video and pictures, and wasn't finding what I needed.
I can see now there are several ways to do what I want - My problem last night was with still pictures. I should have said that when I said "clips." The Power Tools aren't available to still pictures, so the same cropping tool isn't available as for video.
My problem is that I'm accustomed to doing things from scratch, rather than using plug-ins. I've pretty much always ignored transition plug-ins, special FX, "instant this and that" buttons. So last night I didn't try "magic motion" "magic styles"--etc.
I'm accustomed to things like key frames and the ability to re-size an image to be available right there (along with most everything else) in the main preview window. I just need to get used to opening all these various editing windows and looking through FX to edit.
It calls for a lot more mouse clicking, but I'll get the hang of it. What I wanted last night can be done with adding Zoom out or Zoom in from the Effects tab, and then clicking Keyframes to edit the Effect. Magic Motion doesn't seem as editable.
In order to have the zoom do exactly what I want, the first step is to delete the ending keyframes. I want to add zooms in a specific instead of a general way. I want to start with the tools available, but no pre-set motion.
"0" in the keyframes editing window means 100% - and then larger numbers (for zoom out) mean a smaller picture - I feel it would be preferable if the numbers always referred to percentage of the original size.
And negative amounts aren't available. To zoom fully, larger and smaller than the original image, one needs both the Zoom out and Zoom in FX. --
Something a bit quirky is that the width and height dimensions aren't locked together by default. Separate keyframes are needed for each, and to maintain the aspect ratio, the current size you want has to be typed twice--for width, for depth. Later, with that keyframe editing window closed, if you click Effect in the time line, it's a simplified display that shows you can link width and height so you can maintain aspect ratio - but if you do it there - it erases your keyframes.-- If you go there first to chain them - that setting is ignored when you go to created your keyframes--.
It'd be so nice if you could just grab the corner of an image/video in the main preview window, move that how you want (aspect ratio on by default)--and record those changes in real time. That's so fast and intuitive - you can see it can be confusing to suddenly have that sort of thing not available.
A lot more clicking and choosing various tools than I've done before for just automating the size of an image, but I'll get used to it.
Thanks again, Dafydd.
rbowser