Dynamic Zoom In/Out, Hold Position

In the Edit tab, rather than force Dynamic Zoom to be applied to entire clips, beginning at the start of a clip, and ending at the very end of a clip, it would be nice if we could create In and Out points using keyframes so that, for example, one could apply multiple Dynamic Zooms to one clip, resuming the zoom from where the previous one left off.

I know the Blade tool can cut a clip to make the Dynamic Zoom end there, but then you have to copy the clip and swap the Dynamic Zoom green and red rectangles (start and end positions) to make it resume from there. And requiring an actual clip cut can be problematic in certain situations, like if the clip you are working with is a Fusion clip. Cutting a Fusion clip restarts the entire clip after the cut.

Being able to have a clip, which could be a composite of many elements, and have it play at 1x for a few seconds, then initiate the Dynamic Zoom when you specify to zoom into 2x and also move over to the top left of the image, then hold that last frame, stay there with the clip continuing to play, then proceed from there to another Dynamic Zoom and another position, etc. would be great because it's so easy to just create your Red and Green rectangles in order to let Dynamic Zoom do the work of smooth movement along X and Y and zooming transformations.

I previously requested the feature to integrate Dynamic Zoom into Fusion itself as well. Dynamic Zoom is very user friendly because you don't have to get bogged down in keyframes and spline curves to try to mathematically figure out how to make things smooth and graceful. You can just put your view where you want and the math is done for you.

If you add Dynamic Zoom to an Adjustment Clip on the topmost track I expect you can achieve a lot of what you're looking for, just in another way.

If you add Dynamic Zoom to an Adjustment Clip on the topmost track I expect you can achieve a lot of what you're looking for, just in another way.

You're amazing Roger! That's exactly what I need!

There is a "gotcha" when using adjustment clips for applying motion effects:

The effect is applied to EVERYTHING below the adjustment clip, including normal clips/stills on both sides of a transition, for example. This may not be what you want, but I have yet to find a way around this (the AC even goes "through" a compound clip container.)

I think a "late IN, and early OUT setting in the dynamic zoom would capture the vast majority of "Ken Burns" needs.

"late IN, and early OUT setting in the dynamic zoom would capture the vast majority of "Ken Burns" needs.

What do you mean by late in, early out setting? Are you talking about easing in and out?

No. Simply a delay before the DZ starts, and a stop-and-hold just before the clip ends. Any easing would be applied to these points. You see this in KB movies all the time.

You can keyframe all of this, of course, but it is time consuming and keyframe easing in Resolve Edit page doesn't work quite right yet.

So if using an Adjustment Clip, how does one achieve this if the Adjustment Clip is applied to a video underneath and not a still image?

Let's say you position the Adjustment Clip to start 5 seconds after the video starts, and to Dynamic Zoom into the left corner, zooming in several times. When the Adjustment Clip ends, the video will pop back to unzoomed, unpositioned point. There are no transitions in the underlying video, just a long clip. How could one do a Dynamic Zoom, hold on that position, then do another Dynamic Zoom proceeding from that point?

Ask Roger. I can't see how this is going to work for me, but I am perhaps imaging a different scenario.

Well actually, it seems that an Adjustment Clip takes the timeline resolution and makes adjustments to that. What I'm doing is making a Fusion clip that comes into the timeline at 16k resolution so I have room to zoom in on it. The timeline is 4k. If I do a Dynamic Zoom on the Fusion clip, I can zoom in and it is preserving the 16k detail from the Fusion clip, even though the timeline is 4k. If, instead of that, I put an Adjustment Clip on top of the Fusion Clip, and apply the Dynamic Zoom to the Adjustment Clip, it loses the 16k and just treats it like a 4k resolution, thereby defeating the purpose of the Dynamic Zoom.

Yes, well...another nail in the coffin as far as I am concerned.

IMHO Adj. clips are a cool idea, but a nightmare tool, as there are so many ways for it to go wrong. Transitions, compositing,...now resolution? Must be very tricky to program & test such an open-ended compositing tool.

What it seems particularly good for are things that could already be done by groups in the color page. But it is easier to visualize, so there is that.

