The new Boris Continuum Units family of visual effects plug-ins lets you choose toolsets from the award-winning Boris Continuum Complete plug-in suite that are geared towards your specific needs. Each Unit seamlessly integrates with Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, and Motion.
Pan and Zoom makes easy work of documentary-style Pan and Zoom techniques made popular by Ken Burns' documentaries. The filter includes a convenient setup mode offering on-screen controls for the size and position of the zoom region, along with the anchor point and a preview area that shows a rendering of the final result. Both manual keyframing and automated workflows are supported. The Pan and Zoom Unit offers advanced image sampling techniques with edge detection for smooth animation and highest-quality image detail.
Three workflow options are included in the pan and zoom filter - fully automatic, semi automatic or manual.
In fully automatic mode, the user sets the position, rotation and scale for the starting point (Transform A region box) and the ending point (Transform B region box) of the image, using the filters' on-screen widgets. The filter then automatically animates from the A to B region along the duration of the clip in the timeline. there are controls with an on-screen display curve for adjusting the velocity of the ease in and the ease out for the start and end of the animation, and for the amount of frames for which you want the image to hold at the start and end of the effect. the advantage of using the full-automatic mode is that no keyframes are required and the smoothness of the animation velocity at the start and end of the effect can be controlled from within the filter. Since no keyframes need to be set in this workflow, it is easy to save presets that encapsulate a complete pan and zoom move.
In semi-automatic mode the user sets the position, rotation and scale for the starting point (Transform A region box) and the ending point (Transform B region box) of the image, using the filters' on-screen widgets, and then only needs to set keyframes for the completion parameter, which instructs the filter where the animation should be at a given point in time. the advantage to the semi-automatic mode is that the user can directly control exactly the speed and position of the image animation using the completion parameter, however the smoothness at the start and end of the effect must be controlled via host bezier transform handles. In short, semi-automatic mode works just like fully automatic mode except that the animation is based on setting keyframes for the completion slider rather than auto-animation based on clip duration.
In manual mode, the user sets the position, rotation and scale for the Transform A region box at the start of the timeline and manually creates separate keyframes for position, rotation and scale. Then the user sets the current time indicator to the end of the timeline, sets new keyframes for the filter's position, rotation and scale parameters and repositions the Transform A region box. Animation is then generated between the individual Transform A keyframes. the advantage of using full manual mode is that the user retains complete control over every aspect of the animation.
In addition to the HUD (Heads Up Display) widgets, there are controls for sharpness (with many available algorithms), softness (also with many available algorithms), deflicker (with several options) and video safe levels that are available across all modes of operation.
Users should take note that the pan and zoom, when in automatic mode, depends upon the length of the clip to which is is applied. if you are using this filter in after effects and the clip is longer than the comp, then you should pre-comp the clip in order to generate the expected result.
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