Okay, making progress: I can see that under Effects I can drag "zoom in" onto a photo, but the default setting for how fast and how much the zoom occurs is too fast/too much for what I want. Still a little lost as to how to just have the zoom occur very slightly, barely perceptibly. I.e., how to adjust the zoom speed and amount.

The way I do, I select the images on the timeline, I click on the button (Magic Wand, only appears when selecting image), Use Magic Tools.
Seleccion, Magic Motion, has several effects to choose from.
I prefer the User Defined, I adjust the movement to my liking, this will be applied to all the selected images.
There are other ways to do it, I prefer this method. XEON-E5-2680 v4 / Mem. 16GB DDR4
M.2 NVME 512Gb / 2-SSD Sata3 1TB
AMD RX570 / Display Philips 272V8
Windows 11_64Pro / PD22/365

Hi rogbngp -

Using the Zoom FX, you are restricted to zooming to/from the centre. AVPlayVideo's suggestion of using Magic Motion gives you greater flexibility.



Take a look at this packed project. The same image has been zoomed with Magic Motion 3 times - fast, medium & slow. The difference is how far they zoom. Another way to control it is by changing the duration - longer duration = slower zoom.

Cheers - Tony
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Quote I'm sure this is just something simple I'm overlooking, but for photos that run in the video track behind the narration in a video I would like to have the option for them to gradually and very slightly zoom, just to add a little more visual interest. I'm not seeing how to select that effect. Will be very grateful if someone can explain how to do it. Thanking you in advance!

Hi,

Ive only been using PD16 for a few days, so I am not an expert with it. I wanted to do something similar to what you are doing though. This is what Ive done with images so far:

1) First I started a new project. Placed the image as the only item in the timeline and then rendered it as a full video.

2) Next, I pasted the newly rendered video into the timeline of the project I want to show the image zooming into.

3) Then I used action camera settings zoom function to do the zooming in and zooming out action. We can either set the zooming in speed using action camera setting or use the speed setting controls in power tools to slow down the zooming in speed if I wanted it slower (I often use the power tools).

4) Lastly, if I dont like the zooming out part, I cut it out, and in its place I place a screenshot (Cntr-P) of the zoomed image so that the zoomed image will be focused on for as long as I like (The screen will actually show an image of the zoomed it video).

Action Camera Settings seem to only work with video files and not images, so step 1 and 2 converts the image into a video file which we can use for the action camera settings to work on. The advantage of this technique is that you can zoom in to any part of the video and at any magnitude. I think you can also zoom in at any speed. By using the screenshots along with it, you can also keep the videos zoomed in at any amount of time you like.

I hope this is helpful.

Thanks to everyone for their responses! Got very busy in my life after posting this querry, and just now trying to get up to speed on the answers.

Btw, I do want for all the photos I use to always zoom very slowly from the center. That is a constant throughout the video.

Using the method I posted that I have tried, I feel like I'm almost there. I must simply be overlooking a step. Here's a recap:

1) I select "fx" aka "Effects Room" on lefthand column menu.

2) Click and drag "Zoom in" onto the photo in the timeline (which I guess is basically a video clip since it runs for a duration of time in the video).

3) Click the "Effect" button on the menu row in the lower middle of the user interface.

4) There appears two sliders, one for "height" and one for "width." I want for the dimensions of the picture to remain constant, so I select the same value for both height and width. As mentioned, the pictures I'm inserting into the timeline are essentially videos, I guess, in the sense that they run as part of the movie for however many seconds I select for each within the timeline.

In any event, whatever value I enter for the height and width zoom, I don't actually see any zoom taking place when I select "play" to see how the effect looks for the duration of time that the photo (i.e., video clip of the photo) is displayed in the timeline.

I must be overlooking a step. What further do I need to do?

Edit: Okay, I think I've got it now. I had to open "keyframe." Then I set the sliders at zero for the start and entered a value of 4 or 5 at the end for a duration of around 10 seconds. That results in the very slow and slight zoom that I'm looking for.

Hi, rogbngp

I understand that you have to zoom out every time you start a video.
I think you already found the path using Pip Designer.
To facilitate, leave the box, Maintaim aspect ratio checked, so has height and width control together.
To smooth the transition from one video to another add a Fade Overlap transition, adjust as long as you like.
To use the effect created in the 1st video to all others.
Right click on the video with effect, select, Copy Keyframe Attributes.
Holding the Ctrl key, clicks on all the clips you want to apply the effect.
Right-click on the selected area, and choose Paste Keyframe Attributes. XEON-E5-2680 v4 / Mem. 16GB DDR4
M.2 NVME 512Gb / 2-SSD Sata3 1TB
AMD RX570 / Display Philips 272V8
Windows 11_64Pro / PD22/365