It would be a great tool if it could just utilize the highest resolution of the underlying clips. Many other parts of Resolve do this. If I'm working in 1080p and place 10 video clips that are all 1080p on the screen, but transform them all so they are small and fit on the screen, Resolve still recognizes they are 1080p, so if I zoom in on that entire scene, each individual video doesn't pixelate and get blurry. Resolve recognizes that even though I transformed them and scaled them down, they are still to be treated as 1080p so their data is still there when zooming in.

I posted a feature request in the proper place to ask that the developers consider this functionality for the Adjustment Clip. I also requested they improve the Dynamic Zoom feature by 1) integrating it into Fusion itself as a transform option, 2) within the current implementation in the Edit tab, allowing users to specify exactly when the start and end points affect a clip instead of leaving no choice but to apply to the clip's start and end points, and 3) allow for holding the start or end positions of the Dynamic Zoom while the affected clip still plays. This would allow for applying more than 1 Dynamic Zoom to a video clip. Any of these types of improvements would remove barriers toward a lot of creative possibilities so I hope they are implemented as soon as possible.

Hmm, I wasn't expecting it the use the timeline resolution as zooming individual clips works just fine. But I suppose it makes sense since the resolution would have to be normalized to the clip with the highest resolution for it to work with composited clips.

I'm not sure if Resolve is normalizing to the clip with highest resolution of underlying sources, but rather re-compositing it AT the timeline resolution (losing any additional source resolution), when certain things are done. Assume you are working in a 4k timeline with the default "scale image to fit" selected.

Put a 16k still image in the timeline. It still retains its 16k resolution (it just gets scaled down to fit the 4k timeline). But zooming in 20x, you can see the 16k detail.

3 things that cause Resolve to reduce this 16k still image to the project timeline resolution are:

1) importing to Fusion from the timeline, 2) using it as a Compound Clip/Nested Timeline, 3) applying an Adjustment Clip.

1) So you've got your 16k still image in your timeline. Now create a Fusion clip out of it. In Fusion, it's 4k. So working with that Fusion clip from that point forward in the timeline, it has lost it's 16k detail. However, if instead you make a new Fusion clip that's empty, and drag the same 16k image into that, it preserves its 16k resolution. You can then drop that Fusion clip into the timeline and its's still 16k (even though it's squished down to the 4k size, zooming in shows the 16k is still there).

2) Convert your still image into a Compound Clip drop it into another timeline, it loses its 16k.

3) Slap an Adjustment Clip on top of it. Zoom the Adjustment Clip, it's all blurry.

And Roger is correct that zooming individual clips DOES preserve all available resolution, which is why I'm not sure the reason these other functions need to forfeit it. I'm sure there are things I don't understand fully, but if there's no necessary reason to forfeit, perhaps preserving source resolution is something that can be extended to Adjustment Clips, Compound Clips, Nested Timelines, and create Fusion Clip from Timeline actions.

My request would be:

BMD developers update the Dynamic Zoom tool in the Edit tab so it doesn't have to start at beginning and end of clips, but instead can be applied anywhere. Then, you could apply multiple Dynamic Zooms, when and where you wish, to one long clip without chopping it up. In addition, they would need to include the function to "hold position." This way, you could start playing the clip but don't start the Dynamic Zoom until a certain time, then zoom into your desired position, "hold position" there while the clip continues to play, proceed from that position to another position, so on, as many times as you want. This can be used to simulate the navigation of a 2D object in 3D space when you combine it with Pitch, Yaw, and Rotations. This seems like it could be done using a Keyframe-based solution by incorporating the Dynamic Zoom tool into the regular Transform window. After all, Dynamic Zoom is basically an automated solution to perform the math for smoothness incorporating zoom plus X and Y positions.

I'm a newbie at Resolve, but have some editing experience.

My very first attempts at animating high resolution images with Dynamic Zoom had me inserting ins and outs on the timeline in a failed attempt to regulate DZ's operation. This functionality would go a long way towards improving these "Ken Burns" operations in Resolve. Currently, I find it quite limiting.

For example, even a simple "freeze frame -> zoom -> freeze frame" operation is quite convoluted.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Motion Blur! This is key to making a "Ken Burns" effect look professional.

You can reproduce this in Fusion by animating a transform node, but it's a hassle. The Dynamic zoom feature should just expose a Motion Blur setting IMO.