Blackmagic Forum

Let's say I want to do a pan from left to right. I zoom in a bit and then move the media to the right until it aligns with the left frame, and that's where I add the first keyframe. However, I can't for the life of me figure out how to make the media's left border align exactly with the frame's left border. I guess I'm missing some snapping shortcut or alignment button somewhere.

Maybe my explanation of the problem was not clear enough. It certainly isn't easy to explain. Basically I want to zoom into my media in such a way that all the leftmost pixels in the output will be leftmost pixels of the media I'm zooming into. Is this more clear?

msundman wrote:Maybe my explanation of the problem was not clear enough. It certainly isn't easy to explain. Basically I want to zoom into my media in such a way that all the leftmost pixels in the output will be leftmost pixels of the media I'm zooming into. Is this more clear?

Perfectly clear. There is no automatic way such as "snapping" to frame edges.

In preferences you can set to have a grey background in the viewer so you can see if there is misaligned edges.

msundman wrote:I want to zoom into my media in such a way that all the leftmost pixels in the output will be leftmost pixels of the media I'm zooming into.

Try setting the Anchor point X to minus half the picture width, i.e. -960 for 1920x1080.

You can also have a special color tool that allows to see edges.

But there is no snapping

You have to try the Dynamic Zoom of the Edit page.

Peter Chamberlain wrote:In preferences you can set to have a grey background in the viewer so you can see if there is misaligned edges.

That doesn't help at all. Well, maybe a little bit if I zoom in like crazy, but even then the subpixel placing makes it impossible to align it exactly.

Suggestion alternative 1: Buttons for aligning elements left/center/right (x) and top/center/bottom (y).

Suggestion alternative 2: Snapping edges when dragging with some modifier key pressed.

Suggestion alternative 3: Checkbox enabling a mode in which it's impossible to move the media out of the frame. Unlike the previous suggestions this would also work when using rotation/pitch/yaw.

Your screenshot brings me to another issue, from UI Design 101: Do not use checkboxes for inherently non-boolean options, such as "make the background grey". That's not a boolean option as it has no clear complement. What does it mean if it was unchecked? That the foreground will be made grey? Or the borders will be made grey? Or that the background will be made yellow? Or that the background will be made a random color each time, but never grey? Or that the background will be transparent, showing whatever happens to be behind the window?

Johan Hansson wrote:

msundman wrote:I want to zoom into my media in such a way that all the leftmost pixels in the output will be leftmost pixels of the media I'm zooming into.

Try setting the Anchor point X to minus half the picture width, i.e. -960 for 1920x1080.

Thanks, that kinda works, but then you can't change the position at all, but have to do all translations using the anchor (in a kind of mirrored manner, since the media moves the opposite way from the anchor) which means you can't drag around the picture anymore, but are forced to just tweak the anchor values. And you also must leave rotation angle at exactly 0.

Still, neat workaround, thanks!

Jean Claude wrote:You have to try the Dynamic Zoom of the Edit page.

I can't do pans and (independent) zooms with that. If it had keyframes....maybe...assuming that it'll stay within the borders, which I'm not 100% sure it does. Anyway, as it is it's way too simple to be usable for pretty much any situation I can think of.

Snap to frame bounds would be a great feature, whether built into Dynamic Zoom or as an overall Viewport snap feature that applies to anything being actively dragged by the mouse or nudged with keyboard. Is there anything like this at least in the Fusion editor?